The best thing you can do with the chicken scratch EQIP throws at you is run them off the farm.  They want their improvements tied up for a significant period of time and I didn't think much of some of the boondoggle ideas they had for watering and pasture species.  At first their cost share money seemed attractive, but am I ever so glad I took off on my own and am not tied up with them at all.  I will guarantee you they do not know your farm like you do, and what you decide to do today will most likely not be what you want in a few years.  I've actually reallocated some of what I planted to pasture, which would have been EQIP and tied up, to crop land to take advantage of the high corn prices, and will go back to pasture as crop profitability again dwindles.  Seems to me to be another CRP type program that gets them in on your farm for throwing a few $ at you.  Now if you're a 5,000 cow dairy wanting to put in a manure handling system, your talking a chunk of change that might be worth the headache of have them around for, bur for a few thousand dollars of pasture improvements, I'd say leave the carrot in the trap alone.

Eddie