Speech by Bruce I. Knight, Chief,
Natural Resources Conservation Service,
at the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association
Fall Board Meeting

Kerrville, TX, October 11, 2002


Thank you, Mr. Runnels. It is a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about conservation on America’s working lands. I also want to thank your President, John Dudley, and your Executive Vice President, Matt Brockman, for inviting me to be here today. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Matt for many years, and I can say, you are fortunate to have him as a part of your organization.

I enjoy meeting with producer groups such as the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, because you are the reason my agency exists. Our goal is to help you conserve, maintain, and improve the natural resources and environment here in Texas in ways that maintain and improve your profitability.

No one knows more about the needs and goals of your operation than you do, which is why our philosophy at the Natural Resources Conservation Service has always been to have local agricultural leaders set the priorities and individual operators determine their level of participation.

As you can see from my biography, I lead a double life. On one hand, I have been involved for years in agricultural policy, as a congressional staff member and a lobbyist. On the other hand, I am a lifelong rancher and farmer with a strong interest in conservation on working lands.

I have a diversified grain and cattle operation in South Dakota, my native state. We use no-till and rest rotation grazing systems. My father impressed on me that we may be the landowners, but we are really just the stewards of the land. That is how I have run my operation.

At NRCS, I have a chance to combine my experience in how government works at the national level with my experience in local agriculture and conservation.

As I looked over the draft agenda for your meeting, I couldn’t help but notice that your committee structure mirrors many of the things NRCS and other USDA agencies work with every day: Marketing, Animal Health, Legislation, Natural Resources and Environment, and Wildlife.

You can see all of these concerns in the new Farm Bill, which I will talk about in a minute, as well as in the Food and Agriculture Policy document the Department published last year. The Department’s policy document supports all aspects of conservation assistance, including technical assistance, financial assistance, land retirement, and stewardship incentive payments as an integrated “portfolio” of instruments responsive to Americans’ growing expectations about agriculture’s role in promoting and protecting environmental quality.
It also stresses partnership and collaboration to permit private sector participation in providing environmental goods and services, to maximize environmental benefits for conservation dollars spent, and to encourage competition and leveraging of resources. The farm bill by itself represents the single most significant commitment of resources toward conservation on private lands in the nation’s history -- nearly $13 billion over the life of the bill.

As the Department specified in its policy document, the farm bill provides a balanced portfolio of tools for conservation. Among other things, the farm bill provides incentives for proper conservation practices on working lands, helps farmers and ranchers improve the environment and meet environmental standards, and greatly enhances the ability of farmers and ranchers to protect wetlands, water quality, and wildlife habitat. The farm bill presents some really great opportunities for conservation on ranchlands in particular.

To be frank, Federal conservation programs in recent years have not been that good for ranchers, even though many ranch families have realized the need for conservation for more than a century.

One rancher who pioneered the conservation ethic was my personal hero, Theodore Roosevelt. I admire Roosevelt, not just because he was such a champion of conservation, but also because he spent some formative time in the Dakotas, where I grew up and received my conservation education.

At a particularly difficult time in his life – after he had just lost both his wife and his mother – Roosevelt bought a ranch in North Dakota and began his education on the relationship between people and the land. Over time, he developed the beliefs that made him a champion of conservation.

Roosevelt, like many of us, actually lost his shirt as a Dakota rancher. Overgrazing, combined with a severe winter, wiped him out, along with many other landowners from the East and Europe who thought ranching in the Northern Plains, often with Texas longhorns driven north from this area, was an easy way to make money. The departure of these large operations from the scene in the late 1880s opened the way for small ranchers and homesteaders, who were more closely linked to the land they lived on and worked.

We might consider the efforts of the pioneers to learn how to take care of their land the first conservation movement among ranchers. Much later, when USDA had its Great Plains Program, the federal government became involved in helping give ranchers the tools they needed to be conservationists. Unfortunately, with the demise of the Great Plains Program, many of these tools became less available.

The good news is that the new farm bill puts a number of conservation tools back into the hands of landowners. Not only is there more money overall, but the elimination of priority areas means programs will be more widely available for ranchers.

The increased emphasis on conservation in food and agriculture policy and the new farm bill indicates that the Administration, the Congress, and the American people have come to agree with Roosevelt that “There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country.”
I am excited about the new farm bill because it gives us the ability to implement win-win solutions, supported by the Federal Government, worked out by the landowners, operators, and managers, who are the stewards of that land.

Farm Bill Implementation

The farm bill is now five months old, which gives us a bit of a track record as far as implementation is concerned. But we also need to realize that we are only five months into a six-year effort. Many farmers and ranchers know quite a bit about the new farm bill. Many have benefited from its provisions. However, we still have much to do before the farm bill is fully implemented. We still need to write rules for several programs. And we need to be able to make wise use of increasing amounts of money each year.

Under this farm bill, the investment in conservation started big, and it just keeps getting bigger. For example, by 2005, the amount of money in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program each year will equal the total amount spent over the six year life of the last farm bill.

Secretary Veneman recently testified before a Senate committee on what the Department of Agriculture has done to implement the farm bill over the last five months. She outlined the massive workload required to implement the farm bill and how hard employees of the Department have been working to get the job done.

Before the fiscal year ended, we released funding for EQIP, WRP, WHIP, and FPP. We also released $25 million for Ground and Surface Water Conservation, an important new activity authorized in the farm bill as part of EQIP. The total funding released for 2002 was nearly $750 million.

But, another important part of our work is getting the rules in place for programs that have changed as a result of the new farm bill and for programs created in the farm bill. The bill only gives us the rough outlines of what to do and the money to do it. We have to work with farmers and ranchers around the country to write the rules that spell out how these programs will work.

Secretary Veneman also stressed that we are on schedule as far as writing the rules needed to implement the conservation provisions of the farm bill. So far, we have issued final rules for the Wetlands Reserve Program and Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program and proposed rules for Agricultural Management Assistance and the Farmland Protection Program. Incidentally, we are renaming this program the Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program to better describe its scope.

Looking ahead, fiscal year 2003 funding is up substantially from 2002 levels. This fall we will publish the proposed rule for EQIP and the interim final rule for Technical Service Provider certification. We also are making steady progress toward the proposed rule for the Conservation Security Program. Finally, the Department is finishing up the delegation of authority for the Grassland Reserve Program.

We are working hard on writing the rules because we want to get rules into place as quickly as possible. We also want to make the rules as simple as possible and make the rulemaking process fully collaborative. And, we want to keep as much decision making as possible at the local level, so that local people have as much control of the programs as possible. Deputy Secretary Moseley refers to this approach as keeping things “lean and local.”

Some programs have no changes or only prescriptive changes. We have expedited the regulatory process for these programs. Other programs – the new Conservation Security Program, for example – will go through the formal rulemaking process, including a period for public comment.

Farm Bill Program Run Down

I want to take a few minutes to summarize the funding for various programs under the new farm bill. The farm bill provides a great deal of flexibility for America’s farmers and ranchers. Funding increases in all programs offer more farmers and ranchers more options for addressing their natural resource challenges.

Of course, the biggest single program in the farm bill is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP). The farm bill provides an extra $5.5 billion for EQIP. The farm bill offers ranchers more flexibility and resources to protect air and water quality. These include lifting of the animal unit cap, incentive payments for nutrient management plans, elimination of priority areas, and a provision that 60 percent of the increased funding go toward livestock practices.

For Fiscal year 2002, farm bill funding for EQIP amounted to an additional $227 million. For fiscal year 2003, EQIP will have $700 million, plus $45 million for ground and surface water conservation.

Other programs show similar increases.

The farm bill provides $360 million for the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP) over six years. WHIP had $15 million for last fiscal year and will have $30 million for FY 2003.

The new farm bill provides for several programs to protect working farmland and ranchland, including the Farmland Protection Program (FPP) and the Grassland Reserve Program (GRP). FPP helps ensure agricultural lands will remain available for future generations. It will have nearly $600 million over six years. For fiscal year 2003, FPP funding doubles to $100 million. GRP will have a quarter of a billion dollars in mandatory spending to enroll up to two million acres of grazing land. It remains to be seen how much of that money will be available each year.

The new farm bill also permanently authorizes the Resource Conservation and Development Program to promote protection of natural resources and improvement of local economies.

In addition, the Wetlands Reserve Program has significant increases in its acreage cap.

The Conservation Security Program (CSP) will provide payments for producers who have historically practiced good stewardship on their agricultural lands and incentives for those who want to do more. The Department is working hard on the rule for the CSP program. We are determined to create a balanced program that works, so it may take some time to work out the details.

Finally, the farm bill also contains a provision to maintain the trust between operators and NRCS by making your conservation plan information confidential.

That is what the farm bill contains.


Drought Relief
Now, I’d like to talk a bit about drought. Farmers and ranchers in many parts of the country, and especially in West Texas, are suffering the effects of drought. We can hope that conditions will improve, but right now many of you are in serious trouble.

I’m sure many of you see how dry things are on your own ranches every time you look out the window. I can see it on my ranch in South Dakota. My operation is not in as bad a shape as it could be, because we acted on predictions and cut back on stocking levels. We also acted to protect the range, and our economic position, by taking the cattle off the range four to six weeks earlier than usual.

For many farmers and ranchers, many of our decisions on such things as planting, stocking levels and grazing season are supported by NRCS services that are available to all operators.

One of those services is the Drought Monitor site on the Internet, which is produced weekly with input of data and drought assessments by NRCS experts at the National Water and Climate Center.

Another is the new NRCS electronic field office technical guide. We have developed an electronic version of our Field Office Technical Guide, so that our employees, people in the States, our partners, technical service providers, and landowners have web access to the technical information contained in the guide.

But, beyond helping ranchers make decisions based on good water data, USDA also is doing everything it can to assist producers.

In July, Secretary Veneman authorized emergency haying of Conservation Reserve Program acreage in parts of several States around the country to provide forage for livestock and to help producers in areas most severely affected by drought. She later expanded that authority nationwide. NRCS extended the same provision to Water Bank Program contract holders.

The Secretary announced $150 million in supplemental feed in several States where 75 per cent or more of the pasture and range is rated as poor or very poor.

Just three weeks ago (Sept. 19) Secretary Veneman made $750 million available for a new program – the Livestock Compensation Program – for cattle, sheep, goat and buffalo producers in counties designated as primary disaster areas due to drought. Sign up began October 1st, and payments began on October 8th. Designated Counties in Texas are eligible.

The Farm Service Agency administers this program, and most other disaster assistance within USDA. You can check with FSA at your local USDA Service Center for information and assistance.

The number of counties receiving disaster designation keeps growing, with counties in 11 states, including Texas, added in the last two weeks.

USDA also provides assistance in many areas through federal crop insurance and noninsured crop disaster assistance.

We at NRCS also are helping operators combat the effects of drought. We are providing incentives for farmers and ranchers in drought States to help maintain the health of grasslands and minimize the erosion of drought-stricken rangelands. Funding from EQIP is available to help landowners improve water distribution, control brush, plant cover crops, use farming techniques that don’t disturb the soil, and graze cattle in ways that will preserve forage. As you can see, these drought-related practices are also good conservation practices overall.

Some of the WHIP money for the first time also is going to help farmers and ranchers cope with drought. We can enter into one-year wildlife emergency agreements to help landowners meet the immediate habitat needs of wildlife affected by this natural disaster. Efforts may include planting native grasses and forbs, leaving food plots within existing fields, and establishing buffers.

We can’t do much about the availability of water, but we can improve the management of our water resources.

Part of the NRCS mission is to help farmers and ranchers manage and use water effectively, so you can stay in the agriculture business. We can help you manage water on-farm to increase production, maintain water quality, and avoid falling water tables. This is the intent of the new ground and surface water conservation program. We can predict supply, help plan storage to meet water needs, and give you the data you need to plant appropriately. We can help you and your communities capture a wider range of benefits from the land, including wildlife, open spaces, and quality of life. In addition, our tools to assist you with brush control are one of the most effective means of managing for both better range health and greater water supply. We can also help you adopt practices that result in more precise delivery of water, as well as nutrients and pest control agents.

Because agriculture is a major consumer of water, agriculture will be part of the solution to shortage problems. USDA is looking at increased incentives and technical support for improved on-farm water management. Conservation programs also will play an important role in helping to solve water management issues. We may also see more programs to encourage development of on-farm water storage facilities to alleviate local shortages.

Overall, USDA is working with farmers and ranchers in many ways on the drought issue: from helping operators structure their operations in ways that can retain some degree of profitability even when water is scarce, to helping operators make good decisions each season through water supply predictions, to providing relief to operators when drought strikes.

In the midst of a drought like we are experiencing now, relief measures are most important. But, once we are out of these rough times, the prediction function will become more important from season to season. And finally, the techniques available to help farmers and ranchers become less dependent on water are the long-term solution for all of us.

Conclusion In closing, let me say how much we at NRCS look forward to working with the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and others who want to work together on resource issues. The farm bill provides incentives for proper conservation practices on working lands. It helps farmers and ranchers improve the environment and meet environmental expectations.

Farm bill programs offer voluntary solutions for complying with Swampbuster and Sodbuster, the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and other state and local regulations.

But, the farm bill also greatly enhances the ability of operators to protect rangeland, wetlands, water quality, and wildlife habitat in ways that go beyond regulatory requirements. It is important that we keep conservation objectives at the center of our decision making and not give in to what I call the “program mentality.”

As I mentioned earlier, the new farm bill represents the single greatest commitment of resources to conservation on private lands that this nation has ever seen. Thirteen billion dollars in six years for conservation is a huge investment. The big job now for NRCS, and for local leaders and individual producers, is to wisely put these resources to work on the land.

Now we all need to get together and do what it takes to conserve, maintain, and improve our natural resources and environment – and, at the same time, maintain and improve the profitability of our agricultural operations. Let’s roll up our sleeves and get the job done.

One way the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association can help make the farm bill work is to continue making producers aware of all the assistance that is available to them. I hope your organization continue to use all the methods at its disposal to keep members informed of how they can benefit from the new farm bill.

The new farm bill gives us the opportunity to take conservation assistance to a whole new level.

The cornerstone of our work is local leadership. Teddy Roosevelt once said “The movement for the conservation of wild life and the large movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose and method.” That is certainly true as far as NRCS is concerned.

We think commonsense, locally led conservation is the only conservation that works. That is why we will continue to work with local people to help every private landowner in America achieve his or her conservation goals.

Thank you.