CSP: A Revolution in Conservation

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service at the NRCS National Leadership Team Meeting

Washington, DC
March 17, 2004


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.

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. We all need to anticipate this change and be prepared for it.

This is actually the third revolution in private lands conservation.

The first came in 1935. 1935 Slide NRCS was born in the devastating dust bowl. For private land and private landowners, 1935 was the first conservation milestone in U.S. legislation.

These are images that are etched in our consciousness. It was a desperate time that required a radical approach, a healing approach. A new leader and a new agency emerged. Pioneered by Hugh Hammond Bennett, approved by Congress, the new approach to healing the scarred land defined the new conservation agency in the Department of Agriculture, and SCS began its work.

Over five decades, farmers, ranchers, and thousands of Americans, working through their local conservation districts, embraced and spread the new approach. With their committed assistance, the demonstration projects and technical assistance began in 1935 grew throughout the country, but there was more work to do.

Farmers and professional conservationists looked for a way to reach even more producers, giving them the incentives – and help – to stop excessive soil erosion on the land.

A breakthrough was begun in the conservation compliance provisions of 1985. Once again, the strategy of dedicated conservationists across the nation, fulfilled its promise. The revolution of conservation compliance mellowed into the everyday business of conservation tillage, residue management, terraces, and the many other conservation practices that helped the Nation achieve a monumental 1/3 reduction in soil erosion on cropland

But for success to remain successful, it must constantly move forward. The new Conservation Security Program is the latest major shift in conservation. With this new era, fixing and preventing damage is no longer enough. CSP introduces an era where the goal will move on to enhancing the resource.

Frequently, we can add a new program or a new emphasis without fundamentally changing the organization. But I am sure CSP will be different – largely because of the CSP vision, but also because of the 15 percent cap on technical assistance spending. Its effects will be much deeper and wider than we have experienced in the past.


Self-Assessment Process

A prime example of how CSP will affect NRCS is the self-assessment process.

This is a new concept for us, but a time-honored treasure for our customers. Just look at the self-assessment modules around the country. Think of self-assessments for wine grape growers, the Michigan Agriculture Environmental Assurance Program (MEAP), Farm*A*Syst, and Idaho OnePlan.

In the past, the role of determining eligibility has been largely an NRCS role. We build and develop the applications, receive applications, determine eligibility, and rank them. This is a time-consuming process that often has a conservation official doing work our customers can and want to do themselves.

Compare that with self-assessment, where the landowner performs the assessment, and our role is limited to quality control, evaluation, and assisting producers who still need our help. That is a big change in how we spend our time. And I think it is overdue.

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. Not just 7:30 to 4 at the local office and Monday through Friday only.

Self assessment is essentially what anyone does who has used tax preparation software or online services to file their taxes.

A second example of change we must embrace is to manage planning to be sure it is needed and appropriate. We can’t slip back to the days when we had a reputation for doing more planning than was necessary.


Consulting with Customers

This is also a new approach to how we obtain customers.

In the past, we would work with each potential customer in an attempt to get them to a positive decision with regard to participation. With self assessment, our potential customers who are so equipped will go through much of this analysis themselves and arrive at a positive decision independent of us.

CSP embraces an incentive environment in which producers are “pulled toward,” greater conservation effort – and thus choose to seek out opportunities to do more. This contrasts with regulatory approaches in which producers are “pushed towards” solutions by external forces.

If you don’t think pull approaches work, look at automobile advertising. Advertising pulls buyers toward products such as Cadillacs and Expeditions, several steps beyond basic transportation products such as Yugos and Hyundais.

Because CSP is a resource-based enhancement program, producers on all types of agricultural uses and agricultural operations will be eligible to enroll. In some cases, these customers may be new clients for our local field and district offices.

For example, we’ve provided some assistance in rangeland, but not as much as the demand calls for. For orchards, vineyards, rice producers, we have a lot of new challenges and needs not previously met through EQIP. Many economically disadvantaged customers work 9 to 5 and can’t get to our offices during normal office hours.

In the past, the people we provided assistance to often had obvious resource needs or problems, and we got good at treatment. Because CSP has enhancements that go beyond minimum requirements, we will need to look hard at our skills and the recommendations we’re making.

Our customers will be very well informed and looking to us for expertise and inspiration. They will have a need for assistance from us that is ratcheted up – dealing with more specialized resource issues. We’ll have to gear up to work with these new customers.

As Under Secretary Gray mentioned, we need to look at new forms of technology for air, nutrients, pesticides, water, and energy. And we will need to enhance the use of that technology in a very rapid manner.

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.

Our new customers will need different kinds of advice as they undertake enhancements. Some of their needs won’t fit nicely in the box of traditional programs, such as EQIP and WHIP, so we will have to develop new types of technical assistance to meet these needs.

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 – particularly producers who are expecting their watershed to come up in the rotation and want to begin to undertake enhancements.

Other landowners – those not immediately eligible for CSP – can participate in other programs and conservation options as they work their way toward the promise of CSP.

CSP could be compared to an interstate highway. The CSP road will get you to your conservation destination quickly, but there are still plenty of “off ramps” you can use to get other services. And, whether one takes a highway or a byway, we all end at the conservation destination.


Standards and Practices

CSP will accelerate the ongoing revolution in how we approach our Tech Guide Standards and Practices.

Producers will set different – often higher – goals than they have in the past. Standards designed only to meet a minimum or acceptable level will not do the job. We will need to adapt our standards and adopt new ones to account for a higher level of performance.

Similarly, we will need to have new kinds of practices or adapt existing management activities to account for more intensive management – what we are calling “management intensity.” These new needs will require us to continually look at our standards and practices. We need to look critically at new developments in conservation technology and in soil, water, air, nutrient, and pest management.

Through CSP enhancement provisions and the application of intensive management measures, we can create powerful opportunities for producers to achieve even greater environmental performance and additional benefits for society.

We will work hard in CSP to ensure that both high-end and affordable conservation technologies are identified and utilized as intensive management activities to assure eligibility and applicability to a wide range of operations.

CSP and other supportive conservation policies can help us meet the Nation’s goals for conservation, land productivity, enhanced food security, and stronger economic growth through the promotion of sound conservation principles and advancements in science and technology.

In CSP, the enhancement provisions of the program should be specifically designed to showcase highly effective conservation activities and demonstrate how more intensive management activities can improve the resources and provide for more efficient resource utilization and energy conservation.

Scientific and technological advances hold great promise, but their full benefits will not be fully realized without practical application and adoption of the new technology on working agricultural lands through programs like the CSP.

I need your help to integrate this new line of thinking into our existing infrastructure and thought processes.


Measuring Environmental Benefits

Much of what we do in CSP will be resource enhancements that go well beyond minimum requirements of quality criteria in the FOTG. Being able to measure and quantify the benefits of that work will be a challenge.

Typically, measuring environmental and economic benefits is relatively easy when we are fixing resource problems. But, because CSP is more of an enhancement program than a remedial program, we need to look at new ways to measure the benefits of the program.

Our goal is to design CSP to be the most accountable program that we have. The objective of this accountability effort is to identify some tangible outcomes.

For example, if we work with people to improve nutrient management through the enhancements part of the program, how many pounds of nutrients will be prevented from degrading surface or ground water? What are the real end results or outcomes from this type of work. If we work to restore habitat or improve water quality, how many more fish or amphibians will be in the streams? It will challenge us – our economic calculation system, as well as our performance measures.

As conservationists, we need to identify the outcomes we want to measure. Not just recording feet of terraces installed, but getting that to be more outcome based – for example, tons of soil erosion prevented. We need to evolve from what we used to count (how many practices or systems applied) and convert that work to tangible outcomes


Model for Other Programs

One of the reasons I think CSP will have such a great impact on how we do business is that 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 we saying that CSP is in fact a ‘change agent’

It is going to cause us to -- as they say in the Apple Computer ad – to think different and act different. 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.


Anticipating Change

Our responsibility as conservation leaders is to expect the unexpected – try to predict the change.

We can’t predict every change, but we need to anticipate the impacts as changes ripple through the system. Getting through this period of change will require smooth and efficient communication, collaboration, and cooperation among everyone involved.

Managing change of this magnitude will require much closer coordination in all parts of NRCS. Our culture is to rely too much at times on independent top-down implementation – sort of a silo approach.

In a silo approach, there is no overlap between the silos. Each is a separate cylinder occupying its own part of the landscape – a circle on the ground. If we bring the circles together so they overlap, we have the opportunity to coordinate the activities. And coordination brings success.

In Washington, major change efforts such as implementing CSP require close coordination between the Deputy Chiefs. Every Deputy Area plays a role, and their individual roles are not completely independent. For example, changes in Science and Technology affect changes in programs, as do changes in administration, planning, and other headquarters functions.

We have already begun a cross-deputy area coordination plan for the development and implementation of CSP. This plan covers a change as complex as any we have ever faced within NRCS.

When we aren’t 100 percent coordinated at the National level, you can see the effects at the State level and in the Service Centers. You are the first people to notice that the guidance you are receiving from Washington is inconsistent or does not form a cohesive whole.

One of your roles in communication is to let us know when we have failed to coordinate our efforts sufficiently. If your field offices are having trouble implementing change because of something we did in Washington, let us know, so we can make the necessary adjustments.

It has been said that a commercial airliner flying between distant cities – say Washington to Dallas – is off course at least 90 per cent of the time. The whole flight consists of going a bit off course, getting feedback from the ground, making an adjustment, and then starting to go off course again. And yet virtually every flight winds up precisely where it is supposed to.

Feedback works!


NRCS Employees

One way of looking at the CSP revolution in conservation is that it will reverse our growing emphasis on program-driven approaches and lead us back toward a conservation planning approach that is resource driven.

A fundamental change of this nature means NRCS will need to make changes in our hiring and training. We will have to train our new hires differently, retrain our recent hires, and even retrain and refresh veteran employees who have worked for us as much as 15 to 20 years.

We will be bringing back the conservation boot camp, so we will once again have an immersion method of transferring our corporate knowledge, traditions, goals, and philosophies.

We may need to have employees be more mobile – able to help producers in the watersheds where CSP is active.

As conservation goals change, we may need a different mix both of technical skills and personal skills than we have in the past. That will affect our recruiting and our training.

We need to have the wisdom to recruit and train for the needs of tomorrow, rather than the needs of today. As Hockey Great Wayne Gretzky advised, we all need to go to where the puck will be, rather than going to where the puck is now. We need to begin thinking now about what kind of a workforce we are going to need to implement and manage the CSP workload.

A key question is, “Where do we get the people?” Do you know, there are fewer than 2,000 degrees granted in natural resources disciplines each year at the bachelors level or higher. Last year, NRCS hired nearly 300 people with degrees in these fields – equivalent to one in seven of the graduates.

We have to compete with many Federal and state agencies, private industry, nongovernmental organizations, and even our conservation partners for this limited supply of trained professionals.

Retaining existing employees and motivating retirees to continue working in their professions will become increasingly important.

Public Debate

As if all these challenges and changes were not enough to occupy all of our attention, there is one last issue to keep track of and that is the public debate over CSP. At the same time we are preparing to deliver conservation in the post-CSP world, we must realize that the public debate over CSP is not over.

There are people including policy makers – who do not think CSP is the way to go. There are others who feel strongly that CSP IS the way to go, but want it to be an income transfer program, not a conservation program.

There are many people who have a misconception about the level of funding commitment provided to the Conservation Security Program. Under current law, last fall, Congress anticipated an expenditure of less than $7 billion on the program over a ten-year period. Through the hard work of this Administration, we have been able to design the program in a way that will provide more than $13 billion in CSP assistance to farmers and ranchers.

This is a fact that needs to be recognized by the detractors of our approach – and it is our responsibility to ensure that this message is communicated more clearly across the nation.

Whatever we do, we are unlikely to please some of those who oppose CSP or those who support it. Faced with this kind of controversy, our job is to have the vision to make the decisions that make the program work today and in the future.

The next couple of years are going to be an important time in the history of conservation in private lands, and we in NRCS will play an important part.

Let me close by returning to that often repeated story about of Wayne Gretsky. With the 2002 farm bill, Congress put us in the arena. With the 2005 budget submission for CSP and other farm bill conservation programs, President Bush put conservation in the rink – on the ice.

Now, those of us who are conservationists have a choice. We can skate to where the puck is today, or we can skate to where it should be. It seems like an obvious choice to me.

Thank you.