Soil Bank Program

The Soil Bank Program is a federal program (authorized by the Soil Bank Act, P.L. 84-540, Title I) of the late 1950s and early 1960s that paid farmers to retire land from production for 10 years. The predecessor to today’s Conservation Reserve Program. The maximum enrollment was 28,700,000 acres (116,000 km) in 1960. Some elements in the CRP, such as a limit on CRP acres per county, were a response to the Soil Bank experience.