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Taking Conservation Assistance to a New Level
Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief
Natural Resources Conservation Service
at the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture
Lexington, KY
October 8, 2002
Thank you, Commissioner Smith, and good morning. It is a
pleasure to be here today and to be a part of the farm bill implementation
panel. Good morning also to my fellow panelists, USDA Under Secretary Bill Hawks
and John Johnson of USDA’s Farm Service Agency.
Today, I will try to do three things: First, give you an overview of the
conservation provisions of the farm bill. Second, go over what we are doing to
implement those provisions. And third, talk a bit about opportunities the
conservation title presents for the State Departments of Agriculture.
But first I would like to take a minute to recognize the close tie that exists
between NASDA and NRCS and to thank you for your work on the farm bill. Your
2002 Farm Policy Initiative did a good job of presenting the issues facing
American agriculture. It played an important role in framing the debate over the
2002 farm bill.
NASDA is also doing some fine work in the environmental area. I want to
recognize Frank DuBois, director of the New Mexico Department of Agriculture,
and the NASDA Natural Resources and Environment Committee for their fine work.
The NASDA Research Foundation is also doing good things, including publication
of the environmental guides for each state. The guides are a valuable tool for
farmers and ranchers, and we look forward to having the complete set available.
Thanks again for your hard work on behalf of America’s farmers and ranchers.
Now, I’ll give you a quick run down on the provisions of the farm bill and the
resources it makes available to farmers and ranchers.
Farm Bill Program Run Down
The new farm bill represents the largest investment in conservation on America’s
working lands in farm bill history – $13 billion over six years. The farm bill
provides a great deal of flexibility for America’s farmers and ranchers. Funding
increases in all programs offer more farmers and ranchers more options for
addressing their natural resource challenges.
The biggest single program in the farm bill is the Environmental Quality
Incentives Program (EQIP). The farm bill provides an extra $5.5 billion for EQIP.
For Fiscal year 2002, that amounted to an additional $227 million to provide
financial and technical assistance to farmers, ranchers, and tribes. Two hundred
million dollars went for general enrollment for EQIP and $25 million to provide
technical and financial assistance for ground and surface water conservation.
For fiscal year 2003, EQIP will have $700 million, plus $45 million for ground
and surface water conservation.
Other programs show similar increases.
The farm bill provides $360 million for the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program
(WHIP) over six years. WHIP had $15 million for last fiscal year and will have
$30 million for FY 2003.
The new farm bill provides for several programs to protect working farmland and
ranchland, including the Farmland Protection Program (FPP) and the Grassland
Reserve Program (GRP). FPP will have nearly $600 million over six years. For
fiscal year 2002, FPP had $50 million. The Secretary released most of that money
early last month. For fiscal year 2003, FPP funding doubles to $100 million. GRP
will have a quarter of a billion dollars in mandatory spending to enroll up to
two million acres of grazing land. It remains to be seen how much of that money
will be available each year.
In addition, the Wetlands Reserve Program (WRP) has significant increases in its
acreage cap. The Secretary released $275 million in WRP funds last month. We
were able to enroll more than 200,000 acres.
The Conservation Security Program (CSP) will provide payments for producers who
have historically practiced good stewardship on their agricultural lands and
incentives for those who want to do more. The U. S. Department of Agriculture is
working hard on the rule for the CSP program. We are determined to create a
program that works, so it may take some time to work out the details.
Farm Bill Implementation
That is what the farm bill contains. But, passing the farm bill was only the
first step. Even before the bill became law, USDA was preparing for the massive
task of implementing the bill.
That effort is well underway, but we still have much to do.
We are only five months into a six-year effort. We still need to write rules for
several programs. And we need to be able to make wise use of increasing amounts
of money each year. Under this farm bill, the investment in conservation started
big, and it just keeps getting bigger. For example, by 2005, the amount of money
in the Environmental Quality Incentives Program each year will equal the total
amount spent over the six-year life of the last farm bill.
Secretary Veneman recently testified before a Senate committee on what USDA has
done to implement the farm bill over the last five months. Before the Federal
fiscal year ended, we released additional funding for EQIP, WRP, WHIP, and FPP.
We also released $25 million for Ground and Surface Water Conservation, a new
activity authorized in the farm bill as part of EQIP. The total funding released
for 2002 was nearly $750 million.
But, another important part of our work is getting the rules in place for
programs that have changed as a result of the new farm bill and for programs
created in the farm bill. Secretary Veneman also stressed that we are on
schedule as far as writing the rules needed to implement the conservation
provisions of the farm bill. So far, we have issued final rules for the Wetlands
Reserve Program and Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program and a proposed rule for
Agricultural Management Assistance and the Farmland Protection Program. We are
renaming this program the Farm and Ranch Land Protection Program to better
describe its scope.
Looking ahead, this fall we will publish the proposed rule for EQIP and the
interim final rule for Technical Service Provider certification. We also are
making steady progress toward the proposed rule for the Conservation Security
Program. Finally, USDA is finishing up the delegation of authority for the
Grassland Reserve Program. We will post the latest information on the USDA Web
site as we move these rules through the process.
In formulating these rules, we want to keep as much decision making as possible
at the local level, so that local people have as much control of the programs as
possible. Deputy Secretary Moseley refers to this approach as keeping things
“lean and local.” Some programs have no changes or only prescriptive changes. We
have expedited the regulatory process for these programs. Other programs – the
new Conservation Security Program, for example – will go through the formal
rulemaking process, including a period for public comment.
Looking Beyond Programs to Conservation Goals
We are encouraging farmers and ranchers, NRCS employees, and our partners, such
as the State Departments of Agriculture, to look beyond the individual programs
contained in the farm bill and focus on overall conservation goals. Farm bill
programs offer voluntary solutions for complying with the Endangered Species
Act, Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, and other regulations. But, the farm bill
also greatly enhances the ability of operators to protect wetlands, water
quality, and wildlife habitat in ways that go beyond regulatory requirements.
Participation in farm bill programs is uniquely landowner driven: Each producer
determines his or her level of participation. What the farm bill as a whole will
do is help operators maintain profitability, while meeting their conservation
objectives.
It is important that we keep conservation objectives at the center of our
decision making and not give in to what I call the “program mentality.” I hope
the States will help foster the general principles of conservation and not get
too bogged down in the effort to implement individual programs.
Technical Service Providers
One feature of the conservation title of the farm bill that offers a major
opportunity for State conservation agencies is the requirement that USDA
implement a process for using outside services to assist in the delivery of
conservation. States have been providing technical services as a part of
conservation programs for many years, and this provision offers the opportunity
to expand that effort tremendously. The emphasis is to make it possible for
State agencies and other partners to provide additional services, not to replace
existing state-funded activities with Federal dollars.
We hope to have the technical service provider process in place by the middle of
the month (October) with publication of an interim final rule in the Federal
Register. The rule will call for a 90-day comment period, during which we will
find out what further improvement can be made in the process.
Here are some of the features you can expect in the technical service provider
process: The farm bill provides for USDA to offer technical assistance both
directly by government employees or through payment to producers to acquire
outside assistance from qualified sources – including State agencies.
In creating the technical service provider process, we are actually creating a
whole new industry of conservation service providers out there, who will be
doing much of the conservation planning and implementation work for producers.
The farm bill simply provides too much opportunity for NRCS to do all the work.
NRCS employees will still be around, helping landowners, working with technical
service providers, and making sure the resources get where they need to be. We
are continuing to use current procedures to work with our partners. In addition,
the farm bill authorizes USDA to use program resources to enter into stewardship
agreements with State and local agencies, tribes, and nongovernmental
organizations. I want to alert you to an event next month related to technical
service providers. USDA will be hosting a technical service provider input
session to include participants in Washington, DC, with satellite downlinks
nationwide and a Web broadcast. I hope you will all be able to attend, either in
person or electronically. The session will be part of the public input process
for the new rule.
Conclusion
As I mentioned earlier, the new farm bill represents the single greatest
commitment of resources to conservation on private lands that this nation has
ever seen. Thirteen billion dollars in six years for conservation is a huge
investment.
The big job now for NRCS, and for all our partners, including the States, is to
put these resources to work on the land. Now we all need to get together and do
what it takes to conserve, maintain, and improve our natural resources and
environment – and, at the same time, maintain and improve the profitability of
our agricultural operations.
One way States can help make the farm bill work is to continue making producers
aware of all the assistance that is available to them. I hope you will use all
the methods at your disposal to keep producers informed of how they can benefit
from the new farm bill.
The new farm bill gives us the opportunity to take conservation assistance to a
whole new level.
The cornerstone of our work is local leadership. That is certainly true as far
as NRCS is concerned. We think locally led conservation is the only conservation
that works. That is why we will continue to work with the States and with local
people to help every private landowner in America achieve his or her
conservation goals.
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