Good News for Pork Producers

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service
at the U.S. Pork Industry Environmental Summit
Washington, DC
April 15, 2003

Thank you, Kirk (Ferrell). And good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be here today to talk about the future of conservation in the pork industry.

I would like to thank the National Pork Producers Council for sponsoring this conference. This meeting is appropriate in terms of both timing and topic, and that is not accidental. Today’s pork producers face some serious environmental challenges. But, today’s agricultural policies and programs offer new and better ways to help you meet these environmental challenges.

There are many challenges. The pork industry has been subject to increased scrutiny over the years, and that scrutiny continues to grow. Your regulatory environment has become more stringent in recent years -- whether we are talking about environmental regulations, food safety regulations, or other regulations -- and the regulatory environment is becoming even more stringent.

People are coming to expect more of all segments of the food industry, and there’s not much we can do to change that. But there is also a significant amount of help available to help you meet these challenges.

The first kind of help is help in meeting your conservation goals. This help comes in two forms.

It starts with technical assistance. 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 State Conservationists and your State Technical Committees to explore ways of working more closely to meet your technical assistance needs. Thank you for your work with the State Conservationists.

To supplement technical assistance, Congress and the Administration have made a tremendous investment in conservation programs that can help pork producers meet their environmental goals. The pork industry took a strong interest in creating and modifying these programs, and your input is quite visible in the provisions of the 2002 farm bill. I thank you for your efforts during the legislative process and your continued participation in the rule-writing process. We value your input.

The second kind of help is indirect. In this Administration, agencies of the Federal government are working much more closely with pork producers and other segments of the agriculture industry to apply regulations in a way that places less of a burden on producers. 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 morning to talk about these various kinds of help and what they mean for the environment and for pork producers.


Meeting your Conservation Objectives
Our goal is to help operators, including pork producers, maintain profitability, while meeting your conservation objectives.

I hope you were listening closely and heard me say our goal is to help pork producers 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 programs 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. 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 $18 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 pork producers, maintain profitability, while meeting your conservation objectives. The phrase “help pork 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 pork producers from getting what they needed in the way of assistance.

For one thing, the new farm bill expanded EQIP and changed it in ways that are good for all farmers and ranchers, including America’s pork producers. Not only is there more money overall, but EQIP, now includes several new features that will make it widely available and more helpful for pork producers. These include designating at least 60 percent of the increased funding to livestock production practices, lifting the animal unit cap, raising the maximum cost share to $450,000 per individual or entity, eliminating the “bid down” provision (competitive cost-share reduction among program participants), making livestock operations eligible to receive cost- share payments for waste storage facilities, eliminating conservation priority areas, 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.

At this point I need to insert a brief commercial message: NRCS is holding an anaerobic digester summit this June In Raleigh, North Carolina. The summit is part of our effort to explore innovative technologies that will work for the average producer. We are hoping to have good participation from pork producers

Now, getting back on track, 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.

One of the most exciting parts of the new farm bill is the Conservation Security Program which will provide payments for farmers and ranchers who have historically practiced good stewardship on their agricultural lands and incentives for those who want to do more. We published the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on CSP the middle of February.

The farm bill also contains a provision to maintain the trust between operators and NRCS by making your conservation plan information confidential. We are working on the rule to implement this confidentiality provision.

We must realize that Federal financial assistance cannot provide everything every producer needs to reach his or her conservation goals. Soon after the new farm bill became law, NPPC Past President Dave Roper said, the farm bill “will go a long way toward eliminating the backlog of EQIP applications, which will pay environmental dividends for our country year after year.”

Dave was right. Last summer, we awarded a lot of contracts to a lot of producers who had been waiting for a long time. But the demand for conservation is so great that we once again have a backlog of applications. EQIP alone now has a backlog of $1.4 billion nationwide. WRP has 2,800 pending applications, amounting to 475,000 acres. FPP has more than $100 million in pending offers for easements.

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. That means the much bally-hooed 75 per cent cost share will be the exception rather than the rule.

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.

Regulatory Cooperation
I promised to talk a bit about the help that is on the way in the regulatory arena.

Technical assistance and financial assistance are important forms of help for you in meeting environmental regulations and your other conservation goals. But when it comes to regulation, the best help you can have is common-sense regulations.

We are trying to do our part at NRCS by keeping the rules for the farm bill programs “lean and local.” Lean and local is Deputy Secretary Jim Moseley’s term for simplifying the rules and leaving as much of the decision making as possible to local people. One good example is the new EQIP rule, which is 1/3 shorter than the old one.

The other good news on the regulatory front is that regulatory agencies such as the EPA are working more closely with USDA to make regulations less burdensome on producers. This approach is evident in the Final Rule for Consolidated Animal Feeding Operations released late last year by EPA. The new rule is unique in that it came after unprecedented cooperation between EPA and USDA to find a way to help producers meet their own and society’s goals for environmental quality and profitability. Plus, USDA will help producers meet the requirements of the rule through information and education, research and technology transfer, direct technical assistance, and financial assistance through EQIP and other conservation programs.

This cooperation between EPA and USDA is producing results that will benefit producers for years to come. For example, the EPA Water Quality Trading Policy announced early this year, is also based on participation by USDA. This policy will benefit society as a whole by enlisting the voluntary support of producers. It creates economic incentives by establishing a framework for placing a value on environmental credits, which is an essential part of establishing markets for these credits.

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. You – and your communities – deserve to benefit from this effort. The new policy also provides ways to combine public and private resources in ways that provide even greater incentives to landowners. This policy will help American agriculture produce food and fiber and environmental benefits in this country, rather than forcing production overseas.

These are just two examples of how increased cooperation between regulatory agencies and USDA can help take your needs as producers into account and bring a more common-sense approach to regulation.

Conclusion
As I said at the beginning of my talk, pork 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 the pork industry 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. And that includes every pork producer. Thank you.