Nomercy448

Controlled burning CRP is NOT the same thing as tossing a cigarette in the ditch and watching the aftermath. There's no magic trick to burning LARGE patches of CRP or cattle pasture...

All you have to do is till up some fire stop boundaries, selectively burn on low to no wind days, and set back burns to break up the patch into smaller controlled burns.

Much of the CRP in our area borders cattle pastures, so other than the cattle keeping the grass a bit shorter, the only way you can tell what's CRP and what's not is which side of the fence posts the wire is on. It doesn't matter if it's 40acres or 400, or 4000, the same controls have to be in place whenever we burn, to prevent run-aways.

A CRP burn is NOT the same thing as an uncontrolled prairie fire.

I was the deputy chief for our rural volunteer house for 10yrs (the only trucks for 40miles) until I moved 3 yrs ago, and my family is one of the larger farming/ranching families in the state. Burning CRP or cattle pastures covering multiple square miles is pretty common place. One of my own patches covers 5.5sq miles and has been in the CRP system since inception in '86 (2mi x 3mi minus one 300acre homestead on the NE corner). We've burned it AT LEAST every other year since then, and as far as I know, we've burned it about that regularly since my great-great-grandpa bought it before the depression.

One of the neighboring farmers has a section of cattle pasture that we've burned many times that covers over 12 sq. miles. It takes a LOT of time, a lot of hands on deck, and requires pretty accurate gauging of the wind, but it's really not that hard.

It's burning pasture, not rocket science...