Wichita ? U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns will decide by early this summer whether to ease contract penalties for farmers who pull out acres early from a government program that pays them to set their land aside for conservation, his department said Tuesday.

With ethanol demand driving corn prices higher, more farmers are mulling whether to take their land out of the Conservation Reserve Program – a move conservationists fear will lead to the loss of millions of habitat acres for game birds and other endangered species.

Johanns will base his decision in part on the Agricultural Statistics Service prospective planting report that comes out on March 23, said Keith Williams, spokesman for the U.S. Agriculture Department in Washington, D.C.

Johanns also will factor in the newly released results from a special offer made last year to landowners with expiring acres.

“He has not made a decision, and he doesn’t have the information to make a decision at this point in time,” Williams said.

The Agriculture Department said last week that 89 percent of the acreage set to expire this year was re-enrolled in the program. About 83 percent of contracts set to expire between 2008 and 2010 also were extended. Those signups came in response to a special offer the agency gave landowners last year as contracts covering acres were getting ready to expire.

Those enrollments are consistent with past enrollments, which indicates not a lot of acres are coming out voluntarily, Williams said.