A Look at Where We Are Going
 

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief Natural Resources Conservation Service, at "Charging into the Future - Advancing NRCS Into Universes Unknown," -- A National Dialogue Forum for an Agency on the Move, the Natural Resources Conservation Service

National Leadership Team Meeting
Washington, DC
January 12, 2005


Let me begin my remarks with a brief overview of our objectives, both in the near term and in the longer term. This short list should give you a rough framework for the discussions to follow.

Our near-term objectives are to Implement the agenda of the new Secretary of Agriculture and concentrate on the 2005 National Priorities that you received just before the start of the new fiscal year: 1. Streamline and implement conservation programs; 2. Implement President’s management initiatives (strategic management of human capital, competitive sourcing, improved financial performance, expanding e-government, and budget and program integration; 3. Increase outreach activities and workforce diversity; and 4. Enable conservation delivery by modernization and expansion of technical capacity.

Our longer-term objectives are preparation for next farm bill and strategic planning for the 21st Century.

But, before I talk about these objectives, I would like to thank you for some of the accomplishments of 2004.


Accomplishments

NRCS and the partners had many accomplishments in FY 2004: providing conservation technical assistance; applying conservation system plans on more than 27 million acres of crop and grazing lands; developing and applying nearly 10,000 comprehensive nutrient management plans (up from just over 8,000 in 2003); mapping soils or updating soils maps on 28 million acres (up from 22.5 million acres in 2003); signing nearly 48,000 EQIP contracts, more than 3,000 WHIP contracts, and more than 1,000 WRP contracts, which will take us nearly 200,000 acres toward the President’s wetlands goal. We also implemented the Conservation Security Program in a very short timeframe.

The president used the release of the latest NRI data to announce the achievement of no net loss of wetlands due to agriculture. We successfully transferred EQIP paperwork from FSA to NRCS, producing substantial savings.

I would like to take a minute or two to thank those of you -- and there are many -- who have helped get so many farm bill rules written. Here is just a partial list: We have completed the final rules for Agricultural Management Assistance, Conservation of Private Grazing Land, Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program, Wetlands Reserve Program, Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program and Technical Service Provider Assistance.

The Request for Proposals for the 2005 Conservation Partnership Initiative has been posted on the e-Grants and NRCS websites. The Final rule for Conservation Innovation Grants was published today, along with the 2005 Request for Proposals.

We have come a long way, and can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We only have a few rules left to go. The Final Rule for the Conservation Security Program is almost ready for publication. I applaud your efforts regarding CSP. Writing this rule was a long, sometimes arduous process, from the Advance Notice of Proposed Rule Making, through the Extension of Public Comment, to the Interim Final Rule.

The final rule for the Grassland Reserve Program and the rule for the Emergency Watershed Protection Program are also in clearance. The interim final rule for confidentiality is in clearance. And we are still working on the rule for the Healthy Forest Reserve Program. Thank you for all your hard work on these rules.

To return to our other accomplishments: We also implemented the Grassland Reserve Program and Conservation Innovation Grants, and we made further progress toward the annual National Resources Inventory. In addition, we successfully reorganized many parts of NRCS to provide even better support to the conservation efforts of America’s farmers and ranchers.

These accomplishments give us a lot to build on in the future, and I thank you.


Near-Term Objectives

Looking at our near-term objectives, we will experience changes in our leadership and the way we get conservation done. As was mentioned yesterday, we will have a new Secretary of Agriculture. Secretary Veneman has been a fine Secretary of Agriculture, and a great friend of conservation. One of the things she did for conservation was to make the funding available earlier each year. Having the funds early gave us more time to do our jobs and our customers an opportunity to plan before they planted. We will miss Secretary Veneman, even as we welcome our new Secretary.

As always, we can expect a change in leadership to result in some changes in priorities within the overall goals and objectives of the administration. Governor Johanns’s nomination is moving through the confirmation process. The Secretary designate is a farm state governor, the son of Iowa dairy farmers, a strong proponent of alternative energy sources, and a believer in a strong agricultural economy.

For now, we have the 2005 National Priorities that we told you about at the start of the new fiscal year:

The first objective for 2005 is to streamline and implement conservation programs. 2005, 2006, 2007 are all record years for conservation under the 2002 farm bill. They include increasing emphasis on working lands. We need to improve efficiency of working lands programs to get more conservation done. We need a greater emphasis on controlling costs of administering working programs. We need to spread CSP methodology to other programs. We need to increase the use of TSPs and find more minority providers.

We need to look at how easement programs enhance or detract from the working lands concept. We need to be knowledgeable about how our easement programs work, what they are intended to accomplish, and what rules they operate under. A couple of our educational sessions tomorrow will deal with these concerns.


Longer-Term Objectives

As I said, our longer term objectives involve preparation for next farm bill and doing strategic planning for the 21st Century.

Both our near-term objectives and our longer-term objectives involve change. The 2002 farm bill has already changed the face of conservation forever. We can look for more change through the remainder of the current farm bill and in implementation of the next farm bill.


Other Initiatives

I want to take a few minutes today to talk about a number of initiatives that will help us meet our long-term goals.

Changes to Conservation Technical Assistance

The first is changes to Conservation Technical Assistance. CTA has been the foundation of our agency throughout its 70-year history. But, as we have gained new programs and funding, CTA has not always received the respect it deserves. One reason is that we have never fully defined CTA as an official conservation program. In fact until now, we have never had a formal policy covering CTA.

CTA just sort of developed over the years, with policy scattered in many places -- What I call random acts of conservation kindness. But, now we have a policy for CTA, thanks to the hard work of our CTA policy team. The policy provides a format to determine priorities for the CTA program. Those priorities are included in the allocation letter that the States received on Friday. There are five priorities for CTA, four of which are the same as for EQIP. Briefly, the CTA priorities are 1. Comprehensive nutrient management planning, 2. Reduction of non-point source pollution in impaired watersheds, 3. Reduction of emissions that contribute to air quality impairment violations, 4. Reduction in soil erosion and sedimentation on agricultural lands, and 5. Promotion of at risk species habitat conservation. The allocation letter describes these priorities more fully, so don’t rely solely on how I have described them today.

Having a policy and priorities in place is important to continued funding of CTA. The policy and priorities help us treat CTA as the core program it is, and they make it easier for us to demonstrate the benefits of CTA. And, in government today, we need to be able to show what we are accomplishing.

In FY 2003, CTA received an overall rating of “Results Not Demonstrated” under the Program Assessment Rating Tool – PART. The rating score was 59. As a result, the Office of Management and Budget is requiring us to provide an update this year on what we are doing to make the CTA program more accountable. Clearly, improving our management of the CTA program is one important way in which we can integrate our budgeting and programs, as part of the President’s management initiatives.

We are creating a working group of State Conservationists to recommend how to do CTA allocations in the future. Tony Kramer, the State Conservationist from New Jersey, has agreed to lead this effort. We need some volunteers for this working group. If you are interested, contact your Regional Assistant Chief.

We have used an historical approach to allocating CTA. We need to look at whether this is the best approach, or whether we need a new approach, based more on natural resource conservation needs.

Workforce Issues

There are workforce issues that need work this year. We need to work on how we can continue to have the best workforce and how we can be the preferred employer in conservation. I have some good recommendations from a working group of State Conservationists. We will be implementing some of them soon. The working group is doing some follow-up work, and I look forward to their results.

Dana and I are already working on the next steps. One decision we have made and this may be controversial, and some of you may disagree -- and it goes way beyond the working group’s recommendations – is to advertise all State Conservationist positions in the 301 series.

The existing career path for State Conservationists requires some things that seem to us to be more rights of passage than necessities. So it is time for a change. This will open up career opportunities to more employees, and prevent us from missing out on the benefits some of our most talented employees can contribute.



The KSAs for these potions will still reflect the technical expertise of the applicants. And we will expect applicants to have significant management experience at the GS-13 or -14 level. But we don’t want excellent candidates with a couple of decades of experience and who are great managers to find out they are not eligible or no longer eligible for these positions – which is what has been happening.

Strategic Planning

We also need to work on our strategic planning this year. Given the challenges ahead of us, we must have a vibrant strategic planning process. And, given the discussions this week, the time is ripe!

As we wrap up farm bill implementation and farm bill rules, we need to approach the next farm bill with a new strategic plan in place. Now that the rule writing process is almost over, we have the opportunity to work on a new strategic planning process. Our current goals are too short-term and based too much on our year-to-year numerical accomplishments.

I have asked Richard Coombe and Kathy Gugulis to head up an effort to create a new strategic planning process this year. Not in the distant future, but this year.

They will be asking many of you to host listening sessions to bring in our partners to assure a vibrant, locally led process that will help build the conservation effort of the future.

Preparing for the Next Farm Bill

I will also be naming a team to work on the next farm bill. The team will include people from the States, NHQ, and the Technology Support Centers.

Many of you wonder what you can do to get ready for the next farm bill. I will give you the same advice that President Bush gave his political appointees – myself included – a year ago at this time in reference to the election: “Just do your job.”

The performance of NRCS this year will be the basis for how Congress sees the future of conservation. How well are we serving the public? How well have we lived up to the confidence Congress placed in us by passing the 2002 farm bill?

So we need to maximize our performance this year. We need to complete unfinished work from 2003 and 2004 – look at older contracts, and get them done. Within the next few weeks, you will me making your decisions on how to operate this year. Your job is to make decisions that maximize your effectiveness, result in the largest number of contracts, and benefit as many producers as possible.


Conclusion

Our work this year involves both short-term and longer-term objectives. I think we will have enough to keep ourselves busy. This is important work, because it will play an important role in the future of conservation under the next farm bill.

Thank you.