The Future of Conservation on Working Lands in Texas
Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief,
Natural Resources Conservation Service,
at the
Texas Soil and Water Conservation District Directors
Annual Meeting

Corpus Christi, TX
October 9, 2002


Good Morning. Thank you, José. Good morning, Commissioner Combs and Representative Hinojosa. It is a pleasure to be here with you today to talk about the future of conservation on working lands in Texas.

Texas has long been a leader in conservation. Given the amount of land you have in production in this great State, it is no wonder you were among the first to become conservation minded. You have such a diversity of agriculture – and people – in this State that you lead the way in many different areas of conservation, from grazing, to commodity crops, to wildlife habitat, to water conservation and sustaining rural economies.

You have also been blessed with State leaders like Commissioner Combs and Texas Representative Hinojosa, and leaders in Washington, including Representatives Larry Combest and Charles Stenholm on the House Agriculture Committee and Representative Henry Bonilla, who ably looks out for agricultural interests from his seat on the House Appropriations Committee. And, of course, you have my boss, President Bush, who signed the new farm bill, which will set the tone for conservation on working lands in Texas and throughout the Nation over the next six years.

I notice that this is the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Texas Soil and Water Conservation Districts. That fact, alone, is a testament to the length and strength of your leadership in this State.

The Soil and Water Conservation Districts in Texas have played a significant part in developing the locally led approach to conservation that is so important to success. You have developed strong working relationships with a wide range of agricultural interests in the public and private sectors alike. Relationships involving the State Technical Committee, local work groups, and the locally led conservation planning process. These relationships allow farmers and ranchers to reach their conservation goals the right way – through local decision making.

I am here today to talk a bit about where we stand with regard to implementing the new farm bill. There is a lot in the new farm bill to be excited about. It 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.

The size of the investment is important, but the farm bill also changes the emphasis of conservation funding on private lands. Since 1985, most federal spending on private lands conservation has gone to rental and easement payments for idling environmentally sensitive cropland and for cost sharing for conservation practices that enhance the environmental benefits from retired lands.

The new farm bill emphasizes conservation on working lands. The beauty of the new farm bill is that it is specifically designed to reward landowners who have been practicing good conservation or who want to start practicing good conservation. It is directed at achieving both desirable environmental results and economic strength.

The good news is that there are resources – and flexibility – in the new farm bill to provide many kinds of help. There are even provisions in the bill for funding innovative conservation activities.

The farm bill reflects USDA’s commitment to all aspects of conservation assistance. It is an integrated “portfolio” of instruments responsive to Americans’ growing expectations about agriculture’s role in promoting and protecting environmental quality. The portfolio of conservation tools in the farm bill gives producers unprecedented opportunities in the form of technical assistance, cost sharing, land retirement, easements, and also a new stewardship incentives program. Together, these tools will help producers conserve the natural resources on their own lands and help maintain industry profitability. The farm bill also stresses partnership and collaboration to permit private sector participation in providing environmental goods and services.

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. 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 (EQIP) each year will equal the total amount spent over the six year life of the last farm bill.

The five-month anniversary of the signing of the farm bill is a good time to take stock of our progress in implementation. Secretary Veneman recently testified before a Senate committee on what USDA 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 USDA employees have been working to get the job done. Before the fiscal year ended, we released additional funding for EQIP, WRP, WHIP, and FPP. We also released $25 million for Ground and Surface Water Conservation, a 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. 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 a proposed rule 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, USDA 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.

I hope most of you have been getting the information you need. The easiest way to get information on the conservation provisions of the farm bill is to go to the farm bill section of the NRCS web site at www.nrcs.usda.gov.

Some programs are still being defined, but we will get that information on the Web as soon as possible. But the most important work does not happen in Washington: local participation and local leadership is what conservation is all about. Because the conservation programs developed in Washington have only one purpose, and that is to help local people reach their own conservation goals.

Farm bill programs do offer voluntary solutions for complying with the Endangered Species Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and other regulations. But, it also greatly enhances the ability of operators to protect wetlands, water quality, and wildlife habitat in ways that go beyond regulatory requirements.

Participation in farm bill programs is landowner driven: each producer determines his or her level of participation. What the farm bill as a whole will do is help operators maintain profitability, while meeting their conservation objectives. It is important that we keep conservation objectives at the center of our decision making and not focus on the program dollars. If we lose track of our love for the land, we are missing the joy of being in agriculture. And we won’t take the time to fully explore how the new farm bill will help us take care of the land.

I am excited about the new farm bill because it gives us the ability to implement win-win solutions, supported by the Federal Government, and led by local conservation leaders, and landowners, operators, and managers, who are the stewards of the land.

Farm Bill Program Run Down

Because the farm bill contains so much flexibility for America’s farmers and ranchers, I want to take a minute to go over the major provisions. Of course, the biggest single program in the farm bill is the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. The farm bill provides an extra $5.5 billion for EQIP. For fiscal year 2002, that amounted to an additional $227 million to provide financial and technical assistance to farmers, ranchers, and tribes. Two hundred million dollars went for general enrollment for EQIP and $25 million to provide technical and financial assistance for ground and surface water conservation. 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 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 and the Grassland Reserve Program. FPP will have nearly $600 million over six years. For fiscal year 2002, FPP had $50 million. The Secretary released most of that money early last month. For fiscal year 2003, FPP funding doubles to $100 million.

The Grassland Reserve Program 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 Secretary released $275 million in WRP funds last month. We were able to enroll more than 200,000 acres.

The Conservation Security Program will provide payments for producers who have historically practiced good stewardship on their agricultural lands and incentives for those who want to do more. As I mentioned, USDA 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.

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


Uniform Delivery of Farm Bill Programs and Services

There is one other aspect of the new farm bill that I want to talk about, and that is what it can do for underserved groups in the producer community.

The farm bill makes more resources available to more farmers than ever before. It is important that we all work hard to extend the benefits of the farm bill to everyone who is eligible. That means doubling our efforts to serve all kinds of farmers. It means reaching out to all communities. It means being open, fair, courteous, and responsive to all farmers and ranchers. In Texas, that means making the benefits available from the borderlands to the panhandle, from the lowlands of the East to the plains of the West.

USDA is being held increasingly responsible for delivering Agriculture programs to all citizens in this country, and that responsibility flows through agreements and contracts to everywhere Federal dollars are involved. NRCS and all of its partners must live up to this responsibility in everything we do, from meetings with landowners to delivery of services.

As I say everywhere I go, the purpose of the farm bill is to help every landowner reach his or her conservation goals. We can only do this if we are serving every landowner equally.


Technical Service Providers

One final aspect of the farm bill that I know you are interested in is the technical service provider process. Accomplishing the technical and administrative workload of the farm bill will take hard work by USDA employees, our traditional partners, and a lot more. The farm bill provides the authority for us to use technical service providers from the private sector, non-profit groups, and government agencies to get the job done.

We hope to have that process in place by the middle of the month (October) with publication of an interim final rule in the Federal Register. The rule will call for a 90-day comment period, during which we will find out what further improvements can be made. Here are some of the features you can expect in the technical service provider process:

The farm bill provides for USDA to offer technical assistance both directly by government employees or through payment to producers to acquire outside assistance from a qualified source.

The farm bill also provides authority for USDA to continue our current process of cooperative agreements with non-Federal entities.

In creating the technical service provider process, we are actually creating a whole new industry of conservation service providers out there, who will be doing much of the conservation planning and implementation work for producers. The farm bill simply provides too much opportunity for NRCS to do all the work.

Rest assured, NRCS employees will still be around, helping landowners, working with technical service providers, and making sure the resources get where they need to be. Right now, we are filling in the gaps in our field office structure – gaps caused by retirements and other workforce turnover. We are also using current procedures to continue working with our partners. In addition, the farm bill authorizes USDA to use program resources to enter into stewardship agreements with State and local agencies, tribes, and nongovernmental organizations. We need the Soil and Water Conservation Districts and others to keep producers informed of the technical service provider process as it takes effect.

Technical service providers are not new to NRCS or to producers, but they will play a more extensive role than you are used to.

I want to alert you to an event next month related to technical service providers. USDA will be hosting a technical service provider input session to include participants in Washington D.C., with satellite downlinks nationwide and a web broadcast. I hope you will all be able to attend, either in person or electronically. The session will be part of the public input process for the new rule.


Conclusion

In conclusion, let me say that the next few years promise to be the next golden age of conservation on America’s working lands. We can’t take anything away from what our fathers and mothers, our grandfathers and grandmothers, did for conservation during the dust bowl and subsequent years. They accomplished great things. But the farm bill gives us a chance to accomplish great things, too.

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 the Soil and Water Conservation Districts, is to put these resources to work on the land.

One way the Districts can help make the farm bill work is to make producers aware of all the assistance that is available to them. I hope you will continue to use all the methods at its disposal to keep all producers informed of how they can benefit from the new farm bill.

Working together, we have the power to take conservation on working lands in Texas and around the nation to a new level.

Thank you.