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Western CO | Chad, I don't have a huge amount of experience with taking out CRP but do have a lot of experience with continuous crop no-tilling. We did take out a small field of CRP about 10 years ago by no-tilling it. It lays flat and is pretty good soil but it is one of the best fields on my farm now. The last time time this particular field was tilled was in the summer of 1988 -- and our yields have been good to excellent. I actually used soybeans in that field, the first year the glyphosate did all the work and the beans were not very good (8 bu IIRC). So I put it back to beans the next year and they made 32bu/ac -- by that second year the beans were able to choke out what was left of the grass and we only sprayed them once after planting I think. Couple of observations from that experiment -- this field is right next to our yard and we had mowed the edge of it for a while to keep the fire danger down -- in that edge the killing the grass seemed to be easier because of the ease of getting the chemical on the leaves I think, and there were small areas of different species of grass in other parts of the field that hung on for a couple more years but they didn't survive long. I hear lots of guys in this area complain about perennial grasses coming in to their "no-till" and having to till it to get rid of them but I think it is because they are using chem-fallow summer fallow that allows those grasses an opportunity to get established. I think it wouldn't hurt to hay the CRP the summer before you take it out if possible.
As for getting a stand in a the heavy grass cover that can be solved with the right equipment, and you don't have to buy it -- more than likely someone nearby has a drill or planter that would work to get the job done. I no-tilled a piece of native sod here this year that had not been grazed for quite some time and it was not a problem getting the seed where I needed to get a stand.
If conditions were right when you take it out I'm not sure I would be afraid of planting RR corn in it. I would probably want to spray it the fall before to get a jump on it though if you were going to do that. There are also quite a few from here to western KS that have successfully sprayed out CRP and planted it to wheat in the fall. I agree with Dean that I would rather not destroy the soil structure that has been created in those years of CRP. I think in the long run you will be ahead to go that route.
As for the continuous crop no-till side, as I've said before I believe it's the only way to really make a no-till system work "here" but there are certainly lots of folks that will not agree with me. We harvested two 80's of corn this fall side by side where one had been continuous crop since 1996 and the other we just started farming a couple years ago and has been conventional till wheat-fallow for as long as I can remember. The continuous 80 had proso millet on it last year and the other 80 had wheat stubble (read additional two months of moisture catch and better residue). The continuous 80 out yielded the other 80 by nearly 15 bu/ac. Same hybrid, all planted the same day and both fields lay flat and are all the same soil type. That was as close as I can come to comparing the two as equally as possible.
FWIW that's my $0.02
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NE Colorado Guys
