A Job Well Done

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief,Natural Resources Conservation Service at the Conservation Security Program Debriefing

St. Louis, MO
October 13, 2004

First of all, I want to thank you all for everything you did to make the first year of the Conservation Security Program such a great success.

I want to take some time today to praise you for your accomplishments – but that will have to wait. I need to spend a minute or two talking about this week’s CSP debriefing. The reason you are here is to provide ground-level feedback that will help us improve the CSP program and its delivery in 2005 and beyond. I know there are probably many things you would like to tell us you don't like or you wish were different, but please focus on the issues that we can change and that we have the discretion to manage in a way that works better for you.

We will focus tightly on what we learned in 2004 and what we can do differently in 2005. At the same time, you can be confident that the ideas about CSP we discuss this week will have an impact on all of NRCS and all of our programs somewhere down the road.


An Important Accomplishment

Now, I can get back to praising you for implementing CSP. I hope all of you are aware of how important this accomplishment is. And it is important on many levels.

Getting any new program up and running on time is a major challenge, but you did so much more than just get CSP up and running on time. You also put this program in motion in record time. You conducted the training in June, held the signup in July, signed the contracts in August, and made the payments in Sept. That is an incredible illustration of the dedication and resiliency of this organization.

But you did so much more than implement CSP in record time. You also set in motion an approach that will change the way we think of and practice conservation for all time.

If I haven’t said it often enough, thank you. You did it.


2004 and 2005 Accomplishments

Our successes during the first couple of years of CSP are going to be very important when Congress begins to draft the next farm bill. The 2002 farm bill was a tremendous vote of confidence in our ability to get conservation done on the ground. But Congress and others are already starting to look at how we are living up to that vote of confidence. The data from 2004 and 2005 for each of our programs will be the best indicator of what has worked versus what hasn’t worked in the 2002 farm bill.

We need to look closely at how well we are doing in each program and compare our estimate against how others are seeing things. We may think we did the best possible job, but that view will not carry much weight if our customers, our partners, and the lawmakers themselves have a different picture. We have seen this in recent congressional decisions.

We need to make sure our decisions are transparent, logical, and self evident to others, and not just to ourselves. For example, we need to do everything we can to demonstrate the logic behind the watershed approach, so that even producers who are having to wait for their watershed to be selected see the logic in the approach and are willing to wait their turn.

Our decisions have to be seen as fair – both to small operators and to large operators; to specialty producers, such as the organic industry, as well as to production agriculture; to livestock producers, as well as to producers of row crops or those who operate orchards. We cannot please everyone, but we need to do everything we can to be sure everyone understands why we do what we do.

We need to conduct top-quality analyses of our programs, so that we know their strengths and weaknesses. Right now, certain interest groups are ahead of us on analyzing our programs. We need to know our own strengths and weaknesses before others do. Or we will not be seen as the people who know the most about how to go about the business of conservation.

We can’t wait for the data from the Conservation Effects Assessment Project – CEAP. CEAP will be a valuable tool in the future, but we need to know where we stand right now! We should be asking ourselves what information we need to make the case for the conservation accomplishments under the 2002 farm bill. If we were to sit down with the Agricultural Research Service, the Economic Research Service, and the Cooperative States Research, Education, and Extension Service right now, what questions would we ask to give us the data we need to demonstrate our accomplishments?


Looking Forward to 2005 and 2006

Even as we look for ways to measure our progress, we can be secure in the knowledge that the next couple of years are going to be an important time in the history of conservation on private lands. And we in NRCS will play an important part.

CSP is going to have a profound effect on NRCS and the conservation partners. It will revolutionize the way we work, the way we operate, and the way we think. The CSP model will spread to other programs. CSP will show us a much more efficient way to operate and allow us to become more effective enablers of conservation. This is why I have often said that CSP is in fact a ‘change agent’.

As I have said before, I predict that after five years of CSP, NRCS will have evolved and changed to a point that some people may have a hard time recognizing us. With this new era, fixing and preventing resource damage is no longer enough. CSP introduces an era where the goal will move on to enhancing the resource.


CSP Innovations

CSP is already bringing a number of innovations to the conservation effort.

Bringing in New Customers

For one thing, CSP is creating a new approach to how we obtain customers. CSP embraces an incentive environment in which producers are “pulled toward,” greater conservation effort and thus choose to seek out opportunities to do more.

In addition, people’s pursuit of getting into CSP will create demand for other programs. Demand or desire to get into CSP will cause people to look closely at their current conservation system and where they have treatment needs and conservation opportunities. It will lead them to CTA, EQIP, WHIP, continuous CRP, and many State and local conservation programs.

At the same time, we need to look at those traditional programs and see if we can’t find ways our programs can help producers meet some of their enhancement goals

Self Assessment Process

The self-assessment process itself was another important innovation in CSP. Self assessment is a prime example of how CSP will affect the way we do business at NRCS. You pointed the way to an NRCS where the landowner performs the initial assessment, freeing up our time for quality control, evaluation, and assisting producers who still need our help. That is a big change in how we spend our time.

Self assessment is possible largely because of improvements in eGovernment. Landowners now have on-line or software access to information and products when they want them and any time they want them. Farmers of my generation want this

Not only will self-assessment become a major convenience for our customers, it performs several other valuable functions. Self assessment is an educational tool, providing landowners with a clear indication of what they have accomplished and what they have yet to do to qualify for the program. Self assessment introduces transparency and openness to the selection process. Producers do not have to guess what they need to do to qualify. And, self assessment dramatically cuts down the time it takes NRCS to process applications for CSP. It reduces the Federal dollars required to administer the program and makes more dollars available for the producers. That is good government.

Now that we have experience with the self assessment, we can improve it, and we can safely assume that self-assessment is here to stay and that we will be using the CSP self-assessment process as an example for other programs.

By the time of the next farm bill, we should be well along the road toward learning how to apply the self-assessment process and other money-saving measures in appropriate ways in our other programs. For example, think about how different EQIP is in this regard. How much time and energy has it taken over the years to process applications? Particularly in the years when we had applications and no money.

Our time was not used very efficiently working and planning our way through all those applications. If EQIP had started out with a self-assessment feature, life would have been different.

Management Intensity

Another innovation in CSP that has the potential to influence other programs is Management Intensity. We must incorporate intensive management measures if we want to provide the most effective and efficient program possible and one that maximizes benefits and environmental performance for our customers. These measures can improve resources and provide for more efficient resource utilization and energy conservation.

In CSP, we are operating under the principle of rewarding the best and motivating the rest. We are rewarding those people who go beyond the conservation practice standard to achieve higher levels of management. New and emerging technologies are being used to achieve this high level of performance.

We should encourage management intensity and incorporate measures in all our programs to achieve this. Ultimately, our goal should be to have all USDA program participants rewarded for their intensive efforts of achieving great environmental performance and benefits for society.


Importance of CSP to Working Lands

I also want to talk about the importance of CSP to America's working Agricultural lands. Conservation on working lands is the central theme of CSP. CSP is all about enhancing the resources on our farms and ranches and delivering the environmental benefits that are wanted by society.

IN CSP, we are on the cutting edge of technology for conservation on agricultural lands. Consider, for example, the enhancement payments for improvements in the Soil Conditioning Index. We are storing 1 pound of carbon for each 0.1 incremental improvement in the SCI rating per year.


Improving delivery of Science and Technology

CSP is going to be the catalyst for improving NRCS delivery of science and technology. This past summer, we brought some exciting new NRCS technology to our employees and to the clients we serve, including range health concepts, the new Pasture Condition Score, wildlife habitat models designed to address certain conservation species in need of conservation, and more generic habitat models for typical wildlife, such as song birds, upland game birds, and a wide variety of wildlife.

We introduced new ideas on water management with the Irrigation Water Use Index that Dennis Carmen and others developed. And we even introduced some new activities on Energy that allow the Department of Agriculture to play an important role in helping us turn the corner on Energy consumption and Energy conservation. It might now seem like a lot in the beginning, but anything we can do to reduce our Energy consumption is very nearly an act of patriotism at this point in time.

I want NRCS to be a bold leader on these activities.


Conclusion

It seems like we hear about a new revolution every day – a revolution in cell phone technology, a revolution in car buying, a revolution in dieting. But I really do believe that CSP is part of a revolution in how we deliver conservation in this country.

We are in the process of creating an agency that is flexible and responsive to urgent priorities. Treasure this moment. In implementing CSP, you are making decisions that you will tell your children and grand children about. Thank you for your leadership role in bringing about this revolution.