More and Better Conservation on America’s Farms and Ranches

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service,
at the NRCS Conservation Security Program Workshop,
St. Louis, MO
October 6, 2003

Thank you, Roger (Hansen). Good afternoon, everyone.

I can’t tell you how happy I am that we are having this workshop. It means that we are just a few short steps away from implementing the Conservation Security Program – the single most innovative and exciting program contained in the 2002 farm bill. And to say that CSP is the most exciting part of the farm bill is quite a statement, because the whole farm bill was pretty exciting, as all of you can tell from your workload over the past couple of years.

The farm bill brought a record investment in conservation, an increase of $17.1 billion over 10 years. It brought us a greater emphasis on working lands, a billion dollars for EQIP this year, for example, with more to come in the future. It brought us a market-based method to help get this conservation done without increasing the size of the federal government: the Technical Service Provider process. And it brought us CSP, a way to recognize the valuable conservation work farmers and ranchers have done historically and to provide additional incentives for those who strive to do more.

The rest of the conservation title expanded our conservation options in this country by doing more on working lands. CSP expands our conservation options even more by adding a tool that shifts the emphasis of conservation in the direction of recognizing and stimulating conservation – what Secretary Veneman refers to as “Rewarding the Best and Motivating the Rest”.

I want to thank Carole Jett for her leadership on the Farm Bill Implementation Team and Craig Derickson for his leadership as national CSP manager. Carole and Craig and their team members, many of whom you will meet this week, have worked very hard to get us to the point where we are today -- with a draft rule in clearance and a national workshop to get us ready for CSP implementation.

Many other people had important roles in getting CSP to this stage. You will hear from many of them this week. Gary Margheim and Doug McKalip have been deeply involved in the negotiations leading up to creation of the draft rule. Many others have been working to make sure we have the technological and scientific support we need to make this program work in areas such as soil quality, water quality, grazing lands, and wildlife habitat. Others have worked on web-based applications like the Customer Service Toolkit, ProTracts, and the One-Plan.

The backbone of CSP is conservation planning, our bread and butter. Although you may not get to some of the finer points this week that are still under negotiation for the rule, you will get a full dose of the basic mechanics needed to implement CSP, no matter which way the fine points are finalized.

This preparation will be the foundation not only for CSP but for all our work. Yes, mundane activities like updating quality criteria and making sure the common resource areas are done right the first time have become extremely important. I am personally briefed about these activities regularly. They are important, and they are necessary. The results of all this hard work will be apparent over the course of the week.


2003 Accomplishments

Before I get deeply into the Conservation Security Program, I want to take a minute to thank you all for everything you have done to implement the farm bill. Your accomplishments are truly amazing.

During fiscal year 2003, we allocated $2.4 billion to the States. Those of you in this room did a tremendous job of putting that investment to work on the land. Time was tight. We know that. We did not receive most of the money until April, but everyone worked together and put the money to work.

Beyond that, you also did an extraordinary job in the last month of the fiscal year, awarding contracts to cover $155 million in year-end reallocations. Your hard work will enable more farmers and ranchers to meet their conservation goals.

One of our goals for FY 2003 was to make sure every producer knew about farm bill programs and had an opportunity to participate. NRCS employees and partners in every State worked to get the word out. The Department of Agriculture held outreach events in many States, and NRCS employees helped out. We received many thousands of applications for farm bill funds because of these outreach efforts – and underserved segments of the producer population were well represented.

I am proud of all the work our employees did to get the national and local priorities for conservation programs onto the Internet. Having access to these priorities helps producers focus their time and effort on submitting applications that have the best chance of being approved -- one more way in which our e-government efforts produce better service for our customers.

We continued to write program rules that were lean and local. We produced the proposed and final rules for the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program, the final rule for Conservation of Private Grazing Land, the interim final rule Technical Service Provider Assistance, and the final rule for the Environmental Quality Incentives Program.

Getting the Technical Service Provider process up and running was another major challenge last year. Your outreach efforts resulted in more than 1,200 certified providers by the end of the fiscal year, with more than 1,000 additional providers in the certification process.

By certifying a large number of providers, we have arrived at a point where farmers and ranchers can put Technical Service Providers to work. Conservation happens because of one-on-one relationships. Your success in this area is reflected in our serving 3.6 million customers around the country last year.

Even with all this farm bill activity, we were able to help large numbers of farmers and ranchers through our primary product -- conservation technical assistance.

Final figures are pending, but it looks like we helped producers complete plans for resource management systems on nearly 19 million acres of cropland and grazing land. We reduced risk of drought and flooding on 13½ million acres, and we developed or applied nearly 8,000 comprehensive nutrient management plans.

In FY 2003, we completed or updated soil survey mapping on 22 million acres.

We started our effort to streamline program delivery and made good progress on the President’s Management Initiatives. In fact, NRCS is now recognized in the Department of Agriculture as a leader in the development, adoption, and use of information technology.

I know last year was a year of challenge and change for NRCS employees and partners alike. But we all know it was also a year filled with accomplishment. Credit for these accomplishments goes to all NRCS employees and partners.


CSP Implementation

With all that hard work done, the greatest new challenge for 2004 is to implement the Conservation Security Program.

CSP has the potential to alter the face of conservation in this country. CSP has a unique role among USDA conservation programs. It identifies and rewards those farmers and ranchers who meet the highest standards of conservation and environmental management on their operations. It creates powerful incentives for other producers to meet those same standards of conservation performance on their operations. And, it provides public benefits for generations to come.

CSP is a sound approach to conservation because it both rewards the conservation ethic of America’s farmers and ranchers, those who have traditionally maintained the sustainability of their land for future generations and who have provided all Americans the basic public benefits of conservation – cleaner water, cleaner air and scenic landscapes – and encourages them to do more.

CSP also removes some of the burden of improving environmental quality from our farmers and ranchers by providing a measure of public financing for these public benefits. CSP will help producers meet their own and society’s environmental expectations and still be profitable.

One of CSP’s major strengths is that it will address environmental issues in ways that strengthen our agricultural economy. And the payment structure of CSP will encourage farmers and ranchers to do more.

Supporters of the CSP program -- and there were many – envisioned a program that would provide benefits to every producer who wanted to participate and did the work. In fact, that is how the act is written. However, the Omnibus Bill of 2003 capped CSP spending at $3.77 billion through 2013. So, in typical Washington, DC, lexicon, we now have a “capped entitlement.”

Not only does the cap limit what we can accomplish under CSP, it also creates the challenge of writing a rule that will allow us to allocate these funds across eligible applicants in a way that will achieve the intended public policy benefits and is fair. We are negotiating a draft rule that achieves these objectives.

I would like to talk just a bit about what the cap on CSP funding does to our ability to meet demand for this program and about some strategies that will help us get the most conservation done as we possibly can under the cap.

The cap does present some challenges – but even with the cap, CSP has not lost its potential to change the face of private lands conservation. In fact, It may make the program a manageable size for the first years of implementation.


Managing Expectations

The experts at the Economic Research Service (ERS) tell us that close to 2 million farms and ranches could be eligible for CSP, depending on the eligibility criteria. The fact is, $3.77 billion might not even be enough to cover the first wave of producers to sign up for the program.

Another limitation could make it almost impossible for us to provide the technical assistance farmers and ranchers will need to determine their eligibility for CSP. As you know, by law, we cannot spend more than 15% of the CSP funds for technical assistance. Remember, in EQIP we are hard pressed to deliver a focused program for 23 percent.

Achieving the balance between technical and financial assistance will limit the number of producers we can help. Fortunately, we have experience in managing expectations. We lived under caps during the life of the 1996 farm bill; and, even with an additional $17.1 billion to invest under the new farm bill, we are still not able to say “yes” to many producers who want to a participate in our programs.

One tool for managing expectations is open communications. We must continue to give prospective participants information that accurately depicts their chances of getting a proposal approved.

The second tool is transparency. We must continue to make information on our priorities and eligibility and ranking criteria available to producers, both on the Web and through other means. By providing this information, we can help producers put together proposals with a realistic chance of success. Transparency will help producers know how to combine conservation programs and conservation technical assistance in ways that will achieve the complete, multi-resource, operation-wide conservation system, consistent with the highest level of CSP participation.

We also plan to develop a CSP application process that will direct individuals who do not meet the basic requirements of CSP to another program consistent with their goals offered by USDA or other State and local entities.


Changing the Face of Conservation in America

CSP will help change the face of conservation by helping us build better conservation programs, producing greater integration of programs, motivating more producers to undertake conservation activities, promoting collaboration between federal and non-federal entities, and completing the portfolio of conservation programs, encompassing remediation, compliance, and vision


Building Better Programs

The CSP rule will require us to demonstrate the effectiveness of conservation practices. This is an issue of accountability. We simply cannot spend public money on any practice that cannot be demonstrated to produce results. In adopting this standard, we will make CSP the most accountable conservation program in history.

We will use implementation of CSP as a chance to learn how to monitor the effects of conservation practices and track their benefits – which is transferable to all practices and programs.

CSP contains enhancement provisions that will allow participants to test intensive management activities. Monitoring the changes in environmental conditions will provide data for validating the predictive models now in use. We will use these results to refine the activities of the CSP and other programs, and make conservation programs work better.


Integrating Conservation Programs

Another way in which CSP will change the face of private lands conservation is through its emphasis on multiple resources over entire farms and ranches. CSP will advance the “portfolio” approach to conservation policy advanced in the Secretary Veneman’s “Food and Agricultural Policy” document.

It will also contribute to meeting the farm bill objective of achieving the optimal environmental benefits, while maintaining the economic viability of agricultural operations. In fact, we can view CSP as a way to integrate all conservation programs. A producer who participates in CSP might coordinate land retirement, stewardship incentives, conservation compliance, regulatory assistance and even State and partner programs in an integrated package designed to improve both profitability and environmental quality. A central feature of CSP is that the highest level (Tier III) is aimed at agricultural operations that have a complete Resource Management System.


Providing Motivation for Producers

We hope that CSP will inspire producers to get more involved in conservation by showcasing farmers and ranchers who have achieved or will achieve a high level of conservation stewardship.

Even though the cap on CSP funding may limit the number of producers who can participate, we still hope the example of CSP participation will inspire others to get involved in conservation planning and implementation. We hope this aspect of CSP will create additional interest in programs such as CTA, EQIP, WHIP and the Continuous CRP, particularly among producers who want to work toward achieving the level of resource treatment needed to become CSP participants. In this regard, CSP has the potential to become the centerpiece or apex of the pyramid of USDA conservation programs.

As potential CSP participants strive to reach individual payment tier levels under the program, other USDA and private conservation programs will likely supply the technical and financial assistance needed to address resource concerns on working lands.


Increasing Collaboration

Another way CSP will change the face of conservation is through increased collaboration.

Every year, non-Federal entities play a greater role in the delivery of technical assistance and in incentive programs for conservation. We hope that CSP will offer chances for producers to make use of these non-Federal sources of funds for conservation to leverage Federal resources, provide better access to programs, and improve implementation of conservation programs. We are seeking comments from State, local, and Tribal governments, as well as private for-profit and not-for-profit organizations on opportunities for public-private partnerships and joint programs.

One prime opportunity for collaboration is the development and management of wildlife habitat. In the West, for example, about 80 percent of the wildlife species depend on agricultural land for critical habitat, food, and cover. Improvements to the landscape including wetlands, grasslands, flood plains, and riparian zones through programs like CSP and other conservation programs in USDA can help support wildlife and aquatic species and provide benefits in the form of recreation, hunting, and other forms of agro-tourism.

We are also seeking comment on how to implement a program that uses collaboration and leveraging of funds to achieve resource improvements on working agricultural lands through intensive management activities and innovative technologies.


Conclusion

We are nearly ready to implement this exciting new program. How many times in our careers will we have an experience to match this? Not many.

CSP will be an important tool for supporting ongoing conservation stewardship of agricultural lands. It is a new kind of tool that will help producers do more to maintain and enhance natural resources.

With thoughtful rulemaking and proper preparation, we can make sure the Conservation Security Program lives up to its potential. I am confident that all of you will continue do everything you can to make this happen.