Building a Diverse Workforce, Reaching Diverse Customers

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service
at the National Organization of Professional Hispanic NRCS Employees
12th Annual Training Conference

Lafayette, LA
June 28, 2005


Thank you, Bertha, for your kind introduction, and thank you for inviting me to speak at your conference. This is my third NOPHNRCSE meeting. The first time I spoke to you was one of my first major addresses.

Thanks also to Don [Gohmert] and Joey Durel [Lafayette Parish President]and the other folks in Louisiana for their warm hospitality. I’m sure the good times will roll throughout this conference.

Working together, we seek to fulfill the mission of the Natural Resources Conservation Service: providing leadership in a partnership effort to help people conserve, maintain, and improve our natural resources and environment.

This year NRCS is celebrating its 70th anniversary. We’ve been a partner in conservation since 1935. That’s seven decades of helping people help the land.

This anniversary year is a good opportunity to celebrate our partnership with producers and reaffirm our commitment as NRCS employees to the agency’s mission.


Implementing the 2002 Farm Bill

I want to speak for a few minutes about the 2002 farm bill and then look ahead a bit. In 2005, we’re into the third year of the 2002 farm bill. This bill

• doubled funding for conservation programs,
• re-focused conservation on working lands,
• demanded accountability, and
• rewarded stewardship.
   

And NRCS has been busy delivering on the promise of increased investment in conservation. Over the last three years, we have

• Invested billions of additional dollars in conservation,
• Written or revised rules for farm bill programs based on input from thousands of producers and partners,
• Implemented new programs,
• Involved many new partners in conservation,
• Established the Technical Service Provider process to help producers plan and implement their conservation activities, and
• Conducted extensive outreach to be sure every farmer and rancher knows about farm bill opportunities.

We’re not finished yet. We have a lot of conservation to do this year and in the future.

Between today and expiration of the current farm bill, we will invest about $9 billion in conservation. That represents a tremendous amount of work for all of us, for our partners, and especially for farmers and ranchers.


Fulfilling the promise of the 2002 farm bill is job one.

Getting conservation on the ground is our top priority. We have the expertise. We have the commitment. Now we just need to get the job done.

We need to maximize our performance. We need to complete unfinished work from 2003 and 2004. We need to make it happen on the ground. We need to

• maximize our effectiveness,
• sign the largest number of contracts,
• benefit as many producers as possible,
• buy as much conservation as we can,
• bring on as much technology and advanced information as we can,
• assure the integrity of the conservation goals, and
• make the programs and services we offer as transparent as possible.

Since your last meeting, we have a new Secretary of Agriculture. Mike Johanns understands agriculture, and he understands conservation. He knows that the two go together.
He’s also made clear that conservation is one of his top priorities. As he said recently, “…today there's consensus that conservation and economic success don't have to be mutually exclusive. It's a vision of cooperative conservation, working with and not against our producers.”

I hope you each get a chance to meet the Secretary. He’s a man of compassion, conviction, fairness, empathy and integrity.


Cooperative Conservation

As the Secretary pointed out, one of the keys to the 2002 farm bill, and I believe, the next farm bill, is cooperative conservation. Last August, President Bush signed an Executive Order on Cooperative Conservation, asking Federal agencies to work in partnership with the American people to protect this Nation’s environment.

From August 29-31, the White House will host a Cooperative Conservation Conference in St. Louis. The goal is to facilitate the exchange of information and advice on ways we can work together—at all levels of government—in concert with communities and landowners to enhance and protect the environment.

NRCS will be part of that conference—as will other USDA agencies—and other departments including Interior, Defense, Commerce and EPA. Most importantly, our customers will be part of this conference.

This is the first cooperative conservation conference in about 40 years. Only three similar national conferences have been held—President Teddy Roosevelt held the first. President John Kennedy held the second. And Lady Bird Johnson, President Lyndon Johnson’s wife, hosted the third.

This conference gives us a special opportunity to foster relationships and forge alliances that will enable us to move forward in voluntary conservation activities.


Small-Scale/Limited Resource Farmer Initiative

We’re looking for additional ways to reach out to the many different customers we seek to serve. Hispanic customers are our fastest growing segment of farmers. Many of them operate on a small scale or with limited resources. We’re committed to doing more to help these farmers reach their conservation goals.

In March, Secretary Johanns announced a special initiative targeted to help small-scale/limited resource farmers. A team of State conservationists developed this initiative to augment efforts already in place to ensure that our programs are accessible and workable for small farmers.

Eleven states are participating—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia and the Caribbean Area. NRCS offices in these States and Puerto Rico are each setting aside up to $500,000 in appropriate program funds to use in assisting underserved farmers.

The parameters under the initiative are fairly simple:

• At least 10 percent of the overall cropland covered by this initiative must be planted to alternative crops.
• Producers must have 100 acres or less of cropland.
• Cost-share rates will be up to 90 percent for all practices.
• Contracts will be limited to $10,000.

We will use these special set aside funds to help small-scale farmers implement cost-effective and economical conservation practices such as:

• Erosion control
• Water management
• Grazing land planting and management
• Livestock watering facilities
• Fencing, and
• Irrigation systems

We’re also providing NRCS field personnel the training they need to

• Increase their understanding of the conservation needs of small-scale/limited resource farmers and
• Ensure they have the technical skills to help farmers participate in this initiative.

NRCS has hard data that show participation in farm bill conservation programs by small-scale farmers, including Hispanic farmers, is lower than we would like. This initiative will help correct that.

Serving Hispanic Producers and Communities

We’re also looking for other opportunities to reach out to Hispanic producers and communities. Last year we attended a League of United Latin American Citizens—LULAC—meeting, and have staff representing NRCS this week in Little Rock at a town hall meeting to share our programs with the Hispanic community.

NRCS has also worked with organizations such as the National Hispanic Environmental Council to help identify young Hispanic students interested in working with the environment.

NRCS Employees

In NRCS, we are committed to maintaining and improving opportunities for minority employees. That pledge is part of our Civil Rights Policy Statement, and it is also my personal goal.

I want to thank Gilbert Guerrero, our National Hispanic Employment Program Manager. Thanks to all of our Hispanic Employment Program Managers around the country for everything they do to promote a diverse workforce.

To boost Hispanic employment, we provide job opportunity information in Spanish and recruit new employees through several internship and trainee programs. As a small example, earlier this year, NRCS staff interviewed three Hispanic students at a career fair at Texas A&M in Kingsville, Texas. They hired two of those students.

Eleven more students from a pool of 60 interviewed in Puerto Rico have joined NRCS. We also placed five HACU students this year—four in agricultural engineering and one as a GIS specialist.

Last summer 18 percent of the 500 students we hired—93—were Hispanic. Further, NRCS leads all USDA agencies in hiring career interns—135 in 2004, including 25 Hispanics.

Over the past year, NRCS added 173 employees to give us a total workforce of 12,160. Last year we had a 13 percent increase in Hispanic employees. This year we’ve added just three more to bring us to 525.

Today, Hispanics represent 4.32 percent of our workforce. I’m pleased with our progress over the past two years—but I’m not satisfied. Clearly we still have further to go, and I hope we’ll make more progress this year.

2007 Farm Bill Predictions

I want to turn now toward the future for conservation. As we look ahead, the major topic on everyone’s mind today is the 2007 farm bill.

It seems everyone either wants to know what’s going to be in the next farm bill—or thinks they already know! And groups all across the country are lining up to either put in their two cents—or get their two cents!

Two weeks ago, Secretary Johanns announced the first of a number of listening meetings. It will be in Nashville on July 7. There will be more because I know he wants to reach out to as many states as possible.

The Secretary wants to hear directly from our customers—well in advance of Congressional debate and dialogue. In announcing the listening sessions, the Secretary said, “I do not begin this process with preconceived notions about the direction future farm policy should take. We will use the feedback we receive to help us determine the best course for a new farm bill.”

The listening sessions will focus on a variety of topics, including conservation.
We want to know how to:

• Maximize U.S. competitiveness
• Minimize unintended consequences
• Effectively and fairly distribute assistance to producers
• Best achieve conservation and environmental goals
• Provide effective assistance in rural areas, and
• Address agricultural product development, market and research

When it comes to conservation, we may hear some general themes or tenets, building on past farm bills. The 1996 farm bill broached the theme of working lands conservation—and that became a central tenet of the 2002 bill. The current farm bill significantly expanded the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and rounded out the conservation portfolio with the Conservation Security Program.

We know we need to have programs that are holistic, better integrated and more transparent. We know we need programs that work for all producers. Our programs should be size neutral.

We also know the next farm bill should be in tune with the President’s management agenda. It should focus on outcome-based measures—specific results—not miles of streams buffered or acres of land treated.

Returning to Our Roots

As we look toward the next farm bill, I think we’ll be moving more toward our traditional core business—knowledge-based conservation. The future will be more about technical assistance than dollars shared.

Whatever programs we have need to be simpler. We also need to streamline the application process, similar to what we’ve done with the CSP self-assessment tool.

We need to work with the “quality of life” farmers—those on small farmsteads—tribes and those running consolidated family farms. All of them need to know how to conserve the land.

Delivering Services

As you just heard, NRCS has a varied customer base, and it’s getting larger. And we need to deliver our services in a variety of ways.

Many of our customers are getting more and more of their information and their services through the World Wide Web. And some studies show that Hispanics are the fastest expanding group on the Internet. We need to serve them effectively.

We put the CSP self-assessment workbook on the web. We also made it available on disk and on paper.

Today, you can get a copy of your county soil survey in a telephone book format. Later this summer, you can get it online in a form that’s downloadable and available 24/7 and 365 days a year from any personal computer. You won’t need a special program to get it, to understand it, to manipulate it. Our Web Soil Survey will let you select just the small area you want to see and give you the data you want—whenever you want it.

At the same time, we have customers who want to meet us face to face. We need to go toe to toe and belly to belly with them. Some customers will feel more comfortable if they can read our materials in Spanish. Or talk with someone who speaks their language. We’ll do our best to meet their needs.

We want to reach out to each of our customers to provide the information and help they need in the way they want to receive it. That’s the service they deserve, and the service we’re proud to provide.

Conclusion

An old Spanish proverb says “Tomorrow is the busiest day of the week.”

No doubt the message speaks to the tendency we all have to procrastinate. (Just ask my wife, I’m very guilty of that shortcoming.)

But I think for NRCS, this proverb offers another truth. That truth is that our future looks busier than ever—between getting conservation on the ground today, preparing for the next farm bill and increasing our capacity to serve diverse customers effectively.

I appreciate all that your organization—and each of you individually—are doing to make NRCS a strong, diverse and effective organization. We have a bright future ahead in conservation, and I look forward to the exciting challenges we’ll face together.

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