Celebrating Mother Earth Every Day

Remarks prepared for delivery by Arlen L. Lancaster, Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service, at the annual American Indian/Alaska Native Employees Association (AIANEA) Training Conference

Corpus Christi, Texas
August 31, 2007


Good morning. Thank you for that kind introduction, Leota [Burnett], and thanks for inviting me to be part of your annual conference. Originally, I was slated to speak earlier in the conference, and was disappointed when a scheduling conflict pushed me later into the week. But, upon reflection, I am glad I ended up here in the closing session with some messages I hope will travel home with you to your states and districts.

Making Every Acre Count for Conservation

When I began working on natural resources issues years ago, coming from Idaho and Utah, I was much more interested in conservation efforts on public lands. As an avid outdoorsman, I knew all along that I wanted to help shape—and hopefully, someday lead—conservation policymaking, but I thought public lands would be my focus.

Only later did I come to realize that while responsible management of large-scale public lands is no doubt critical, truly lasting change for the environment can only be achieved through partnership with private property owners, since two-thirds of U.S. land is in their hands. If our goal is productive lands, and a healthy environment, we have to make every acre, public and private, count for conservation.

That is the reason we exist as an organization. It is also the primary reason this association was chartered: to help NRCS reach American Indian and Alaska Native landowners, to recruit and train American Indian and Alaska Native employees to develop leaders and to increase cultural knowledge and technical expertise within our workforce so we can continue to provide the direct assistance and outreach we are known for.

You have so much to be proud of as you celebrate your 10th anniversary this year, and I understand that you have big plans in 2008, including getting your strategic visioning process under way. That effort is right in line with the first of my three priorities as Chief, which is ensuring we’re prepared to meet future challenges.

Preparing to Meet Future Challenges

In NRCS, our past performance bodes well for future success, but we cannot rest on our laurels—especially not now, when conservation and the environment have become daily topics in our national conversation, and so many opportunities are laid before us.

That is why my first priority is aimed at preparing ourselves as individuals, as an agency and as members of the larger conservation community, to meet future challenges. I also want to ensure we are poised to take full advantage of the current momentum for positive change in the way many Americans think about and care for the land.

For instance, our customer base is changing rapidly and all indicators predict it will continue to do so. The 2002 Census of Agriculture is revealing in this regard. From 1997 to 2002, the number of principal operators increased by: 8.6 percent for African Americans; 20 percent for American Indians/Alaska Natives; 13.4 percent for women; and an extraordinary 51.2 percent for Hispanic/Latino operators.

Given these dramatic changes, we must acknowledge that some of our existing delivery methods may not work as well as they have in the past, so we will need to find new ways to serve traditionally underserved communities.

At the agency level, we are committed to maintaining our government-to-government relationship with Tribal Nations. As evidence of that commitment, I was pleased earlier this year to sign a memorandum of agreement between NRCS, the Farm Service Agency, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs relative to the planning and implementation of conservation programs on Indian lands.

At the state level, I consider soil conservation districts a critical partner in this outreach effort. And local leadership from this association, as well as your close alliance with the Intertribal Agriculture Council, will remain key factors in our ability to reach everyone who has a need for our programs.

I should mention here that the IAC is also marking an anniversary this year, the organization’s 20th, as a respected voice within the Indian community.

What applies to underserved communities is true for beginning farmers and ranchers, as well. Engaging these new producers in resource planning at the outset and providing them with technical assistance to establish and maintain good conservation practices will yield dividends in the long run, in the form of cleaner air and water and productive soils.

I said earlier that we need to prepare ourselves as an agency, and as individuals, so let me ask you: What are you doing to keep your skills current? When was the last time you updated your Individual Development Plan? There are many ways for you to refresh outmoded skills, or acquire new ones, through distance learning, our partnering colleges and universities, graduate programs, formal training, and even detail assignments.

Do you consider yourself mobile? Ready to serve where the agency needs your skills and strengths? Or, have you settled in for the duration? Take a look at the bios of agency leaders, and you will find most of them have benefited from many different professional development opportunities and experiences, even though those choices sometimes involved sacrifice. Richard Vigil, our Nevada State Conservationist, is a prime example of this.

Do you have National Headquarters in your future plans? I feel that anyone who aspires to leadership in our organization or to gaining a fuller understanding of how decisions are made and where our budget comes from, or even how all the pieces of USDA fit together, will want to make D.C. a milestone on his or her career path.

Together, we have a responsibility to prepare the next generation of NRCS leaders. Let us focus on getting the new/junior personnel to boot camp. A really hard-working national team led by Chris Tippie just reviewed the entire course from top to bottom, and revised the curriculum to ensure it delivers the required basic natural resources and planning skills needed to accomplish our mission of helping people help the land, today and in the future.

Making Conservation Easier

I want to now move on to the second of my three priorities as Chief. I call it the second, but it is really first in my heart. It is making conservation easier; I am sure some of you have heard me talk about this before.

When I say “making conservation easier,” I mean making it easier for our customers and for our employees. I want to be sure you have better tools and time to get out of the office more, so we are studying ways to reduce your administrative burdens, eliminate redundant procedures, and streamline processes. Ideally, I would like for you to be able to spend as much as 70 percent of your time in the field, providing the one-on-one, bread-and-butter technical assistance our reputation is built on.

For our customers, I mean reducing the complexity of our programs, to make them easier and more accessible, as our farm bill proposals recommend, along with reducing the number of individual programs and acronyms, the differing and opaque eligibility requirements, and everything else that makes customers say “This is too hard!”

Participation in our programs is entirely voluntary. So, if we are going to make every acre, and every landowner, count for conservation, we have to make it easier for eligible producers to take advantage of our programs.

We should design structures, plans, and programs to support their needs, not ours, and look at our policies and procedures with an eye to how user friendly they are. And, we must continue to focus on our core mission areas—conservation planning and technical assistance—to help farmers and ranchers make good decisions for the land.

After a year as chief, I am more convinced than ever that if you give landowners the tools, they will implement conservation. They want to do right by the environment and right by future generations, including their own children and grandchildren.

Accounting for the Benefits of Conservation

To make the case for good stewardship, then, we have to be able to demonstrate that good environmental practices are compatible with good economic performance. My third priority, therefore, is accounting for the benefits of all these good conservation decisions. By being able to demonstrate the impacts of past conservation actions, as well as the likely impacts of future ones, we can enhance our credibility and retain the trust we have worked so hard to earn.

That is why I am such a big fan of the Conservation Effects Assessment Project, which will help us tie specific actions to obvious outcomes. We have made a lot of progress during CEAP’s first five years, and I am currently reviewing the steering committee’s vision for the next five.

We are closing in on producing results from the cropland component. In about 18 months, for the first time other than with soil erosion, we will be able to measure the effect of our work—your work—in a way that is really meaningful to Congress, our customers, planners and the public.

These kinds of data will strengthen our case for continued conservation funding in future farm bills, and will also go a long way towards gaining overdue recognition for the dedicated conservation efforts of farmers and ranchers.

Celebrating Mother Earth

For some of you, as well as for some of our customers who are indigenous peoples, needing to convince people of the value of conservation might seem odd. While working with tribal representatives on conservation issues as a congressional staffer in Idaho, I saw firsthand that for many “first Americans,” stewardship and protection of cultural and natural resources are traditional, strongly held beliefs dating back millennia, in some cases.

My friends in the Nez Perce Tribe certainly gave me an education with respect to putting conservation on the ground. You may not all be aware that the Nez Perce operate one of the most sophisticated fisheries programs in the United States and have a similarly impressive natural resources department that covers such areas as cultural resources, environmental restoration, conservation planning for all agricultural leases, water management and forestry. Their wildlife management program has been instrumental in reintroducing wolves in the state of Idaho and in protecting big horn sheep and elk and bird species.

“Celebrating Mother Earth” is part of how the Nez Perce live their lives every day. We can all learn from that ethic, and apply its lessons in how we do business every day, whether we are helping people help the land on a single acre or across an entire landscape.

In Closing

Your leadership and expertise are essential to our ability to meet future challenges, make conservation easier and account for the benefits of stewardship. Thank you for all you do for NRCS and for your commitment to making every acre count for conservation.

I am really glad I was able to join you this morning and am pleased to take any questions.

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