Strengthening our Stewardship

As Prepared for Delivery

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief
Natural Resources Conservation Service, at
Annual Soil and Water Stewardship Week Breakfast
Wagoner, OK
May 5, 2006

Thank you, Bill. I’m sure you all know how fortunate you are to have Bill Wilson working for you at the national level. And we at the Natural Resources Conservation Service have been delighted to partner with him and others at NACD.

I especially appreciate the opportunity this morning to join conservation district folks in Oklahoma in celebrating Stewardship Week at your annual breakfast. There’s no more fitting location to honor those who care for the land than here in Wagoner.

A few of you may remember the first stewardship celebration 60 years ago. In 1946, Farm and Ranch Magazine sponsored “Soil and Soul Sunday” to remind landowners that they hold positions of trust for God. It began as a cooperative project with national church leaders who prepared the write-up that churchgoers received that Sunday.

Then in 1955, NACD took over sponsoring what was then called Soil Stewardship Sunday.
Today, NACD sponsors Soil and Water Stewardship Week, which reminds us of our responsibility to care for the land for the generations to come. As my dad always told me when I was growing up, “Son, always remember that any land you ever hold title to is not really yours. You are simply the steward while you’re on this earth.” It’s a bit of wisdom I try never to lose sight of.

This year the Stewardship Week theme is “Water Wise,” focusing on one of our most valuable natural resources and one of the building blocks of life. Someone has said that water is earth’s lifeblood. Indeed, our mortal bodies are 60 percent water.

In the 1746 edition of Poor Richard’s Almanac, Ben Franklin wrote, “When the well is dry, we know the worth of water.” In reality, all of us in this room, everyone who’s ever been through a drought, know the value of water. And it is priceless.

While water is a renewable resource, it is not an infinite resource. It’s incredible to realize that we have the same amount of water today as there was in prehistoric times. Or as someone said, “All the water that will ever be—is—right now.”

Some have speculated that the resource that will inspire the most conflict worldwide in the 21st Century is not oil, but water. I can believe it. I’m sure you can, too.

That is why NRCS places a high priority on improving water quality and quantity, on helping farmers find ways to conserve water. We’re in the business of helping people help the land—and that means the water, too.

Increasing Water Quality/Quantity

NRCS has made a significant investment in water resources under the 2002 farm bill. Through our Environmental Quality Incentives Program alone, we have invested more than $1.2 billion in cost-shares specifically on conservation practices that help improve water quality.

Just last year, through a variety of NRCS programs, we implemented conservation practices on nearly 7 million acres that will increase the purity of water in streams, rivers and lakes. For example, we helped farmers apply more than 12,000 comprehensive nutrient management plans.

With our help, landowners installed nearly 60,000 acres of filter strips and established good nutrient management practices on more than 4 million acres. They created, enhanced or restored nearly 300,000 acres of wetlands.

These practices significantly impact the purity of our water supply. We estimate that conservation practices installed with NRCS help last year reduced soil erosion by more than 52 million tons.

Oklahoma Achievements

Let’s turn now to what’s happening specifically in Oklahoma. Passage of the 2002 farm bill dramatically increased the resources available for conservation.

In Oklahoma, your share of the Environmental Quality Incentives Program nearly tripled from 2002 to 2005. And about 325 farmers and ranchers are participating in the new Conservation Security Program.

Last year alone, through farm bill programs, NRCS invested more than $33 million in conservation in Oklahoma. That covers more than 800,000 acres.

I know you appreciate all that Darrel and his staff and our folks in the counties have done in partnership with NACD and landowners to get conservation on the ground.

Budget

That’s the good news—and it is very, very good. The more difficult part is that we’re now facing tighter budgets—this year and in the future.

As a nation, we need to fulfill our obligations and reduce our debts. Every agency and program will be affected. NRCS has worked hard to streamline our programs—and we’re pulling together another crosscutting group to look at additional ways to further reduce administrative costs.
We know it’s critical to make certain that every dollar we invest buys as much conservation as possible. That’s common sense and good business practice. We need to solve problems in one area and then move to the next to address resource issues there.

This year, most states, like Oklahoma, are facing budget declines, especially in Conservation Technical Assistance. One of the difficulties we’re experiencing is the increasing use of earmarks directing our funds to specific projects. Earmarks limit our flexibility to target resources, and they cut into the overall funding that we can allocate to states.

Dealing with a budget cutback isn’t easy. We recognize that. But we must work within the funding the Congress gives us, and we will take the steps necessary to do that.

What that means is that a number of states—like Oklahoma—will need to make some tough decisions. At the same time, the commitment to cooperative conservation remains strong—and the President’s 2007 budget proposal reflects that commitment.

The President has proposed a 28-percent increase in the Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, nearly a one-third increase in the Conservation Security Program and a whopping 60-percent increase in the Wetlands Reserve Program.

However, there is sobering news for watersheds, RC&D, GLCI and the other earmarks. The key message is accountability—measuring the contribution each program makes to meeting conservation goals.

Still, the overall NRCS budget reflects only a tiny 2-percent cut—clear demonstration of the value of environmental stewardship. It also sets forth our priorities—addressing the most serious environmental concerns and recognizing those whose stewardship is exemplary and encouraging them to do more.

Market-Based Incentives

Of course, federal dollars are only one part of the picture. I am excited about new opportunities ahead to draw more resources to conservation—not from government but from the market.

Last week I spoke at the National Mitigation & Banking Conference in Portland. Later this month, EPA and NRCS are sponsoring a Water Quality Trading Conference in Pittsburgh.
The focus of these meetings is finding ways to place a value on ecosystem services and encouraging those who receive the services to contribute toward the cost of providing them.

Market approaches to conservation are a logical extension of our work. And we are determined to develop creative strategies that benefit the public, enhance the environment and support those who make their living from the land.

Voluntary market mechanisms may include:
• environmental credit trading,
• insurance,
• mitigation banking,
• competitive offer-based auctioning,
• eco-labeling—and more.

The key to successful markets is that they are voluntary and transparent.

What We Are Doing for Farmers

As we move forward, I believe NRCS will be emphasizing knowledge-based conservation.
We’re going to be helping people help the land by providing tools that enable precision conservation.

Precision conservation is about optimizing resources. That’s putting the right practices in the right place at the right time and at the right scale.

Our part is to develop tools that will enable landowners to make wise land use decisions. Toward that end, last summer we launched the Web Soil Survey to make soils data available 24/7 over the Internet. Now anyone can download this information from the NRCS webpage at www.nrcs.usda.gov. And over the past seven months, we’ve received more than 110 million hits, averaging more than half a million per day.

Our website also includes a PLANTS database that landowners can access to get information on characteristics of specific plants and how they can best be used—or, in the case of an invasive, controlled. All of our conservation practices and standards are also on our website. Of course, as you know, you can get this information at our local office as well.

Another tool that I hope you’ve taken a look at is our energy estimator introduced last December to help producers determine how much money they could save by switching from conventional tillage to no till or reduced tillage.

2007 Farm Bill

I believe these tools and others that we’re working on will be increasingly helpful to farmers in the future. As you know, the future will include a new farm bill next year.

Last summer and fall, the Department of Agriculture held 53 listening sessions in 48 states, including a meeting in Oklahoma City on September 22, to find out what producers want to see in the next farm bill. Comments at those sessions confirmed that conservation is important to farmers and ranchers.

I see the next farm bill as an opportunity for us to:
• Better integrate our programs
• Increase transparency
• Ensure that programs work for all producers, including limited resource and underserved farmers, and
• Emphasize results—outcome-based measures.

What’s Ahead—Strategic Plan

At the same time, NRCS has been discussing a long-term view of conservation on working agricultural lands—where we need to go in the years—and even decades—ahead. To help clarify our vision and chart our course, we’ve developed a strategic plan. This is a bottom-up plan that’s been developed with the involvement of NRCS employees at all levels as well as customers and partners, like districts.

Our mission is simple and clear: helping people help the land. And our ultimate objective is productive lands and a healthy environment. To help us move from vision to reality, we have identified six goals—three foundation goals and three venture goals.

Our foundation goals cover traditional NRCS concerns:
• high quality, productive soils;
• clean and abundant water;
• and healthy plant and animal communities.

The venture goals focus on emerging resource concerns related to current economic and demographic trends. These include:
• air quality,
• an adequate energy supply and
• working farms and ranch lands.

The plan also identifies three strategies we will use to address these concerns:
• cooperative conservation,
• a watershed approach and
• a market-based approach.

This plan is a solid blueprint that will drive us forward, under the 2002 farm bill and the farm bills of the future. At the same time, there is sufficient flexibility in the plan to enable us to adjust to the inevitable changes that will occur—including whatever the next farm bill brings—and to recognize local priorities.

Conclusion

I think it’s important to plan ahead—and that’s why NRCS has developed a far-reaching strategic plan. I think that’s critical if we’re to be wise stewards of the responsibilities entrusted to us.

Landowners who accept their role as stewards also need to plan ahead. They recognize that our resources are finite, and we need to conserve them for those who come after us.

I like the way Rick Warren puts it, very simply and forthrightly, in The Purpose-Driven Life: “We never actually own anything during our brief stay on earth. God just loans the earth to us while we’re here. It was God’s property before you arrived, and God will loan it to someone else after you die.”
The essence of stewardship is acknowledging that we’re just sojourners, settling on the land for a short time and then moving on. Our job is to leave the land in good shape for those who are next to pass this way. We can never forget that we are accountable to the true owner, and we have a sacred obligation to fulfill our responsibilities faithfully.

Thank you for celebrating 51 years of soil and water conservation.