Beeler ? A popular government farm program designed to take sensitive land out of production also could be putting some people out of business if the economy doesn’t turn around soon.

In Kansas, 2.7 million acres of farmland are sitting idle under the Conservation Reserve Program, which began in 1985. It pays farmers as an incentive to protect the land, but some say that in the process it’s also hurting companies that rely on farmers growing and harvesting crops.

Raymond Lamoree, who stops at Beeler’s grain elevator almost daily to chat with other area farmers over coffee, said he was taking more than 200 acres of cropland out of wheat production and enrolling it in CRP.

“I think it’s a wonderful thing so we can retire,” Lamoree, 81, said. “It’s hard to make a living as a farmer, and I have to make a living some way.”

Dale Klenke, the cooperative’s manager, is worried that the Ness County elevator’s days are numbered because of the amount of land being enrolled in the program.

Ness County is located in a wildlife habitat area and its landowners will lead the state in acreage put into the program. A total of 30,174 acres were signed in recently, giving the county around 71,000 acres enrolled in the CRP program.

Rod Winkler, an FSA conservation program specialist, said half of the farmers who enroll in CRP do so because they’re concerned about the environment. The other half are farmers who want to slow down.

With the average age of the Kansas farmer nearing 60, he said, some see the program as a retirement check.

A Ness County Extension Office study said the county could lose $6.5 million a year by seeding the new CRP acreage to grass. Figures include input costs and the economic loss of not harvesting a crop.