The Farm Bill and the Cattle Industry

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief
Natural Resources Conservation Service
at the Young Cattlemen's Conference
Washington, DC

June 6, 2002

Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be here this afternoon. I am excited to have a chance to meet with you today.

As you may know, I am fairly new to the job of Chief at NRCS – and to NRCS overall. I have spent much of my life in Washington as a lobbyist, first for the wheat industry, and then for the corn industry. I have also served on several congressional staffs.

But, I am also a cattleman. I have a 1500-acre diversified grain and cattle operation in South Dakota. You might say running the NRCS is my day job, and being a farmer and rancher is my other day job. I am happy to be able to combine my two greatest interests – agriculture and agricultural policy.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association is a valuable partner of the NRCS in the effort to implement and practice conservation on America’s agricultural lands. The cattle industry has many successes in the conservation arena, for which you can be justifiably proud. I know also that there are a number of issues that concern you, and that these issues will require an ongoing dialogue between the cattle industry and numerous government agencies.

Fortunately the new farm bill does a lot of things to make conservation easier for the cattle industry. I want to touch a bit on your specific issues while giving an overview of what is in the Conservation Title of the farm bill, and what we are doing at NRCS to implement the farm bill.


The Farm Bill

The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 represents an unprecedented investment in conservation on America’s private lands – nearly $13 billion over the next six years. It emphasizes conservation on working lands – including livestock operations – largely through increases in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program (WHIP), and the new Conservation Security Program (CSP).

The most dramatic growth is in EQIP. The 1996 farm bill provided a 6-year investment of $1.3 billion for EQIP. The new farm bill provides more than $5-1/2 billion over 6 years. The focus on livestock producers within EQIP has been expanded, with funding for livestock producers increased to 60% of the annual program. Grazing systems management is an included practice. Livestock waste management is an included practice.

The elimination of limits on the size of eligible livestock operations will help larger livestock operations comply with proposed animal waste management regulations under the Clean Water Act and possible requirements related to TMDLs.

But just as important as the increased investment is the ways in which the new farm bill streamlines the program – changes based largely on comments from producers. Streamlined provisions include first year payments, shorter contracts, and more flexibility, especially for midsized livestock operators.

EQIP also includes new funding for ground and surface water conservation activities.

WHIP increases from $50 million under the old farm bill to $360 million over 6 years under the new farm bill. The program provides cost sharing for landowners who want to develop and improve wildlife habitat.

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 program is open to all agricultural land – cropland and grazing land.

The authorization for the Conservation of Private Grazing Lands (CPGL) program under the new farm bill remains at $60 million a year.

The new farm bill permanently authorizes the Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) program to promote protection of natural resources and improvement of local economies.

Land retirement programs, such as the Conservation Reserve Program (CR) and the Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) also have significant increases. Land retirement programs have dominated Federal agricultural conservation spending since 1985. The acreage cap for the CRP has been raised by nearly 3 million acres (to 39.2 million). CRP’s Farmable Wetland Program has been extended to all states and the cap increased to 1 million acres. WRP will more than double, to cover more than 2 million acres under the new farm bill, with a commitment to enroll up to 250,000 acres each year.

The new farm bill provides for several other programs to protect working farmland, including the Farmland Protection Program (FPP) and the Grasslands Reserve Program (GRP).

FPP provides funds to State, tribal, or local governments and to nonprofit organization to help purchase easements protecting productive farm and ranch land from conversion to nonagricultural uses. The 1996 farm bill allocated up to $35 million. The new farm bill raises that to nearly $600 million over 6 years. Eligible land now specifically includes rangeland, grassland, and pastureland.

The new Grassland Reserve Program (GRP provides a quarter of a billion dollars in mandatory spending to enroll up to 2 million acres in rental agreements or easements.

Finally, the new farm bill includes several watershed-based programs.

The farm bill authorizes $600 million over 6 years under the Small Watershed Rehabilitation Program to rehabilitate or remove aging dams that pose health and safety threats. Within this authorization, mandatory funding starts at $45 the first year and increases by $5 million per year.  Discretionary funding starts at $45 million and increases by $10 million each year.

The new Grassroots Source Water Protection Program is authorized at $5 million annually for wellhead or ground water protection programs.

The Great Lakes Basin Program for erosion and sediment control is authorized at $5 million annually.

The Conservation Corridor Demonstration Program on the east side of the Chesapeake Bay will demonstrate local conservation and economic cooperation using existing USDA conservation programs.


The Challenges of implementation

Along with this unprecedented investment in the future of conservation on private lands comes the challenge of getting the job done.

We are working in many areas, including informing producers of the provisions of the farm bill, training our employees to get the job done, expediting the rule making process for provisions of the new farm bill, and finding ways to involve others in farm bill implementation.

We think one key to getting the job done is to stay flexible and delegate as much authority as we can to our employees in the field.


Getting the word out

We are already working hard to make everyone aware of the conservation provisions of the new farm bill.

The farm bill section of the NRCS web site contains a wealth of information on many of the new conservation programs. Just go to the NRCS home page at www.nrcs.usda.gov and click on “farm bill.” Some programs are still being defined, but we will get that information on the web site as soon as possible.

We will also be putting out press releases to get information into the hands of producers around the country. Our local offices have packets of information and will be doing presentations in the community through the summer.


Training

We are training our local employees, so they will be able to implement the farm bill and advise producers on its provisions. Training on WRP, WHIP, and FPP began before Memorial Day. Training on other programs will begin as soon as we have the information.

We are also developing an electronic version of our Field Office Technical Guide. We’re doing this through a two-phase process that is starting today. Right now, we are providing to our people in the states web-based software that they will use to put technical information into the guide. That will be used by other field people and – down the road – third party vendors.

Phase Two is set for November of this year. At that time, NRCS field staff and third-party vendors will be able to use the information and data that has been put into the electronic version of the guide to create “Thunderbooks.” These are collections of Field Office Technical Guide materials specific to their work that they can download onto their laptops and hand-held computers.

The electronic Field Office Technical Guide is being written by the people who are going to use it most and who have the expertise to use it well. And that is something that we and third-party vendors will need as we put the Farm Bill programs into action.


Rule Making

Implementing the new farm bill will require extensive rule making. We have already started this process, so that we can get rules into place as quickly as possible. We want to make the rules as simple as possible. We also want to make the rule making process fully collaborative, consistent with the Administrative Procedures Act. And, we want to keep as much decision making as possible at the local level, so that local people have as much control of their programs as possible.

Some programs have no changes or only prescriptive changes, and we will expedite the regulatory process. Getting these rules in place quickly is important, because the farm bill includes over $500 million in additional funding that we must put to work this summer. Others programs, including the new Conservation Security Program will go through the formal rule making process, including a period of public comment.


Getting others involved

Accomplishing the technical and administrative workload of the farm bill will take hard work by USDA employees, our traditional partners, and a lot more. We have already started filling in the gaps in our field office structure – gaps caused by retirements and other workforce turnover.

We will, of course be using current procedures to continue working with our partners. Even so, we will have to rely heavily on outside help to provide direct technical assistance and to deliver conservation activities under the new farm bill. The farm bill provides the authority for this, and there will be ample opportunity during rulemaking for us to hear from everyone.

The farm bill provides for the Department 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.

We conducted listening sessions across the country this spring to find out what producers wanted out of a third party vendor program. In addition, the farm bill authorizes the Department to use program resources to enter into stewardship agreements with State and local agencies, tribes, and nongovernmental organizations.


Conclusion

That, in a nutshell, is the conservation title of the farm bill and what we are doing at NRCS to implement it. I would be happy to answer questions.