Consequences of land retirement policies on agricultural labor and land tenure: Evidence from the historical Conservation Reserve Program in the United States

Abstract Voluntary agricultural land retirement programs are widely recognized for their environmental benefits, yet their economic effects, particularly on labor markets and land tenure, remain less understood. This paper examines the short‐ and long‐term impacts of the first large‐scale US land retirement initiative, the historical Conservation Reserve Program, introduced under the 1956 Set‐Aside Act. Between 1957 and 1960, the program enrolled more than 30 million acres under 3‐, 5‐, or 10‐year contracts, which then expired gradually through 1970. Using a newly digitized Conservation Reserve Program enrollment database linked to agricultural census data from the 1950s through the 1970s, we find that counties with medium and high enrollment intensity experienced statistically significant declines in tenant‐cultivated land relative to low‐enrollment counties during the program's active years. In medium‐enrollment counties, tenant‐operated land declined by roughly 0.6 percentage points, while high‐enrollment counties experienced declines of approximately 1.6 percentage points nationally. The proportion of tenant farm operators also fell in both medium‐ and high‐enrollment counties. These effects were larger and more persistent in the South, especially in counties with higher shares of nonwhite farm operators and sharecropping.