Voluntary, Locally Led Conservation Works the Best

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service at the Minnesota Farm Bureau Federation Annual Meeting Bloomington, MN
November 23, 2003

Thank you, Al (Christopherson), and good evening, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here this evening representing Secretary Veneman and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. I want to talk tonight about ways you – the farmers and ranchers of Minnesota – can reach your conservation goals without sacrificing your financial goals.

More Stringent Regulatory Environment

I know that today’s producers – particularly animal producers, but also grain and row crop producers as well – face some serious environmental challenges, whether we are talking about environmental regulations, food safety regulations, or other regulations. But, today’s agricultural policies and programs offer new and better ways to help you meet these environmental challenges.

The first kind of help is help in meeting your conservation goals. This help comes in two forms. It starts with technical assistance. Al Christopherson knows this.

NRCS employees are ready to help you analyze your situation and help identify solutions. That is what we have done for more than 70 years, and what we continue to do today. I know many of you have been working closely with your District Conservationists; your State Conservationist, Bill Hunt, who is here with me tonight; and your State Technical Committee to explore ways of working more closely to meet your technical assistance needs. Thank you for your participation.

To supplement technical assistance, Congress and the Administration have made a tremendous investment in conservation programs that can help producers meet their environmental goals.

The second kind of help is indirect. In this Administration, agencies of the Federal government are working much more closely with all segments of the agriculture industry to apply regulations in a way that places less of a burden on producers.

We at USDA are highly supportive of market-based approaches to conservation. Producers incur the expenses and do the work of conserving and improving the environment. By relying more on the perspective of producers in administering environmental regulations, we can create a regulatory environment that protects the public interest without unduly harming your profitability.

I want to take a few minutes this evening to talk about these various kinds of help and what they mean both for the environment and for producers.


Meeting your Conservation Objectives

Our goal is to help producers maintain profitability, while meeting your conservation objectives. I hope you were listening closely and heard me say our goal is to help you meet your conservation objectives.

The phrase “meet your conservation objectives” is important. We need to look beyond regulations and beyond specific Federal conservation programs and work toward overall conservation goals. Looking only at programs keeps us from seeing all the other good that conservation efforts can accomplish.

I’ve been a farmer and rancher all my life. And I’ve never met any of my fellow farmers or ranchers who told me they were in the business because they loved the challenge of meeting regulations and the thrill of applying for cost share programs.

No. We are in the business because we love the land, we love making it produce, and we love our role of feeding, clothing, and sheltering people. If we lose track of our love for the land, we are missing the joy of being in agriculture.

The beauty of today’s conservation programs is that they are specifically directed at working lands. They are intended to help landowners achieve both desirable environmental results and economic strength.

Certainly, you can get help in doing what it takes to meet environmental requirements. And that kind of help is important. But you can also get help to achieve conservation goals that have nothing to do with requirements.

The NRCS approach is based on voluntary conservation – which means we want to help you achieve your conservation goals. Some of your goals will be compliance driven, but others will not.

Our approach is also based on local leadership – which means we want to help with things local producers think are important, and not just things that meet Federal requirements. That’s why the rule for EQIP under the 2003 farm bill provides for local as well as national priorities in the ranking process. I hope some of you took the opportunity to help define the priorities for Minnesota.

The good news is that there are resources – and flexibility – in our conservation programs to provide many kinds of help.


Conservation Programs
By now all of you should have heard that the new farm bill represents the single most significant commitment of resources toward conservation on private lands in the nation’s history – an increase of more than $17 billion over 10 years.

If Congress approves the conservation spending proposed by the President in the 2004 budget, we will have the resources needed to take private land conservation to a new level. Our conservation programs reflect the Department of Agriculture’s commitment to all aspects of conservation assistance. Together, the programs form 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 includes technical assistance, cost sharing, land retirement, easements, and also the new Conservation Security Program.

Program Flexibility

As I said a moment ago, our goal is to help producers, maintain profitability, while meeting your conservation objectives. The phrase “help producers” is important because some producers have come to see little connection between activities of the Federal government over the past decade on one hand, and anything they view as “help” on the other.

Priority areas, limited funding, and program restrictions have often combined to prevent producers from getting what they needed in the way of assistance. But that is changing.

For one thing, the new farm bill expanded EQIP and changed it in ways that are good for farmers and ranchers. Furthermore, we overhauled the rules on EQIP to be “local and lean” as Deputy Secretary Moseley has said. The EQIP rule is 1/3 shorter, while codifying the locally led process.

Features of the new rule include
-- Raising the maximum cost share to $450,000 per individual or entity,
-- Eliminating the “bid down” provision (competitive cost-share reduction among program participants),
-- Lifting the animal unit cap,
-- Making livestock operations eligible to receive cost- share payments for waste storage facilities,
-- Raising the cost share limit for limited resource producers and beginning farmers 90 percent,
-- Allowing payment to producers in the same year as the contract, and
-- Reducing the minimum length of an EQIP contract to 1 year after the implementation of all practices.

I am excited about the 2002 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.


One of the most exciting parts of the new farm bill is the Conservation Security Program (CSP), which will recognize farmers and ranchers who have historically practiced good stewardship on their agricultural lands and provide incentives for those who want to do more. We hope to have the proposed rule for the CSP program published in the near future.

We must realize that Federal financial assistance cannot provide everything every producer needs to reach his or her conservation goals. Even with the increased investment in conservation under the 2002 farm bill, the demand for conservation is so great that we once again have a backlog of applications.

The great demand for conservation means we will have to be more strategic in making our conservation investments. We will have to use cost-shares appropriately – as incentives, rather than as entitlements. We have had to limit cost share rates in most cases. Producers and local leaders will also have to look for new partners and new ways to leverage the Federal dollar. But with creativity and cooperation, there is no end to the amount of conservation we can do.

We at NRCS must manage the programs frugally, so that as many farmers as possible are helped by the programs.


Conclusion

As I said at the beginning of my talk, producers have some major conservation challenges, both in terms of meeting your own conservation goals, and in terms of meeting society’s growing expectations and more stringent regulatory requirements.

I have outlined some of the help you can expect in meeting these challenges: access to good technical assistance, strong conservation programs, and a growing spirit of cooperation in the regulatory arena. These three kinds of help should help producers address local resource concerns on working lands, maintain industry profitability, and promote the sustainability of rural communities.

We at NRCS will continue to work with local people to help every private landowner in America achieve his or her conservation goals.

Thank you.