The Role of Technical Service
Providers in Implementing the Farm Bill

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief,
Natural Resources Conservation Service
during the
NRCS Technical Service Provider Satellite Telecast

Washington, DC, September 12, 2002

Today’s telecast will give us a chance to bring prospective technical service providers up to date on what we are doing to implement the technical service provider process. We will also talk about the objectives we hope to meet through technical service providers. And finally, we will answer questions from our viewing audience, as well as from potential technical providers who submitted questions in advance.

Many of you in the audience today are participating in this telecast in the same room with your State Conservationist or your State Technical Service Provider Contact. You will also have a chance to discuss the technical service provider process with them after the broadcast.

I would like to talk for a couple of minutes about the technical service provider process as it relates to the new farm bill. It is true that the farm bill authorizes NRCS to provide technical assistance through technical service providers. But, more than that, the magnitude of the farm bill requires that we rely heavily on such providers.

As you have probably heard, the new farm bill represents a level of investment in conservation that has not been present in any previous farm bill—an investment of $13 billion over a 6-year period. This is the single most significant commitment of resources toward conservation on private lands in the nation’s history. Accomplishing the technical and administrative workload of the farm bill will take hard work by USDA employees, our traditional partners, and many others.

The most direct way to say this is that the farm bill is so big, we need lots of outside help to get the job done. In fact, what we are doing is building an industry of certified professionals to help us get the job done. These technical service providers will play an important role -- providing direct technical assistance and delivering conservation activities under the new farm bill.

The effort to put the technical service provider process in place is proceeding on schedule. The listening sessions we conducted across the country this spring, combined with many meetings with stakeholder groups, have helped us find out what producers and providers want from a technical service provider process. At the same time, our existing processes for using technical service providers are helping us expand the use of outside help, even while we are constructing the new process.

I want to emphasize that using technical service providers is nothing new. We have had a certification policy in place for years, covering conservation planning, comprehensive nutrient management plans and conservation planning that includes pest management. We’ve had memorandums of understanding in place to allow members of many professional organizations to do this kind of planning. The most important feature of the new law is it sets up the mechanism for paying for these and other forms of assistance.

The goal of the technical service provider process is to use private sector, non-profit, and public agency resources to help get the job done. Technical service providers will not replace NRCS employees. NRCS will still have plenty to do, providing the service landowners have come to expect, and fulfilling the inherent government responsibilities assigned to our agency.

Technical service providers will be important because they will expand our capabilities well beyond what we can do ourselves. We will maintain the proud NRCS tradition of service. We have been, and will continue to be, an agency that is all about service -- service to the land, service to landowners, and service to America's taxpayers.

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We have been working hard to come up with an interim final rule covering technical service providers. I am fairly confident that we will publish the interim final rule in the Federal Register by October 1. The technical service provider process will become operational at the same time that the proposed rule is published.

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I would like to thank all of the potential technical service providers who tuned in today, and the people from the NRCS state offices who made themselves available to discuss the technical service provider process after the broadcast.

I can’t emphasize how important the technical service provider process is to successful implementation of the farm bill. As I said at the start of the program, there is simply too much work to be done for NRCS employees to be able to do it alone. If we tried to go it alone, no one in any of our field offices would see their families for the next six years -- and we would still not have enough hours to get the job done.

I also mentioned earlier in the program that you should see the proposed rule for the technical service provider process in the Federal Register by October 1 – with the process going operational at that time.

If you have any lingering questions after today’s broadcast, feel free to call the Technical Service Provider Group at (202) 720 6731 or reach them by e-mail at marilou.flores@usda.gov. Melissa Hammond and her team have been doing a great job of keeping interested parties informed, and they will continue to play that role.