Was looking around online and found an ad for a 59+ acre tract of land. In the description it says:  THERE IS A LOT OF WILDLIFE. PROPERTY ENROLLED IN THE GRASSLAND RESERVE PROGRAM (GRP). 4 ACRES HAVE BEEN SURVEYED OUT

What does that mean? Sounds to me like 4 acres of the 59 acres has been surveyed out and participates in the GRP. Would I not be able to do anything with that 4 acres?

I'm just curious. We are not buying this land. I'm simply just doing some day dreaming about a possible future land purchase and came across this listing.

More likely just the opposite and the 4 acres is not in the program. Having 4 in the program wouldn't pay much. You'll want to find out how much he is paid for the land in the program in order to determine how that impacts what you're willing to pay for the land. Oh, and if it's like the CRP program, you'll need to know how much longer the contract is in effect.

This ^^^

Find out the details (google can tell you a lot about the "general program details" but you need to find the details of the specific contract. It's likely 4 acres were surveyed out and excluded from the program for a future building site.

For general information, some CRP programs and reserve/set-aside programs can be pretty lucrative. For example, at my place I can get $120/acre to put my tillable acres into a program for a certain declining species of sparrow. I can do a 10 or 15 year contract. USDA will pay a planting incentive, then the state will turn around and pay the actual planting costs of the habitat under their "upland game bird habitat" program. Coincidentally, the habitat for sparrows is very similar to that of quail and other upland game birds. By excluding certain, small plots from the program I can then plant legume food plots that will be beneficial to other wildlife (deer, turkeys etc). All of this will pay almost 20% of the annual mortgage payments on my homestead, allow me to manage my property for maximum wildlife potential, and I still maintain full recreational privileges (no commercial privileges though).

ETA, let me clarify the recreational vs commercial land use. This information is from what I have gleaned from the CRP program, which is pretty broad (there are like fifty or sixty different land-enrollment categories). You must have a property management plan, the USDA district biologist will help write it. What you do on the property must be in the plan (strip discing, controlled burns, pesticide use etc). Recreational use includes hunting, hiking, camping type activities. Commercial use would be grazing cattle, cutting for hay, or other agricultural purposes. That being said, when I spoke with my district biologist he told me that grazing cattle is permitted if it's in the management plan (trying to recreate the bison grazing the prairies environmental benefits). It is generally accepted that CRP lands can still be leased for recreational purposes (hunting etc). Therefore, if one wanted you could enroll a property, making good money from the program, then turn around and lease it as a "managed hunting lease". You just have to be able to get it in the right programs for the lucrative money and that will not only be state-specific, but also county specific. For example, in my state Quail is one of the birds you can manage for as part of the SAFE (CP38 program of CRP) but in my county there are no acres allotted as quail habitat, the closest thing is the Henslow's Sparrow, which is similar habitat to that of Quail.

I concur with the others that it's likely the opposite.

I don't know anything at all about that program, but I would have just assumed it provided property tax relief. Here in PA we have the "Clean and Green" program for example; certainly qualifying tracts of land can be enrolled to bring your property taxes down. The assessor's office tells me though in my particular county it doesn't pay off because we haven't had a re-assessment in so long.

Still, now I'm wondering if I need to do some digging and see if there are any programs out there that could actually pay me for the property like that.