In response to the coronavirus pandemic currently impacting all states, including Kansas, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Kansas Department of Agriculture are recommending landowners and managers voluntarily reduce the number of acres they burn this spring. To support this recommendation, the Kansas Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Kansas Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) are encouraging the delay of any scheduled prescribed burning of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) acres.
FSA and NRCS will assist landowners in choosing an alternative type of CRP management practice for the current year through a revised Conservation Plan of Operations. Applicable CRP contract producers will need to contact their local service center to initiate the change request, then complete the necessary paperwork, which can be done by mailing it in or through email. Contact information for local service centers can be found here.
If land managers do choose to burn, it is critical that they consult the smoke modeling tool on www.ksfire.org. This tool indicates the level at which a burn would contribute to urban area air quality problems. Land managers should refrain from burning if the area is predicted in the large (red) contribution range on the smoke modeling map.
