NRCS History Articles

Natural Resources Conservation Service Brief History

by Douglas Helms, Historian, Natural Resources Conservation Service

The Soil Conservation Service (SCS), predecessor to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), was created on April 27, 1935, by Public Law 46 (Seventy-fourth Congress), which declared that soil erosion was a menace to the national welfare and authorized broad powers to the new agency to attack the problem. (As part of the Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of 1994, the name was changed to the Natural Resources Conservation Service on 20 October 1994.) The enactment testified to a continuing federal commitment to soil conservation and was the culmination of the efforts of the agency's first chief, Hugh Hammond Bennett. A North Carolina native, Bennett joined the Bureau of Soils in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 1903, shortly after graduating from the University of North Carolina. About four years earlier, the bureau had begun making soil surveys to assist agricultural development. Usually mapped on a county basis, the maps and descriptions of the properties of the soil would help make farmers aware of the potentials and limitations of particular soils.

Bennett's Crusade

During the years of making surveys, Bennett came to believe that soil erosion was taking such a toll on farmland that, if left unchecked, it would impair the nation's ability to produce food. He launched a crusade of speaking and article-writing to draw attention to the problem. Through professional contacts and writings such as the influential USDA bulletin Soil Erosion: A National Menace, Bennett became the department's acknowledged soil erosion expert. Largely owing to Bennett's efforts, Congress approved a group of soil erosion experiment stations in 1929.

Recognition of soil erosion as a problem and Bennett's expertise and contributions proved crucial when the emergency employment programs of the Great Depression offered an opportunity to work on erosion. A clause in the National Industrial Recovery Act of June 16, 1933, permitted erosion control work. Several plans were offered for carrying out this provision. In reacting to plans to simply build terraces, Bennett argued persuasively that soil conservation was based on a variety of management and vegetative measures such as contouring, strip cropping, crop rotations, pasture improvement and management, reforesting of land not suited to cropland, wildlife enhancement, and use of land according to its potential. Thus, according to Bennett soil conservation was multidisciplinary and relied on numerous specialists — agronomists, soil scientists, engineers, foresters, wildlife biologists, and social scientists — to develop mutually supporting soil and water conservation measures.

The Soil Erosion Service

Bennett's arguments proved persuasive, and on September 19, 1933, he became the first director of the Soil Erosion Service, which was funded with $5 million in emergency employment funds and operated out of the Department of the Interior. Bennett planned demonstrations of soil and water conservation on farms in selected watersheds. He located the earliest of the demonstration projects near the erosion experiment stations so that the head of the experiment station could also supervise the project and use the experiment station's findings. Working along with Raymond H. Davis, director of the Upper Mississippi Soil Erosion Experiment Station at La Crosse, and officials of the University of Wisconsin, Bennett selected the Coon Creek watershed as the first demonstration project. Farmers in demonstration projects could sign five-year cooperative agreements to install conservation measures.

The Soil Erosion Service furnished equipment, seed, seedlings, and assistance in planning the measures. Young men from nearby Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camps or workers hired by the Soil Erosion Service would do much of the work. A project staff might consist of an engineer, soil scientist, forester, economist, and biologist to work with farmers on rearranging the farm for conservation practices. Eventually the Service developed the conservation farm plan, written cooperatively by the farmer and the service, to detail the needed work. The personal connection between the trained conservationist and the land user became the hallmark of agency activities.

The Soil Conservation Service

As the work found favor with farmers and more requests were made for demonstration projects, friends of the soil conservation movement introduced bills into Congress to give the work a more assured legislative footing. This too was one of Bennett's objectives. The Congressional hearing provided one of the most memorable events in conservation history. In the mid-1930s it was not uncommon during the early spring for one of the dust storms from the Dust Bowl region to be swept up into the atmosphere and to be carried out to the Atlantic seaboard. Bennett recounted the events five years after his testimony before the Senate Public Lands Committee on Public Law 46:

The hearing was dragging a little. I think some of the Senators were sprinkling a few grains of salt on the tail of some of my astronomical figures relating to soil losses by erosion. At any rate, I recall wishing rather intensely, at the time, that the dust storm then reported on its way eastward would arrive. I had followed the progress of the big duster from its point of origin in northeastern New Mexico, on into the Ohio Valley, and had every reason to believe it would eventually reach Washington.

It did — in sun-darkening proportions — and at about the right time — for the benefit of Public Forty-six.

When it arrived, while the hearing was still on, we took a little time off the record, moved from the great mahogany table to the windows of the Senate Office Building for a look. Everything went nicely thereafter. Jonathan Daniels, "Hugh Bennett," The Land 1 (1941), 10.

Shortly before the bill passed Congress, President Franklin Roosevelt resolved a struggle between the secretaries of the departments of the Interior and Agriculture, by transferring the service, now called the SCS, to the USDA. With passage of legislation giving the SCS a promising future, the work expanded rapidly. By mid-1936 there were 147 demonstration projects, 48 nurseries, 23 experiment stations, 454 CCC camps, and over 23,000 Work Progress Administration workers on the rolls.

The demonstration projects were important to the history of the conservation movement. During the depths of the depression, many farmers were receptive to the help. Owing to the availability of labor and equipment, the young service was able to transform farms into models of conservation. Moreover, by concentrating work on the selected watersheds, the service could demonstrate the cumulative effects of work on individual farms and its value to the whole watershed.

Conservation Districts

Still, some people questioned whether demonstration projects were the best method for spreading conservation from this promising beginning. One criticism was that farmers should take a more active part in planning and installing the work. M. L. Wilson, Under Secretary of Agriculture, devoted considerable thought to spreading conservation from the scattered demonstration projects to the rest of the country. In order to develop the legal framework for the new mechanisms, he enlisted the aid of Philip Glick, a young lawyer in the USDA. Together they drew on the strengths and flexibility of federalism to develop a new unit of government, the conservation district. The district would be organized under state, not federal, law. Most of each district's directors, or supervisors, would be elected by the people living within the district's boundaries.

Thus the district concept fulfilled many of Wilson's objectives. Local groups would be more involved in planning and setting priorities in their districts. The district likewise provided a means of spreading the conservation activities nationwide. The federal government could contribute to the conservation effort with financial aid as well as with trained personnel. The arrangement allowed federal assistance to conservation without complete federal control.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt transmitted the law regarding standard state soil conservation districts to the governors of the states on February 27, 1937 along with the suggestion that each state pass the law. Arkansas passed the first such law on March 3, 1937. The Brown Creek Soil Conservation District in North Carolina, in whose boundaries lay the home farm of Hugh Bennett, signed the first memorandum of understanding with the USDA on August 4, 1937. Not surprisingly, many of the demonstration project areas and CCC work areas quickly organized conservation districts. In some areas SCS personnel and farmers friendly to the district movement had to overcome opposition. At the end of 1939 there were eighty-eight million acres in districts. The acreage in districts topped the one billion mark in 1947 and the two billion mark in 1973.

The nearly three thousand districts, their state associations, and the National Association of Conservation Districts became the grass-roots support for federal conservation programs and helped sustain SCS and conservation funding through difficult times. In states and counties where districts had funds, they added personnel to work alongside SCS employees and thus sped the conservation work. The SCS field office in many states might have a mixture of federal and district employees working alongside one another.

The districts could further conservation by purchasing equipment and supplies needed for conservation work. For instance, they promoted the adoption of conservation tillage by purchasing no-till drills which they lent or leased to farmers. As private citizens, district officials could influence state laws and regulations in areas where it would be inappropriate for federal employees to do so. As units of state government, the districts could play a role in planning and zoning, areas of the law reserved to state government.

Water Resources

The agency's title highlighted soil, but the scope of the agency's work encompassed the interaction of soil and water. A hallmark of the SCS has been its emphasis on treating the whole watershed--not just the in-stream and floodplain conditions, but also the upland areas of the watershed. Before, or in conjunction with installing flood control, streambank erosion control, or other structures, the SCS worked with landowners to use conservation measures that would increase infiltration, reduce runoff, and prevent sediments from moving to the stream. Some of the early demonstration projects combined flood control structures and water supply structures with conservation measures on the watershed lands. The Flood Control Act of 1936 authorized the SCS to study measures regarding soil erosion control, runoff, and water flow retardation in selected watersheds. The Flood Control Act of 1944 approved eleven of these plans for operation.

The Watershed Protection and Flood Prevention Act of 1954 established a different, more streamlined procedure for the SCS to carry out what came to be called the small watershed program on upstream watersheds of less than 250,000 acres: federal assistance would be provided for the building of structural works that could not possibly be realized by individual parties; local communities were expected to provide land rights and become legally responsible for the operation and maintenance of these structures, and landowners above them were expected to apply conservation measures that would reduce erosion and slow runoff.

Some of these projects, usually those involving drainage and channel modifications, became the objects of the severest criticism SCS had yet received, as part of the environmental movement's critique of federal assistance in matters of flood control and drainage. But it bears remembering that the projects were to treat the whole watershed: work for which individuals bore primary responsibility was matched by community responsibility, and federal assistance was provided to the latter.

Most projects have involved more than flood prevention and watershed protection: drainage has been involved in nineteen percent of the projects, recreation in seventeen percent, municipal and industrial water supply in eleven percent, fish and wildlife habitat enhancement in six per cent, irrigation in six, and water quality protection in seven. Since the Flood Control Act of 1944, the Service has been involved in 1,641 projects covering more than 134 million acres.

Expanding Responsibilities and Activities

The primary method of operation of the renamed NRCS continues to be working directly with farmers in cooperation with conservation districts. In its ongoing mission to conserve, maintain, and enhance the quality of resources, it has had to adapt and tailor its services to changing agricultural conditions, congressional mandates, and public concerns. In addition to working with individuals, the NRCS and the districts may work with groups and units of government at all levels.

During the mid-1960s there was great emphasis on using soil survey data and other information to help communities and local governments in their planning and development efforts. Over the next twenty years the Service undertook river basin surveying and planning activities at scales large and small in order to identify needed conservation work. Public concerns about water pollution have been addressed in a series of amendments to the Clean Water Act. While the original focus was on municipal and industrial sources of pollution, agricultural sources, sometimes referred to as nonpoint sources, became an area of concern in the 1970s. The NRCS works with farmers to reduce these sources of sediments and other pollutants from cropland and pasture. The NRCS works with livestock and poultry farmers on waste management systems as well as composting, manure storage facilities, and other practices that lessen and control water runoff. The NRCS assists farmers in the arid and semiarid West on water conservation, irrigation scheduling, and measures to combat soluble salt concentrations in soil, surface water, and groundwater. Range and pasture management techniques developed by NRCS aid ranchers in maintaining soil- and moisture-retaining ground cover and reducing erosion. The Service works with private land owners on timber management. Farm conservation plans can include information to help owners increase wildlife habitat.

The Food Security Act of 1985, more commonly called the 1985 farm bill, linked farmers' eligibility for USDA programs to conservation performance. The highly erodible lands provision, sometimes known as conservation compliance, required farmers to use conservation measures on erodible land in order to remain eligible for USDA programs such as price support payments and crop insurance. The agency also became responsible for identifying wetlands that farmers could not alter without also losing benefits. These requirements placed a considerable work load on SCS field staff and altered the relationship of SCS to its clientele. While participation in programs was still voluntary, the SCS had assumed a role different from its tradition of using persuasion with farmers. Implementation of the highly erodible lands provision of the 1985 farm bill resulted in a continuing decline of erosion on cropland. Technology contributed to this as conservation tillage systems relying on herbicides and reduced tillage equipment became one of the primary tools used by farmers in achieving their erosion reduction goals.

Emergency Conservation Programs

During the 1990s the frequency and intensity of natural disasters seemed to increase. The Soil Conservation Service field staff, through their responsibilities under the Emergency Watershed Program, assisted numerous communities in recovery. A few of these events were hurricanes Hugo, Andrew, and Fran, the Oakland-Berkeley Hills fires of 1991, and then the Southern California fires in 1993 and 1994. In addition, SCS assisted in restoring channel and levees after the 1993 Midwest flood. The flood put addition focus on restoring wetlands. Rather than restoring some levees the agencies signed long-term easements with the owners under an Emergency Wetland Reserve Program. The 1996 farm bill provided authority for purchase of floodplain easements in future emergency events.

Environmental Conservation and Restoration

In a number of areas the agency participated in what might be termed “restoration” projects to reverse previous land, channel and wetland alterations. In 1994 NRCS assumed management of the Wetland Reserve Program which had been authorized in the 1990 farm bill. Funds provided for restoration as well as long-term or permanent easements. SCS geologists and landscape architects coordinated a Federal effort to produce a “Stream Corridor Restoration” manual. The manual placed emphasis on use of vegetation rather than structural works for stream corridor restoration. The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), authorized in the 1985 farm bill, provided for long-term (10-year) rentals of cropland and establishment of vegetation on the reserve acres. In requiring vegetative cover, the SCS placed great emphasis on native species of grass. The nurseries and plant materials centers, which had been selecting plants for conservation uses since the beginning of the agency, now put an emphasis on selecting native seeds and plants for use in prairie and wetland restoration. They had also worked with the National Park Service to select and increase native seed and plants for the National Parks.

New Name, Major Reorganization

The Soil Conservation Service was one of the many Federal agencies reorganized under the “reinventing government” initiative. The Federal Crop Insurance Reform and Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of October 14, 1994, gave the Secretary of Agriculture authority to reorganize the Department. The reorganization, accomplished by a Secretary’s memorandum of October 20, 1994, changed the agency’s name from the Soil Conservation Service to the Natural Resources Conservation Service; ostensibly to focus on the fact the agency’s conservation mission encompassed water, air, plants, and animals in addition to soil. The reorganization also moved many of the financial assistance programs to NRCS. Previously, most financial assistance programs had been located in the predecessors to the newly created Farm Service Agency--namely the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, Production and Marketing Administration, Agricultural Adjustment Administration. The overall trend in the 1990s was to link technical assistance for conservation more closely with the financial assistance for conservation and to concentrate on critical problems. The Environmental Quality Incentives Program, authorized in the 1996 farm bill, brought several financial assistance programs under one umbrella. Also, Congress, in the 2002 farm bill, created the Conservation Security Program which was designed to reward land owners doing good conversion work; motivate other ferms to adfopt conservaiotn measures; and to provide invectives for higher levels of conservation performance. During the 1990s and first decade of the 21t century, the funding for financial assistance has increased while the number of NRCS staff remained level or declined. The field office staff devoted more of their time assisting landowners prepare applications for financial assistance programs as well as providing advice in installing conservation practices.

Water Quality

During the 1990s water quality increasingly occupied the agency. Reducing the off-site impacts of chemicals used in agricultural production had been on the agency’s agenda since the initiation of the Rural Clean Water program in the late 1970s. During the 1990s production of animals for meat and milk became increasingly concentrated in large operations. NRCS staff worked with producers to write comprehensive nutrient management plans so as to maintain and improve water quality.

Heritage and Philosophy

Work on farmlands growing commodities is only one part of the agency's work. Through the sixty years of experience, the agency developed numerous scientifically-based tools and standards in agronomy, forestry, engineering, economics, wildlife biology and other disciplines that local NRCS field office conservationists use in helping landowners plan and install conservation practices. Also, historical experience created a philosophy that the service still follows: Assess the resources on the land, the conservation problems and opportunities. Draw on various sciences and disciplines and integrate all their contributions into a plan for the whole property. Work closely with land users so that the plans for conservation mesh with their objectives. Through implementing conservation on individual projects, contribute to the overall quality of life in the watershed or region.

Bibliography

Archer, Sellers G. Soil Conservation. Norman, Okla., 1956.

Bennett, Hugh Hammond. Elements of Soil Conservation. New York, 1947.

Bennett, Hugh Hammond. Soil Conservation. New York, 1939.

Buie, Eugene C. A History of the United State Department of Agriculture Water Resources Activities. Washington, D.C., 1979.

Brink, Wellington. Big Hugh, The Father of Soil Conservation. New York, 1951.

Hardin, Charles M. The Politics of Agriculture: Soil Conservation and the Struggle for Power in Rural America. Glencoe, Ill., 1952.

Held, R. Burnell and Clawson, Marion. Soil Conservation in Perspective. Baltimore, 1967.

Helms, Douglas. Readings in the History of the Soil Conservation Service. Washington, D.C., 1992.

Morgan, Robert J. Governing Soil Conservation: Thirty Years of the New Decentralization. Baltimore, 1965.

Parks, W. Robert. Soil Conservation Districts in Action. Ames, Iowa, 1952.

Sampson, R. Neil. For Love of the Land: A History of the National Association of Conservation Districts.League City, Tex., 1985.

Simms, D. Harper. The Soil Conservation Service. New York, 1967.

U.S. Soil Conservation Service. The Preparation of the Standard State Soil Conservation Districts Law: An Interview with Philip M. Glick. Washington, D.C., 1980.

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