As Prepared for Delivery

Serving Customers, Planning Ahead, Finishing Strong

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

Rochester, New York
August 2, 2005


Welcome to Rochester and the National Leadership Team meeting.

Personnel Changes

Since we met in Corpus Christi in May, we’ve had a number of staff changes. In fact, I know I’ll miss some of the changes, so I’ll apologize up front.

First and foremost, we have with us today my new boss, Deputy Under Secretary Merlyn Carlson. You’ll hear from him later today.

At headquarters:

Gary Mast, Pete Fullerton and Niles Jager have joined NRCS as special assistants to the Chief.

Taylor Oldroyd took a promotion and moved over to NRE as Congressional Liaison for Natural Resources and Environment, and Raegan Weber will be taking over some of his work.

Steve Probst is serving as Acting Director of the Budget Planning and Analysis Division, and Dan Runnels is Acting Director of the Operations Management and Oversight Division.

Dr. Meg Walsh has come on board as the National Atmospheric Resources Specialist. She is helping Diane Gelburd, who is the DFO for the Agricultural Air Quality Task Force.

Gerald Griswold begins a detail next week to serve as a natural resource specialist in the Animal Husbandry and Clean Water Division.

Pamela Boyland is serving as Acting Director of the Human Resources Management Division while Karen Karlinchak is at the Department.

Arun Basu is the new Special Assistant for Outreach and Diversity.
Andrew Johnson will be the acting director for CTAP following Carlos Henning’s retirement tomorrow.

Bruce Julian will be acting as Civil Rights Division Director, beginning Aug. 22, and Tony Kramer begins acting as the Conservation Technical Assistance Branch Chief, following Wally Turner’s retirement.

Thanks to Rich Simms for serving as acting director of Financial Assistance Programs, and to Adolfo Perez for stepping in behind him to serve as acting State Conservationist in Idaho.

Barbara Compton joins us next week as the new management analyst for the TSP Team.

Thanks also to Steve Mozley who’s serving as the Environmental Improvement Programs Branch Chief and Steve Hundley who’s serving as the Farm and Ranch Lands Protection Program Manager.

Noller Herbert has been selected as National Engineering Software Coordinator.

And in the States:

Effective August 21, Roylene Rides-at-the-Door will be the new State Conservationist in Rhode Island.

Later this month Jon Hall will take over as State Conservationist in Delaware. Thank you to Ann English for serving as acting.

And Ed Burton is slated to be the new State Conservationist in California with Carlos Suarez as the permanent deputy.

In early September, Doug Zehner will begin serving as acting State Conservationist in New Jersey.

Thanks to Allen Green for acting as State Conservationist in California and to Dennis Alexander who’s been acting in Colorado.

FY 2005 Wrap Up

I want to begin this morning at the end. By that, I mean the end of FY 2005—which is rapidly approaching.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of wrapping up our work for this year. Our primary focus must be getting conservation on the ground.

And I can’t encourage you too strongly to stress this point—and keep on stressing it—with your folks.
Taking applications is important. Signing contracts is important. But what really counts is putting conservation practices in place.

As I’ve said before, completing the work we’ve begun under the 2002 farm bill is Job 1 for our employees. Follow-through is critical. Doing a good job—and finishing it—is the best way to get ready for the challenges ahead.

The 2002 farm bill authorized $17.1 billion in conservation spending. So we still have a lot of work to do. And we need to do that as effectively, efficiently and prudently as possible. That’s the most important way for all of us to prepare the ground—literally and figuratively—for the next farm bill.

The discussion this week is all about maximizing the effectiveness of those dollars. This week I hope to release $24 million of additional EQIP dollars to many of you. It has been complicated, but we have successfully converted several million dollars of technical assistance to financial assistance that you, as State Conservationists, have decided to return. We can do more.

As you talk with your folks, please emphasize the importance of doing our jobs to the best of our ability. It’s important that this message—and other information we’re sharing here—gets passed along to your staffs.

Communications Assessment

Tomorrow you’ll be hearing in detail from Mission Strategies on the communications assessment—both their analysis and a series of recommendations. Mission Strategies conducted a very thorough evaluation based on comments from interviews with a wide range of people, focus groups involving our customers and the results of the employee survey that more than 6,500 NRCS employees completed in May.

Our goal with this assessment is to help us find ways to take a good communications program and make it great. Just as we pride ourselves in NRCS on the professionalism of those in the scientific disciplines, we need to recognize and rely on professionalism in other disciplines.

We want to better serve those of you in the States, and ultimately to better serve our customers.

Establishing a single, immediately identifiable logo was the first step in that process.

Getting the advice of communications professionals when programmatic decisions are made is another step we all need to take. I want to see our PAS’s take a place at the table from initial discussions to final wrap-up.

We need to develop our marketing and outreach strategies as an integral part of our program plans—not as an afterthought. We need the professional advice of our professional communications team from the outset—and the Mission Strategies report tells us that’s an area we need to work on.

I’ve asked Mission Strategies to share the complete report, which they’ve presented to me in draft. And they’ll be giving the same presentation to our Public Affairs Specialists and Earth Team coordinators at their conference in Philadelphia next week.

Some of the report I agree with; some I disagree with; and some I want to think about further.

I’m looking for your feedback and feedback from the communications team.

I hope you’ll discuss what you hear tomorrow with the PAS’s you work with after they return from their conference. Then, early this fall, we’ll identify the recommendations that will move us toward an outstanding communications program for NRCS and begin to put them in place.

CSP 2005/2006

Last week, top staff participated in a number of events to celebrate CSP contract signings. We announced that contracts are being offered to 12,700 farmers covering 9 million acres of agricultural land. Producers will benefit from the full use of the $202 million provided for CSP this year.

To follow up this successful sign-up, we will have a CSP debriefing meeting to hear recommendations and concerns from you and your employees. We made a lot of improvements in the process this year, and I’d like to see us make at least as much improvement next year.

We’re gearing up to announce the 2006 watersheds—very soon—based on your priority order and recommendations. And after we announce the watersheds, we want to announce the CSP sign-up—probably sooner than you think!

We will also be gearing up for contract modifications this fall. So we need your team leaders to begin immediately to determine what types of enhancements we should add to those declining rate contracts.

This is where CSP will really begin to shine—exploring the potential of those superior producers to achieve even greater natural resource benefits, including producer-based studies and assessment activities. This is the time for Tier I farmers and ranchers who strive to improve the rest of their operation to move up into Tier II.

I would like to be able to give participating producers the option of getting their next payment in the current year or the next calendar year—for tax purposes. My challenge to the Deputies is to have the systems in place—toolkit and Protracts—with the updates suggested in the debriefing session—ready for us to be able to stand behind a commitment to make payments in either year—as the landowner prefers. This is a very ambitious goal—many would say unrealistic—but where we ultimately want to be.

Clearly our goal is to get ahead of the game this year—and there are a lot of gears that must mesh to make that happen. I cannot overemphasize the importance of coordination in this next year.

We have to get everything done earlier. We must be able to look eyeball to eyeball with our critics and show that when we get the money early, we can get the planning done, the priority resource concerns funded and keep the prior year contracts funded as well.

FY 2006 Funding

Looking ahead to the next fiscal year, I think we probably need to expect our appropriations bill after October 1. Although both the House and the Senate have completed their actions, it’s unlikely that the conference committee will meet until after the August recess.

The Senate will be focusing its attention on the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court. Plus there’s the spectre of reconciliation in September.

I want to mention briefly a few significant points. First, for Conservation Operations, I think when everything shakes out, the final dollar amount is likely to be closer to the Senate mark—that is higher—than to the House mark. I know some of you have been concerned about that.

However, there’s a message in the trendline for technical assistance funding—which has been headed downward, although the President’s budget requests an additional $37 million for AFO/CAFO technical assistance. The bottom line is if we want higher PART scores—and therefore more support for technical assistance—we need to continue our work to meet the Presidential management initiatives.

We’re definitely making progress. We’ve completed our CTA program policy. We need to continue to streamline and make this program transparent.

We need to revise the CTA allocations process to develop a logical, defensible formula.

And we need to have that allocations formula deployed and operable when FY 2006 begins.

At the same time, for Fiscal Year 2006, we need to recognize that our friends on the Hill have focused their attention first on mandatory farm bill funding. EQIP funds are increasing slightly, and most other programs are holding steady.

I am a little disappointed, however, that Congress appears to be funding only about 150,000 acres under the Wetland Reserve Program—and the President had requested 200,000. It will be more difficult to meet the President’s commitment to create, restore or enhance 3 million acres of wetlands over five years without stronger Congressional support.

Also, there are a couple of programs funded that still need an overhaul. The watershed perations program is funded—but 100 percent earmarked. That gives us no opportunity to focus on conservation priorities. The RC&D program also needs to be reinvented to emphasize improvements to soil, water and wildlife resources.

Strategic Planning

As you know, we’re working on a strategic plan to guide us in the years ahead. And you’ll hear more about that shortly.

Last time we met, I encouraged you to be bold and visionary in your brainstorming and planning.  And to look beyond the next five years to 10 to 20 years ahead.

Last month, we asked everyone in NRCS to take a brief survey to give us their best ideas for the future direction of NRCS. Even though we had a short turnaround time, and the survey came out during vacation season, more than 3,450 NRCS employees completed the survey.

It’s very important to me that each NRCS employee have an opportunity to weigh in on our future. We’re still tabulating the results, but I can tell you that our staff identified water quality, soil erosion and water quantity as the three most important natural resource issues for NRCS. In some parts of the country, we’ll be gathering more specific information from customers about our products and services.

Encouraging conservation on the land has always been at the core of our business and the technology, tools and service we deliver to our customers. We’re looking closely at our business lines, products and services and at how a changing customer base may impact how we do business in the future.

We’ll also be looking at what strategic issues we need to address in the future. That means operational issues as well as land, water and other emerging natural resource issues. You’ll get a chance later at this meeting to share your thoughts on strategic issues.

Cooperative Conservation

Speaking of the conference, this is the first Cooperative Conservation Conference in 40 years. In addition to the exhibit and other activities, five of our success stories will be included among 30-plus case studies—

• Restoring habitat for the threatened Louisiana black bear—and neotropical birds—on more than 56,000 acres in a corridor stretching from Northeast Louisiana to the Gulf of Mexico;
• Increasing habitat for the endangered Black-capped vireo [VERY oh] and Golden-cheeked warbler on private Texas rangeland;
• Restoring 13,000 acres of the Nation’s largest wetland and tall grass prairie with 30 partners in Minnesota;
• Rejuvenating rangeland through the Malpai Borderlands Partnership in New Mexico and Arizona and protecting 42,000 acres of private land through conservation easements; and
• Planting more than 160,000 acres of vegetative buffers to protect waterways in Iowa.

Secretary Johanns will speak at the conference, along with other cabinet secretaries. This is an excellent opportunity for NRCS to tell the story of locally led cooperative conservation—and our 70 years’ experience helping people help the land. Our customers will be there, but we’ll also have a broader audience to hear our message.

2007 Farm Bill

August is a busy month—and it’s only going to get busier. Since we last met, Secretary Johanns has held the first two listening forums on the next farm bill—in Tennessee and North Dakota.
Two more sessions are scheduled for later this week—in Minnesota and Wisconsin. And next week the Secretary will hold forums in Iowa and California.

The Secretary wants to hear directly from our customers—well in advance of Congressional debate and dialogue. In announcing the listening forums, 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 forums cover a variety of topics, including conservation. The Secretary wants our customers to tell us how the next farm bill can help us:

• 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

During the first session in Tennessee, several callers indicated that conservation technical assistance was more valuable than financial assistance. A couple of cattle ranchers spoke of how beneficial conservation practices such as installing cattle crossings and fencing streams had been to them. Other callers simply support conservation programs in the new farm bill.

As these listening forums continue, we’re likely to hear some general conservation 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.

Already, 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.

Conclusion

As I’m sure you’ve noted, our agenda for the next two days is packed. We’re in a very busy season. We have a lot on our plate.

But we also have tremendous opportunities over the next weeks and months:

• To share our success stories with a national audience at the White House Cooperative Conservation Conference
• To complete our conservation work for FY 05
• To hear from our customers in the Secretary’s listening sessions what conservation programs they want to see in the next farm bill
• To envision our future in conservation together as we prepare our next strategic plan.

This is an exciting time and a demanding time. We need to use the next few days to prepare for what lies ahead.

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