[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CHALLENGES AND SUCCESSES OF CONSERVATION PROGRAMS IN 2020
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON CONSERVATION AND FORESTRY
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
OCTOBER 1, 2020
__________
Serial No. 116-37
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Printed for the use of the Committee on Agriculture
agriculture.house.gov
______
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
42-616 PDF WASHINGTON : 2020
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE
COLLIN C. PETERSON, Minnesota, Chairman
DAVID SCOTT, Georgia K. MICHAEL CONAWAY, Texas, Ranking
JIM COSTA, California Minority Member
MARCIA L. FUDGE, Ohio GLENN THOMPSON, Pennsylvania
JAMES P. McGOVERN, Massachusetts AUSTIN SCOTT, Georgia
FILEMON VELA, Texas ERIC A. ``RICK'' CRAWFORD,
STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands Arkansas
ALMA S. ADAMS, North Carolina SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
Vice Chair VICKY HARTZLER, Missouri
ABIGAIL DAVIS SPANBERGER, Virginia DOUG LaMALFA, California
JAHANA HAYES, Connecticut RODNEY DAVIS, Illinois
ANTONIO DELGADO, New York TED S. YOHO, Florida
TJ COX, California RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia
ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota MIKE BOST, Illinois
ANTHONY BRINDISI, New York DAVID ROUZER, North Carolina
JOSH HARDER, California RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
KIM SCHRIER, Washington TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine ROGER W. MARSHALL, Kansas
CHERI BUSTOS, Illinois DON BACON, Nebraska
SEAN PATRICK MALONEY, New York NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
SALUD O. CARBAJAL, California DUSTY JOHNSON, South Dakota
AL LAWSON, Jr., Florida JAMES R. BAIRD, Indiana
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona JIM HAGEDORN, Minnesota
JIMMY PANETTA, California CHRIS JACOBS, New York
ANN KIRKPATRICK, Arizona TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
CYNTHIA AXNE, Iowa
XOCHITL TORRES SMALL, New Mexico
______
Anne Simmons, Staff Director
Matthew S. Schertz, Minority Staff Director
______
Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry
ABIGAIL DAVIS SPANBERGER, Virginia, Chair
MARCIA L. FUDGE, Ohio DOUG LaMALFA, California, Ranking
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona Minority Member
CHELLIE PINGREE, Maine RICK W. ALLEN, Georgia
CYNTHIA AXNE, Iowa RALPH LEE ABRAHAM, Louisiana
TRENT KELLY, Mississippi
TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
Felix Muniz, Jr., Subcommittee Staff Director
(ii)
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
LaMalfa, Hon. Doug, a Representative in Congress from California,
opening statement.............................................. 4
Peterson, Hon. Collin C., a Representative in Congress from
Minnesota, opening statement................................... 14
Spanberger, Hon. Abigail Davis, a Representative in Congress from
Virginia, opening statement.................................... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 3
Witnesses
Norton, Kevin D., Acting Chief, Natural Resources Conservation
Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C....... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Submitted questions.......................................... 57
Palmer, Tim, President, National Association of Conservation
Districts, Truro, IA........................................... 20
Prepared statement........................................... 22
Patterson, Steve, Senior Vice President, Marketing,
Communications, and Government Affairs, Southern States
Cooperative, Henrico, VA....................................... 25
Prepared statement........................................... 27
Waldrop, Ph.D., Karen A., Chief Conservation Officer, Ducks
Unlimited, Memphis, TN......................................... 29
Prepared statement........................................... 31
Coppess, J.D., Jonathan W., Assistant Professor of Law and
Policy, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics,
University of Illinois, Urbana, IL............................. 34
Prepared statement........................................... 37
Submitted questions.......................................... 73
CHALLENGES AND SUCCESSES OF CONSERVATION PROGRAMS IN 2020
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THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2020
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry,
Committee on Agriculture,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 10:01 a.m., in
the Capitol Visitor Center Auditorium, Room CVC-200, Hon.
Abigail Davis Spanberger [Chair of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Members present: Representatives Spanberger, Pingree, Axne,
Peterson (ex officio), LaMalfa, Allen, and Balderson.
Staff present: Prescott Martin III, Felix Muniz, Jr., Josh
Maxwell, Ricki Schroeder, Patricia Straughn, John Konya, Dana
Sandman, and Justina Graff.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. ABIGAIL DAVIS SPANBERGER, A
REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM VIRGINIA
The Chair. This hearing of the Subcommittee on Conservation
and Forestry entitled, Challenges and Successes of Conservation
Programs in 2020, will come to order. Welcome, and thank you
for joining today's hearing with Mr. Kevin Norton, Acting Chief
of the Natural Resources Conservation Service; Mr. Tim Palmer,
President of the National Association of Conservation
Districts; Mr. Steve Patterson, Senior Vice President of
Corporate Marketing, Communications, and Government Affairs for
Southern States Cooperative; Dr. Karen Waldrop, Chief
Conservation Officer for Ducks Unlimited; and Mr. Jonathan
Coppess, Assistant Professor at the Department of Agricultural
and Consumer Economics at the University of Illinois. After
brief remarks, the hearing will begin and will be open to
questions. Members will be recognized in order of seniority,
alternating between Majority and Minority Members. When you are
recognized, you will be asked to unmute your microphone, and
you will have 5 minutes to ask your questions or make a
comment. In order to get to as many questions as possible, the
timer will stay consistently visible on your screen.
Good morning, and welcome to today's hearing on the
challenges and successes of conservation programs in 2020. I
hesitate to say this, but in these unprecedented times, it goes
without saying that the way NRCS operates and serves
stakeholders and landowners across the country looks very
different these days. And perhaps more importantly, the
realities facing farmers and producers as a result of the
COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic downturn are about as
different today as one could imagine, compared to when the 2018
Farm Bill was passed.
We are here today to examine the ways NRCS is adjusting to
the new normal of serving customers and administering programs
amid the pandemic. How producers and farmers are utilizing
conservation during these duel crises, what challenges NRCS is
experiencing, what successes the agency has had that we can
build upon, and what role conservation could play in the
upcoming, hopefully, economic recovery, and whether there are
additional flexibilities that farmers and producers may need
within the existing conservation programs to ensure that they
are able to continue the important work of conservation during
these uncertain times.
Since the 1930s, NRCS has worked to provide producers with
technical support and financial assistance to achieve the
benefits of a healthy and productive landscape. In 2019 alone,
NRCS and its partners worked with more than 500,000 producers
on over 43 million acres to build conservation plans and
implement practices that increase production, reduce input
costs, conserve natural resources, and protect wildlife
habitat. Together, these actions not only have a positive
impact on farms, but also on their neighbors, their watersheds,
and the entire U.S. population.
In my home State of Virginia, NRCS works with 47 Soil and
Water Conservation Districts and partners at the state and
local levels to make sure Virginia's farmers and landowners
have the assistance and resources they need to protect soil and
water quality across our Commonwealth. Yet in central Virginia
and across the country, the process of administering and
delivering successful and meaningful conservation programs has
grown increasingly complex over the years. For one, the forces
acting on our soil and water and air are themselves becoming
more extreme, and we see more frequent and intense impacts as a
result of climate change, frequent storms, flooding across the
Midwest, hurricanes in the Southeast, historic wildfires in
West, and adding to this complex environment is the COVID-19
public health crisis. In addition to its human toll, it has
rippled through the agricultural sector as well.
For these reasons, it is imperative that we take a hard
look at the way we deliver our conservation programs so that we
can make sure we are able to accomplish their important goals
in light of the challenges that exist. We know that NRCS
programs not only help producers adapt to climactic conditions,
to protect food and fiber production, but can even help reverse
the effects of climate change. We also know that conservation
programs can assist communities in recovering from the economic
shocks like the ones presented by COVID-19 by generating
significant economic activity and supporting a variety of jobs
in rural communities.
It is worth noting that conservation spending, including
implementation of practices, direct payments to farmers,
administrative costs, results in an injection of dollars into
local economies. For example, from 2014 to 2017, $2.6 billion
was invested in the Conservation Technical Assistance Program.
This investment generated an average of $4 billion in economic
activity and supported 12,100 jobs each year.
Throughout this hearing, I am eager to hear from our
experts on conservation program delivery, especially in light
of this rapidly evolving landscape. I am also interested in
hearing how conservation can contribute to the well-being of
farm operations and aid in COVID recovery. I also specifically
would love to hear from our witnesses, their perspectives on
the ability of NRCS field staff to service producers as the
environmental landscape evolves, including updated staffing
needs of the Department, efforts to attract qualified staff,
and what personnel resources are required to optimize the
ability of these critical programs to accomplish their next
goals.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Spanberger follows:]
Prepared Statement of Hon. Abigail Davis Spanberger, a Representative
in Congress from Virginia
Good morning and welcome to today's hearing on the Challenges and
Successes of Conservation Programs in 2020.
I hesitate to say, ``in these unprecedented times,'' but it goes
without saying that the ways NRCS operates and serves stakeholders and
landowners across the country look different these days. Perhaps more
importantly, the realities facing farmers and producers as a result of
the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent economic downturn are about as
different today as one could imagine as compared to when the 2018 Farm
Bill was passed. We're here today to examine the ways NRCS is adjusting
to the new normal of serving customers and administering programs amid
the pandemic, how producers and farmers are utilizing conservation
during these dual crises, what challenges NRCS is experiencing, what
successes the agency has had that we can build upon, what role
conservation could play in the coming economic recovery, and whether
there are additional flexibilities that farmers and producers may need
within existing conservation programs to ensure that they are able to
continue the important work of conservation during these uncertain
times.
Since the 1930s, NRCS has worked to provide producers with
technical support and financial assistance to achieve the benefits of a
healthy and productive landscape. In 2019 alone, NRCS and its partners
worked with more than 500,000 producers on over 43 million acres to
build conservation plans and implement practices that increase
production, reduce input costs, conserve natural resources, and protect
wildlife habitat. Together these actions not only have a positive
impact on farms, but also on their neighbors, their watersheds, and the
entire U.S. population.
In my home state of Virginia, NRCS works with 47 Soil and Water
Conservation Districts and partners at the state and local levels to
make sure Virginia's farmers and landowners have the assistance and
resources they need to protect soil and water quality across our state.
Yet, in central Virginia and across the country, the process of
administering and delivering successful and meaningful conservation
programs has grown increasingly complex over the years. For one, the
forces acting on our soil and water and air are themselves becoming
more extreme. We are seeing more frequent and intense impacts as a
result of climate change--including frequent storms and flooding across
the Midwest, hurricanes in the Southeast, and historic wildfires in the
West. Adding to this complex environment is the COVID-19 public health
crisis which, in addition to its human toll, has rippled throughout the
agricultural sector as well.
For these reasons, it's imperative that we take a hard look at the
ways we deliver our conservation programs, so that we can make sure
we're still able to accomplish their important goals in light of the
challenges that exist. We know that NRCS programs not only help
producers adapt to climatic conditions to protect food and fiber
production but can even help reverse the effects of climate change. We
also know that conservation programs can assist communities in
recovering from economic shocks like the one presented by COVID-19 by
generating significant economic activity and supporting a variety of
jobs in rural communities. It's worth noting that conservation
spending, including implementation of practices, direct payments to
farmers, and administrative costs, results in an injection of dollars
into local economies. For example, from 2014 to 2017, $2.6 billion was
invested in the Conservation Technical Assistance Program. This
investment generated an average of $4 billion in economic activity and
supported 12,100 jobs each year.
Throughout this hearing today, I am eager to hear from our experts
on conservation program delivery especially in light of this rapidly
evolving landscape. I am also interested in hearing how conservation
can contribute to the well-being of farm operations and aid in the
COVID recovery.
I also specifically want to hear our witness' perspectives on the
ability of NRCS field staff to service producers as the environmental
landscape evolves, including updated staffing needs of the Department,
efforts to attract qualified staff, and what personnel resources are
required to optimize the ability of these critical programs to
accomplish their important goals.
With that, I look to the Ranking Member, Mr. LaMalfa of California,
for his comments.
The Chair. With that, I look to the Ranking Member, Mr.
LaMalfa of California, for his comments.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DOUG LaMALFA, A REPRESENTATIVE IN
CONGRESS FROM CALIFORNIA
Mr. LaMalfa. Good morning, and thank you, Chair Spanberger,
for holding today's hearing to review the successes and
challenges of the conservation programs in 2020.
Of course, in January of this year, our Subcommittee heard
from NRCS Chief Lohr and FSA Administrator Fordyce regarding
the implementation of the conservation programs included in the
2018 Farm Bill. Since that time, our country has been through--
and I don't have to tell you here today--an extended period
with the COVID situation. While much was shut down, of course,
farmers and ranchers continued to make sure that Americans
still had access to the safest, most abundant, and most
affordable food supply in the world. The season does not wait
for the virus. You have to get it done.
NRCS field offices also continue to work to serve their
customers. Although there are some restrictions, NRCS employees
have adapted and continued to administer these critical
conservation programs.
Almost 2 years ago, Congress passed the 2018 Farm Bill that
protected mandatory funding in the conservation title. It
increased funding for EQIP, which is known as the Environmental
Quality Incentives Program, and ACEP, the Agriculture
Conservation Easement Program, and provided a separate funding
allocation for RCPP, the Regional Conservation Partnership
Program. The 2014 Farm Bill made significant reforms like
consolidating over 20 conservation programs into 13. The 2018
Farm Bill built upon these successes by streamlining program
administration to provide for better delivery.
These changes were designed to improve access to
conservation programs all across the country, and I am proud of
the results so far we have seen, specifically in my home State
of California. For example, the California Rice Commission was
recently awarded nearly $5.5 million in RCPP funding to
maximize water bird habitat on rice lands in California.
So, I would like to congratulate Chief Kevin Norton on his
role as Acting Chief of Natural Resources Conservation Service.
I welcome him here today. Of course, he has a long history of
service at NRCS, including as Louisiana State Conservationist,
as a detailee to the Senate and House Agriculture Committees
during the 2014 and 2018 Farm Bill, and most recently as
Associate Chief of NRCS. Thanks for being here, sir.
I also would like to thank our second panel of witnesses as
they come up a bit later for being here. With the input and
expertise of stakeholders like you, we have been able to
improve conservation programs over the years so that they work
better for our farmers and ranchers. I look forward to a
productive discussion with both panels of witnesses to hear
about their successes and challenges of the programs in 2020. I
thank Chair Spanberger, and I will yield back.
The Chair. The Chair would request that other Members
submit their opening statements for the record so witnesses may
begin their testimony and to ensure that there is ample time
for questions.
I would like to begin by first welcoming our first witness.
Thank you for being here today, Chief Norton.
Mr. Kevin Norton serves as Acting Chief for NRCS. He began
his career with NRCS in 1981 as a ranger conservationist in
Oklahoma, and has since served in a number of other roles
within the agency, including as the NRCS State Conservationist
for Louisiana, and most recently as the NRCS Associate Chief.
We will now proceed to hearing your testimony. I thank you
for being here today, sir. You will have 5 minutes, and when 1
minute is left, the light will turn yellow, signaling that your
time is close to expiring.
Mr. Norton, please begin when you are ready.
STATEMENT OF KEVIN D. NORTON, ACTING CHIEF, NATURAL RESOURCES
CONSERVATION SERVICE, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Norton. Thank you, and good morning, Chair Spanberger,
Ranking Member LaMalfa, Chairman Peterson, and Members of the
Subcommittee that are joining us via the teleconferencing
functionalities. Thank you for this opportunity. It is really a
privilege to be before you today to discuss the challenges and
successes of the Natural Resources Conservation Service and the
delivery of our programs this past year.
As you have said, it has been an unprecedented year with
external influences applying unusual pressures on our staff,
adjusting to some degree, and then the way we have operated at
the field level. Our discussion today will highlight the
resiliency and dedication of the NRCS team and our partners as
we ensure service delivery to our customers.
But, I want to start first by thanking and expressing a
great appreciation to the farmers, ranchers, and foresters
throughout this country who adopt voluntary conservation, a lot
of times without cost-share or with cost-share financial
assistance that you all provide to us through the farm bill, as
they work to meet their needs and the needs of agriculture,
forestry, and natural resources and provide a multitude of
services to our great nation. As you said, Mr. LaMalfa,
agriculture never stopped. We had to be there for them.
It is noteworthy during this challenging year that we did
complete 115,000 conservation plans with producers. We
installed conservation measures on over 1 million acres of
conservation practices, and this would not have happened
without the dedicated staff, the work of our partners coming
together and contributing to the collective efforts to service
our customers and the natural resources.
In identifying some challenges, I will share a few things
with you. The pandemic obviously was the most important
challenge impacting our agency today. However, at no time did
the NRCS cease operations at any location in the United States.
We were available by varying means to continue the field work.
We abided by the protocols of social distancing and those kinds
of things, and we were able to continue delivering the field
work, applying the conservation measures on the field, and then
also working to put that funding that you all provided to us
into contracts via some very innovative-type things. And we
have done that through opening our services by phone,
connecting folks from the office call to their home phone,
email, fax, and more importantly, bringing web services
available for them to access our customers. We have extended
the field office, our servicing points, to our employees' homes
and into the homes of our customers, and with great success.
By the time the year is--and I will tell you, when this all
started, we really did have some concerns about our ability to
continue to deliver these programs with all of the things that
were happening, and the varying degree of local regulation,
local influences on how we could move about and do things. The
Department gave us latitude to still get into the field, to be
there, and to be available, and by the time we closed out the
year yesterday, we saw very little impact on the work that we
needed to do throughout the year. So, it was quite a success.
As you indicated, we talked a little bit at the last
hearing, Chief Lohr talked about our staffing. Our collective
efforts of priority hiring, using direct hire authority, it had
a positive impact. I am pleased to report today while we are
not yet at the goal that we had set for ourselves of 10,445
positions by mid-year, we have had 2,900 new people join our
agency. We have had attrition through separation, retirements,
and those kinds of things, but we are very close to 9,400
people, and that is at least 700 more than any time, any number
that we have had in the past 2 years. We are on a positive
trajectory. We are making inroads. We are beginning to see the
staffing improve. The focus of all of these efforts are the
field servicing points, those state offices down to the field
offices where we interact and connect with our customers.
Throughout this year, there have been many challenges, but
there have been many successes. We talk about the impacts on
the livestock industry with the pandemic and production supply
problems. We have created a new CART system for our unified
streamlined application evaluation process, and many
achievements about conservation implementation where we are on
pace with all the work that we had this last year.
I will close with my comments and say when I reflect back
on 2020 and the challenges that were laid out before us, it is
only because of the resiliency of the entire NRCS team from the
field level through to our national office, the adjustments
that we made in being more flexible about our service and that
NRCS and our partners that are helping us service the
customers--that we have been able to achieve the
accomplishments that we had this past year. We responded with
all of this going on. We continued our response to the
wildfires, the hurricanes, and the floods, the major impacts
that happened. That work will continue. We don't solve those
issues and address them overnight. We are still gathering
information. We have completed delivery of our conservation
programs, numerous initiatives. We established and stood up the
Office of Urban Agriculture that was provided instruction in
the farm bill, and we are continuing to lean forward in
addressing emerging natural resource issues and needs.
With that, I want to thank you for your continued support,
your confidence, the authorities that you have given us through
the farm bill and the financial assistance programs to continue
to work with customers and address the natural resource issues
of our nation.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Norton follows:]
Prepared Statement of Kevin D. Norton, Acting Chief, Natural Resources
Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Washington, D.C.
Introduction
Chair Spanberger, Ranking Member LaMalfa, and Members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today
to discuss the challenges and successes of the Natural Resources
Conservation Service (NRCS) conservation programs. This has been an
unprecedented year with external influences applying unusual pressures
on our staffs and adjusting, to some degree, the way we operate at the
field level. The information I will share with you today will show the
resiliency and dedication of the entire NRCS team, from field
technicians and District Conservationists all the way through our state
and national leadership teams, to ensure services are delivered to our
customers. I appreciate the ongoing support and leadership this
Subcommittee has provided for voluntary, private lands conservation and
the improvement of our soil, water, and other invaluable natural
resources as embodied in the 2018 Farm Bill and within our other
authorities.
COVID-19 did have an impact on our operations. Our staffing levels
have been impacted due to diminished ability to on-board employees and
difficulty in completing relocations. We are working with the Farm
Production and Conservation (FPAC) Business Center's hiring team and
continue making strides to bring people on board. For example, the FPAC
Business Center addressed issues we were having with fingerprinting
requirements. They made adjustments that resulted in improved on-
boarding timeframes. Even with these difficulties, our efforts are
having a positive impact. In the fourth quarter of FY 2020, we brought
on board 639 employees. The total of new FY 2020 on-boarded employees
to fill vacancies is 2,943, which is higher than those on-boarded to
fill vacancies in FY 2019 by 1,331. This includes both permanent and
nonpermanent on-board employees. This demonstrates that NRCS has
overcome the impediments to on-boarding created by COVID-19.
We also had to rethink our methods for training our staff and
partners who help us deliver our programs. We have evaluated our
training needs and identified those that can be offered virtually and
those that must remain in-person trainings. Some of the in-person
trainings had to be postponed until sometime in FY 2021.
Although we are at varying phases of reopening, our field staff
have continued servicing our customers. From the early stages of the
pandemic, we instructed staff to continue servicing producers in the
field while following social distancing requirements. Consequently,
programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program and the
Conservation Stewardship Program have seen little impact. A few
challenges we experienced included:
1. Some impact in our easement programs due to courthouse closings
impeding records search requirements.
2. A delay in installing Soil Climate Analysis Network stations for
American Indian Tribes due to travel restrictions on
reservation lands. We'll be working with Tribes to get
these installed as soon as possible.
3. Collecting field data needed for our National Resources
Inventory. COVID-19 has made collecting field data
problematic. But we are working through these challenges to
maintain the accuracy and consistency of the data.
NRCS does not have specific COVID authority, but we did see a need
and moved to help producers who were adversely impacted by market chain
disruptions and closed outlets. NRCS worked with the USDA-Animal and
Plant Health Inspection Service researchers to offer assistance to
impacted producers. We reached out to state producer organizations,
national associations, and state agencies in calibrating our response
to the needs of producers. For dairies who dumped excess milk, NRCS
developed excess milk disposal guidance that outlined various
approaches on how to safely dispose of milk. For livestock producers
who had to depopulate inventory, NRCS developed guidance for disposal
and offered assistance through the Environmental Quality Incentives
Program (EQIP). Additionally, NRCS developed guidance for producers who
were changing from a production diet to a maintenance diet. Through
EQIP, over $500,000 were obligated in eight states to help producers
deal with facility closure impacts on their operations.
Though we had challenges, when I reflect back on FY 2020 I see
significant results. The 2018 Farm Bill included numerous references
for agency outcomes reporting related to our conservation programs and
to streamlining programs. In response, NRCS embarked on a historic
change to amalgamate numerous business practices into one program-
neutral conservation planning process through an information technology
application known as Conservation Assessment and Ranking Tool (CART).
CART established a common quantitative framework for all of
conservation planning and program delivery activities. This IT
application was deployed in FY 2020 and will revolutionize the way NRCS
adopts and deploys technology to its 2,400+ field offices and enhance
our ability to report our outcomes.
We also, in 2018, established an Outcomes Team that is working
closely with our Conservation Effects Assessment Project modelers and
other staff to develop outcomes related materials to be shared in an
interactive environment with the public. This year, we instituted a
monthly webinar series that has shared outcomes information on various
topics, including results from various Working Lands for Wildlife
initiatives, measuring and understanding the effects of conservation
within watersheds, results from tillage management and structural
conservation practices effects and trends, and data available in the
Natural Resources Inventory. The meetings are well attended and will be
continuing throughout the year.
You also asked that we provide more useful data to the public that
resulted from various Conservation Innovation Grants (CIGs) that were
awarded either nationally or at the state level. Work on this database
is on-going and we anticipate releasing information later in FY 2021.
Another significant achievement was the update of our conservation
practice standards. We evaluated and updated our conservation practice
standards within 2 years of farm bill enactment. These reviews
incorporated public feedback along the entire process, including
initial feedback on practices needing to be updated followed by
specific feedback requests for each specific practice, and, once
updates were incorporated, the public had an opportunity to provide
feedback on the accepted updates. We released 47 conservation practice
standard updates; 25 standards were updated and are being prepared for
release; 23 standards have been reviewed and are ready for public
review with a Federal Register posting; and 14 are still under internal
review.
Further, we established the Office of Urban Agriculture and
Innovative Production through collaboration with all USDA agencies
whose missions included urban agriculture. Through this office we
entered into grant agreements with those seeking to improve
opportunities for urban agriculturalists. Interest was tremendous.
Under the farm bill authorities, we received more than 500 proposals
for the $4 million funding provided for this purpose. Additionally, we
are working with the Farm Service Agency to initiate the process of
establishing five of the required ten pilot urban county committees;
and are working through the process to establish the Secretary's Urban
Agriculture Advisory Committee.
Opportunities continue to grow with the Joint Chiefs' Restoration
Initiative where we are working in concert with the USDA Forest Service
(USFS) to address resource concerns where private lands join National
Forest System lands. This initiative exemplifies the USDA shared
stewardship model of bringing together Federal, state, and local
governments with Tribes, community groups, and private landowners to
achieve landscape-scale conservation outcomes across different land
ownerships. Over the last 7 years, USDA (NRCS and USFS) has invested
more than $225 million in 85 projects across 40 states and Puerto Rico.
A record 34 proposals were submitted in FY 2020. Community interest has
also expanded as people become more aware of this collaborative means
to fund conservation work addressing wildfire risk reduction, water
quality and supply protection, and at-risk wildlife habitat
improvements.
Another highlight is our strategic effort to increase the adoption
of soil health management systems across the landscape. Every state now
has a Soil Health Strategy focused on the goal of getting soil health
management systems implemented. national and state strategic efforts
include enhanced outreach and training across the agriculture community
and within our staffs so they can provide better assistance to our
customers. The agency launched a soil health management systems Key
Performance Indicator in 2020 that will track cropland with multiple
conservation practices installed representing a soil health management
system. In FY 2019, a baseline of 209,000 acres was established.
We responded to emergencies, including wildfire, hurricane, and
flooding disasters. Our efforts in this area seem to be growing. In FY
2020, we provided $12 million for flooding in Michigan and $7 million
for tropical storm Cristobal. We are currently evaluating funding needs
for other natural disasters. For Hurricane Isaias, we are evaluating
damages in the southeastern states to determine if there is a need for
Emergency Watershed Protection (EWP) Program-Recovery disaster
assistance. For Hurricane Laura, we received an EWP assistance request
from the Orange County, Texas, Drainage District and anticipate another
request will come from Shelby County. For western wildfires, NRCS
offices throughout the region are working with local communities to
assess damages as conditions allow. We are also monitoring Hurricane
Sally in the Gulf Coast to determine whether any assistance is needed
for impacted states.
Other accomplishments in FY 2020 include:
Interim Final Rules for all major farm bill programs were
published, public comments were evaluated, and final rules for
each program have been developed and are in various stages of
clearance;
We provided transparency and more clarity to the
conservation compliance provisions with our recently published
final rule following public comment evaluation on the interim
final rule that was published in December of 2018;
Our Plant Materials Centers are developing vegetative
solutions to protect coastal and estuarine areas that are
feeling the effects of rising sea levels and increased storm
intensity;
We have offered funding opportunities in the amount of $345
million for those who want to partner with us to address
natural resource concerns through the Regional Conservation
Partnership Program (RCPP), as well as funding opportunities
for feral swine eradication projects ($11.9 million), CIGs ($37
million awarded in FY 2020 and $40 million subsequently
announced as available for projects to be selected in FY 2021,
both on-farm and classic), Wetland Mitigation Banking Program
($5 million), as well as offering opportunities through the
Working Lands for Wildlife Initiatives[;]
Entered into agreements with other Federal Agencies where it
benefitted the agriculture community and our other customers,
including with the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers[; and]
NRCS has addressed water quality throughout the history of
the agency, but the 2018 Farm Bill made source water protection
and collaboration with partners in the drinking water sector an
explicit priority of NRCS conservation programs. NRCS State
Conservationists, in collaboration with partners, have
identified high priority areas for source water protection in
each state, and at least 10% of most farm bill conservation
program funding is dedicated to protecting source water.
Although we do not yet have final FY 2020 enrollment information,
we have provided preliminary information so you can see the volume of
work our staff completed during this complicated year:
Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP): Over 30,000
contracts providing nearly $1.1 billion on 9.6 million acres.
Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP): In addition to the new
enrollments described below, NRCS also renewed almost 1,000 contracts
on 2.5 million acres.
CSP Classic: Over 4,248 contracts providing over $260 million
on 5.3 million acres
CSP Grassland Conservation Initiative: more than 5,000
contracts on nearly 400,000 acres providing $35 million.
Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP): More than 1,300
contracts on 430,000 acres.
An additional highlight for FY 2020 the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service decided not to list:
the bi-state population of greater sage-grouse, (CA and NV)
in part due to over 17,000 acres conserved through NRCS
programs; and
the arctic grayling Upper Missouri River population (MT and
WY). Critical conservation measures implemented by partners,
including NRCS clients, addressed threats and increased the
number of breeding fish.
Other notable results of conservation programs include delistings
of stream segments, which have been associated with National Water
Quality Initiatives watersheds, as reported by the EPA this year. These
include Bayou Grand Marais in Louisiana (total dissolved solids) and
Rio Grande de Anasco (dissolved oxygen and turbidity) in Puerto Rico.
Though we made significant accomplishments in FY 2020, including
CART described above which will improve the agency's ability to assess
performance and report outcomes, there is more to be done. NRCS will
soon be rolling out:
the opportunity for producers to enter into incentive
contracts under EQIP[;]
the soil remediation provision in the farm bill will begin
implementation in October 2020;
the Comprehensive Conservation Plans in the CSP as well as
the Conservation Planning Assessment in EQIP; and
developing capability for applications and contracts with
individual producers through RCPP.
Conclusion
I am excited about the authorities, responsibilities, and
opportunities you provided NRCS for delivering private lands
conservation programs to the farms, ranches and forestland of our great
country. We embrace the work with passion and will continue striving to
deliver these programs to the benefit of our nation's natural
resources. I thank you for letting me share our progress and successes
with assisting private landowners, producers, and others with
implementing the agencies program authorities.
The Chair. Thank you very much for your testimony, Chief
Lohr--excuse me, Chief Norton. Old habits die hard. I
apologize.
At this time, Members will be recognized for questions in
order of seniority, alternating between Majority and Minority
Members. You will be recognized for 5 minutes each in order to
allow us to get to as many questions as possible. Please keep
your microphones muted until you are recognized in order to
minimize background noise. When 1 minute is left, the light
will turn yellow, signaling time is close to expiring.
I will first recognize myself for 5 minutes.
Chief Norton, I want to first congratulate and thank you
for all of the work that your agency has done. Those staffing
numbers, I know, in prior months, on this Committee, we had
concerns about staffing levels within NRCS, and certainly,
hiring during a global pandemic is an impressive feat. I am
pleased to hear that you all are on a positive trajectory.
I would like to get the conversation started within a focus
of conservation more broadly. It is essential to helping
farmers build resiliency, boost their bottom line, improve
production, stimulate local economies. We know these things to
be true, but certainly during the COVID-19 crisis, farmers are
facing such significant challenges.
What do you see the role for conservation programs as part
of how farmers can respond to and recover from the COVID-19
crisis? Are there any particular opportunities that
conservation programs could present as farmers are continuing
to plan for the future amid our current reality?
Mr. Norton. Thank you for that question.
I really believe and think that we have demonstrated that
we will be able to continue delivery of all of our conservation
portfolio even through things like that. We have no idea, as we
look across the country, of when all of our offices will be
back to full open status. But I see the needs of those
producers out there have not changed. They are making
applications for the program. It is about them achieving
resource sustainability, doing adjustments to their operation,
and us being able to continue to do that, because that is their
livelihood. In many cases, it is their generational farm. And I
see not a lot of difference, from our perspective, other than
the way we service people. And it has changed. We were very
much a face-to-face engaging agency, and it is remarkable how
successful we have been in using the technologies around us to
engage with those producers so that they can have those
contracts, they can get those conservation plans, and they can
get the conservation work implemented.
I see continuing this path and continuing to innovate
around the way we engage and have opportunities for them, but
we want to be there for them for the conservation work they
need to do on their operations.
The Chair. And you talked about the adjustments that NRCS
has made, and certainly the adjustments that our producers are
making. Are there additional flexibilities that we, Members of
Congress on this Subcommittee, flexibilities that we should
consider for conservation programs that would help maintain
farmer engagement and help reduce uncertainty during this
challenging time?
Mr. Norton. We believe that, at this point, in this last
farm bill, you provided us a tremendous amount of flexibility.
We need to continue that. The idea that conservation--well,
just looking at the Chair and the Ranking Member, the
conservation needs of your states couldn't be any different.
Water quality is water quality, but how you deal with that in
Virginia versus California, tremendously different. Having
those flexibilities so that we can shape that conservation
program delivery to what is needed is the thing that we need to
continue. We do not need to be unduly influenced of setting
priorities at one level that doesn't really work across the
landscape. And the authorities that you have given us, the
flexibility allows us with our State Conservationists and the
state technical committee, the partners there within the state,
to really address those conservation issues as they reside
locally within that state.
I think it is a continuation of that locally-led effort
that is local even at the county level, but at the state level,
gives us the flexibility to deliver the programs that best
address the issues and the needs there in the state.
The Chair. Well, I thank you for the kind words about the
2018 Farm Bill, and I give full credit to my colleagues up
here, because that predates me. Thank you to the Chairman,
Ranking Member Conaway, and Ranking Member LaMalfa for your
good work on that.
To just close out in the last remaining seconds that I
have, I was wondering if you could just speak to very, very
broadly, if you were making a pitch to some of our colleagues
who do not serve on the Agriculture Committee who may not have
exposure to these programs about what they could mean in
agricultural communities across the country as we are
rebuilding our economy out of COVID, how do you see these
programs really being part of that continued economic
engagement and part of the hard work of recovering our economy?
Mr. Norton. Yes. We are a nation that produces. We feed our
people. We feed the world. And we do it in a very sustainable
fashion. I grew up in Oklahoma. I grew up with stories of the
Dust Bowl, worst environmental catastrophe we ever had. We are
producing agriculture efficiently, effectively, and with good
environmental practices, stewardship. And those things
continue. It keeps moving, as has been discussed earlier in
your statements. Things move. We need to help. We need to be
there with these programs, these dollars, to help our
conservation, our farmers, our ranchers, our forestland owners,
those people on the ground. We need to help them move
conservation and adapt and adjust, because what we do is about
environmental sustainability, economic sustainability, but
sustainability of society. And we have to help them move, and
we have to help them continue to be productive because the
benefits to them applying proper conservation extends way
beyond the farm. It expands to the watershed that they are
operating in, the community that they live in, as you shared
about the rolling out of the money and how it feeds across. But
it also is the health and the well-being of our nation. The
security of our nation is vested in the conservation work we
do. We cannot feed this world on depleted natural resources,
and we have a solid resource base. We need to continue to
sustain that and work in partnership with the people on the
ground that have stewardship of those resources to be
successful.
The Chair. Thank you very much.
I now recognize the gentleman from California for 5
minutes.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you.
We have heard from the Secretary numerous times that
improving and having great customer service is a priority for
the Department, and so we are wondering in your department how
you have a workforce analysis that was done for NRCS, and the
technical capacity is something that is being looked at. How is
that going versus the capacity versus the need, going forward?
And then, do you have the people you need to deliver these
conservation programs at the same time that you are working on
the technical capacity that agriculture needs these days?
Mr. Norton. That is a very good question.
As we shared, and as you all discussed in the last hearing,
we are not at a staffing level that we need to be by any of
those tools that we are using, the optimal productive office
and the cycle time study. We do have the authority and the
opportunity to grow to 11,011 people. Whether that is enough
when we get there--we need to get there first. We know we are
understaffed, but we are gaining staff.
Mr. LaMalfa. Eleven thousand?
Mr. Norton. Eleven thousand eleven, yes.
Mr. LaMalfa. Precisely 11,011.
Mr. Norton. Well, that is what the models kick out, so we
just go with it.
Mr. LaMalfa. Well, it is precise.
Mr. Norton. But we are on our trajectory to get there.
Actually, COVID probably slowed us down.
Mr. LaMalfa. No doubt.
Mr. Norton. The challenge of getting people hired; but sir,
I think we are on the right path. We have made gains this year.
We have improvement we can still do that we are getting a lot
of support from the Farm Production and Conservation Business
Center.
You all have given us a lot of resources with the farm
bill, both financial and technical assistance resources. The
technical assistance is what we staff with, what we work with
partners to get the delivery out on to the ground. We are
investing those strategically and as efficiently as possible
while we are still trying to get the financial assistance
dollars out.
Right now, I think we are on our way, yes, sir.
Mr. LaMalfa. Yes. Well, you are having successes out there,
even with the difficulty of what we are going through this
year.
When I talked with the California Rice people here and
ongoing, and they want me to let you know, as I am, that they
are very thankful for the help with NRCS for funding, et
cetera, for the salmon rearing project they have going on a
couple hundred acres of riceland adjacent to the Sacramento
River. This is where small salmon are introduced into the area
and feed up on all those great nutrients that are in the rice
fields, and you get nice big fat salmon coming out of there and
helping to get the population up in the Sacramento River
system, like everybody wants to. So, that has been a very
exciting partnership and avenue to see how that will go. They
will be looking for expansion of that and I think there are
more growers ready to line up and be part of that. So, that is
a big thumbs up on that.
I am going to wear our Chair out on this forestry question
here. Obviously it is a huge issue in the West, and in
California, there are more fires than you can count right now
in my home state, and even in my district. What is NRCS's work
to help with landowners reduce fire risk? Again, we are having
difficulty with forester capacity, boots-on-the-ground, so to
speak, and some states have fewer than others. What can NRCS do
to help address this issue, increasing the latitude a little
bit of your scope there to be helpful in that department, since
it really does seem to be an emergency? And then have that
affect possible funding for landowners to put the practices in
place that would help for reducing wildfire risk on their lands
and in maybe surrounding government lands, too?
Mr. Norton. Thank you. Again, back to the farm bill and our
authorities, beginning in 2014, we began to get more
flexibility when working on forestland. A lot of the
limitations were taken off. We do work with private forestland.
That is where we are focused, all of our work on private
forestland. We have a lot more flexibility in working with
those folks that have forestland.
Mr. LaMalfa. Are there any barriers we need to help you
with, that you know of? Anything law-wise or rule-wise that is
getting in the way from going farther?
Mr. Norton. I think we are in a good place. It is about
local priorities. We are working with the Forest Service on
this fire shed, wildfire risk reduction coming into partnership
with them. We saw a success in one of the fires a couple of
years ago, 2018, where they used the properties that we had
actually done, the forest stewardship on. That was a place that
they went to put the preventive measures to stop the fire from
spreading.
We have plenty of authority. It certainly is a matter of
locally the priorities around funding and whether we are
working on forestland, rice production, those kinds of things,
but we have a lot of tools to work with those folks and
continue to work on forest stewardship level, forest health
activities that would create the opportunity for less, the
fires are going to happen whenever the conditions are right,
but have a better chance of addressing the fire because you are
working with a healthy forest and a diverse vegetation.
Mr. LaMalfa. It comes back to do you have the personnel and
the funding to get after all these, right?
Mr. Norton. Yes, sir, and to your point, in this whole
effort of hiring, we are looking at picking up additional
forestry staff for our people. That is, again, about the State
Conservationists making a decision on what they need. But we
engage directly with state and private forestry interests for
technical service assistance and have agreements that are
complementing our service and filling gaps where we are absent.
We do have other avenues that we work with other partners to
get forestry assistance where we don't have the trained staff.
Mr. LaMalfa. Great. Thank you, Chief Norton.
I better yield back. Thank you, ma'am.
The Chair. I now recognize the Chairman of the full
Agriculture Committee, Chairman Peterson, for 5 minutes.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. COLLIN C. PETERSON, A REPRESENTATIVE
IN CONGRESS FROM MINNESOTA
Mr. Peterson. I thank the gentlelady. I will be brief, and
I am going to have to bug out because I have other commitments
I have to take care of.
I don't know. I haven't really thought this through, but
the last month or so, I have been confronted by people that
have complained that they are having difficulty getting into
the CSP program. Some complaints about the nature of the
program not fitting their situation. And also, it seems like
some people are saying that there are not resources to do or
for them to be able to--they won't even take their application,
it sounded like. So, is that going on? This is kind of
anecdotal, but I mean, are you hearing those kinds of things,
and is it something that is on your radar screen and you are
doing anything about?
Mr. Norton. Sir, I can't speak specifically to that, but I
can speak to one thing you said. If we have offices not taking
an application, I need to know where they are at and who is not
doing it. All of our programs are open to accept applications
on a continuous basis. We do evaluation cycles, so if they are
putting in an application after the evaluation cycle, they will
have to wait until the next time. But we are limited to an
appropriation amount relative to the number of contracts we can
get to. The eligibility criteria did not adjust significantly,
so it may be a factor of demand and just the amount of
resources we have, and that they are----
Mr. Peterson. So, that is kind of a state-by-state thing,
isn't it?
Mr. Norton. Yes.
Mr. Peterson. The state makes priorities. It sounded like
some of these folks were discouraging them from applying
because they didn't think they would be successful, so I don't
know.
Mr. Norton. Just let me know, sir, because we should not--
--
Mr. Peterson. In the future when I hear that, I am going to
pin them down and find out where they applied and what the
situation is.
You revised the CSP two or three times, and the last time,
it was a couple of years ago, you came up with a new process,
as I understand it. And do you think that has improved the
situation since that has been put in place, or do you have any
feedback on that?
Mr. Norton. Yes. We had the conservation measurement tool
that was developed out of the 2008 Farm Bill, then we had the
Conservation Activity Evaluation Tool (CAET) that came out of
the 2014 Farm Bill. Now we have transitioned to the
Conservation Assessment Ranking Tool, CART, that was
demonstrated to you. That has become, in this effort of
streamlining, reducing confusion, not having completely
different approaches when somebody begins to work with us. This
is a streamlined process so that they are all evaluated in a
very common flow, and if CSP is the best place for them, we
take them that way. If it is EQIP, they can go without having
to come in and file a completely different application.
We are doing that, but still the priorities around CSP have
not changed significantly. We are using a different tool, but
the program has taken it to the same, hopefully, end goal that
is authorized. Some of this may be--well, one, again, is back
to our folks discouraging people. We shouldn't be doing that.
We should take the application. We should go in to the CART
tool. We should work with them about their goals, their
objectives, what their issues are, what they plan to do, and
give them honest feedback about where they are at. And then
from that, they can make further decisions about whether they
want to continue to make some adjustments so they are better
eligible for CSP in the future, or whether they want to go to
EQIP for a while and then come back and be very competitive to
CSP.
That is the functionality we have so that we can help
people move forward in the right path. It has been a struggle
for our field offices. It is a big change, but we got there. At
the end of the day, we got it done.
Mr. Peterson. Do you survey people that have been through
the process, producers that have gone in and applied for CSP
and been successful or unsuccessful? Are any of those surveyed?
Is there any feedback given to you?
Mr. Norton. I don't have any right now. We are in the
process of a broader customer service survey effort. It has not
concluded yet. We don't expect a report until November. We are
looking at those kinds of things. We do work through this with
the state technical committee, which is a very broad
representation of organizations. We welcome feedback and
discussion at the state level on those things, but I have no
personal feedback. It is really all anecdotal, just as you
described.
Mr. Peterson. Thank you very much, and I apologize having
to bug out, but I appreciate you being here today.
I yield back.
The Chair. I now recognize the gentleman from Ohio for 5
minutes.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr.
Norton, for being here today, this morning, I should say.
I will just ask one brief question of the Ranking Member as
my big top question about the employee issue. But in your
testimony, you tell us how 2021 will be an improvement compared
to 2020. Have you crafted a plan to start the year strong?
Mr. Norton. I am sorry, could you repeat that?
Mr. Balderson. Have you crafted the year for 2021 strong
and speaking optimistically? I mean, what can you expect to see
this time next year?
Mr. Norton. I believe we have. Certainly, our objective had
been to have everything ready to deploy today. We are still
getting some software developed and things like that, but we
have a strong position to start where our folks can begin to
engage in program delivery earlier than they typically do.
We are going in strong. We believe that all of the things
that we have gone through this year have done nothing but make
us better and stronger as we address 2021, and we don't have as
much learning around our software, our tools, our evaluation
process. The programs are now fairly stable, and we want them
to stay stable through the balance of the farm bill.
Sir, I believe we have not yet got all the people we need
in Ohio or in any other location around the country, but we are
on the upward trajectory with that. I feel pretty good. We are
maintaining a lot of the initiatives that we had in place. I
know for Ohio, Lake Erie is a focal point. We are not pulling
back at all from that effort. Our State Conservationist is
there working with the state and folks, and we are leaning into
that effort.
I feel like we are going in strong. I am pretty optimistic
about this year.
Mr. Balderson. Okay. Well, thank you very much, and Madam
Chair, I yield back my remaining time.
The Chair. Thank you very much.
I now recognize the gentlewoman from Maine for 5 minutes.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Madam Chair. Here is hoping the
sound works today, you can hear me.
The Chair. We can hear you.
Ms. Pingree. Great.
Thank you, Chief Norton, for being with us today, and to
the Committee for holding this hearing.
I want to raise an issue I have heard about in Maine
regarding the RCPP Program. This year's effort supports new
implementation of guidance on forest eligibility that appears
to significantly restrict the type of forestlands that can
qualify for the program. As you can imagine, this has generated
a great deal of confusion and concern among more applicants and
existing RCPP projects, including a project that we have in the
Sebago Lake Watershed in my district, which is the watershed
that provides drinking water for our largest city. I am
concerned that the new restrictions could limit easement
enrollments and restoration activities performed on small,
family-owned forests, which are a substantial share of the
forestland in Maine.
Could you explain to me how the Department is interpreting
non-industrial private forestland?
Mr. Norton. Yes, thank you. There has been a lot of
engagement with us this past 2 weeks around the impacts of the
sentence that we tacked on to the definition of non-industrial
private forestland, more around the commercial side of things.
In the farm bill, you all did very well in defining non-
industrial private forestland, so we have that definition. In
2019, when we did the APF for RCPP, we received feedback that
we needed to be more clear about what was not non-industrial
private forestland, and so that is where we got ourselves a
little jammed up here was trying to really say all of this
forestland is private, what is non-industrial and what is
industrial. And what we have determined that we are going to do
is we are going to pull back that sentence. We will reissue the
APF and we will extend the period of application. At this
point, we are believing November 30th, but that is our plan at
this point. The one thing that we are still struggling with is
the discussion about how do you define industrial private
forestland, because the whole conservation title is really
built about serving family forests, not the vertical corporate
forest interest or their subsidiaries, or these larger 150,
200,000 acre operations that are pulled together by multiple
investments and those kinds of things. We don't really know how
we really need to describe that and make sure that the face of
RCPP are the things that you all have wanted us to do with the
farm bill as we understand them, and we don't move off into
these, $300 million for conservation going off target to the
more non-title XII type farm bill interests.
Any feedback that you all could give us along that line
would be helpful, but we are trying to find a way to be sure
that we stay true to the target audience of the conservation
title, which is America's agriculture producers and smaller
forestland owners around family interests. They can be
corporations. We are not trying to stop any of that, but not do
the larger business interest type things.
Ms. Pingree. Great. That is very helpful, and I certainly
can supply more info about the situation in Maine, because we
are clear about more industrial forest, the paper company-owned
lands. There are a variety of things that are very different
than small family holdings that are managed for commercial use
to keep the forest healthy, but certainly not big multi-
national corporations and finding that balance. We will follow
up and send you a little more information.
I am about out of time, but let me ask you just quickly:
The 2018 Farm Bill had some new On-Farm Conservation Innovation
Trials to test some of the innovative approaches to
conservation on agricultural land, and I am interested in the
part focused specifically on soil health. The agency just
announced a new round of awards earlier this week, and we may
run out of time, but could you give me a little bit of a status
update and how you plan to use the information collected
through that program and for those trials?
Mr. Norton. Yes, $25 million total in that authority of on-
farm trials. We did our first grants last year. The agreements
were done by the end of the year, so this is their first year
of implementation. We have no results yet coming back on any of
those. We just announced our new suite, really, a lot of
interest, good response. We have about $10 million that is
focused on the soil health issue where we--two things: The
first is on-farm demonstration trials is for it to be
demonstration. People in the field can see it. Their neighbors,
they can actually show, tell, and from a farmer's perspective,
rancher's perspective, they can share what they have learned,
their journey through this effort. But then we are gathering
data and we have currently awarded a small contract to build an
interactive website that will actually make this available and
serve up in a very user-friendly fashion for the broader
agriculture population to look at what is going on in all of
our Conservation Innovation Grants and these on-farm trials,
and try to map their paths to success if they want to go down
that journey.
Ms. Pingree. Great. That is wonderful to hear, and I yield
back my time. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair. Thank you.
Before we close out the first panel--again, Chief Norton, I
thank you for being here--I am going to yield an additional 5
minutes to Ranking Member LaMalfa for any additional questions
he may have.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you again. I will try and make it snappy
here.
I just wanted to follow up on EQIP and the success we have
had in that. In the 2018 Farm Bill, it created a new authority
known as Conservation Innovation Incentive Payments. It
simplified part of the streamlining that we have seen that came
with the bill. It is intended to target natural resource
concerns in specific regions of a state. We have had a lot of
inquiries from constituents on how this is important, how they
can provide input on the resource concerns and the practices
that should be applied and would be most helpful. Nobody knows
better than the people that live on and run those lands,
whether it is farming or forests or firefighting, et cetera.
So, on this, can you provide any ideas or guidance on how
to best provide for the locally-led input for these practices
on the particular resource concerns? Because again, it would
probably be very valuable input on having an effective program.
Mr. Norton. Yes, yes. The process, as rightfully it should
have been described, is a state-led process. Individual
producers, if they have things that they would like to see as
priorities, should communicate directly with the State
Conservationist. They should infuse those into the system. They
can go to their local district conservationist or they can send
a letter directly to the State Conservationist and say I would
like to see these priorities for incentive contracts. If they
are members of producer organizations or interests that are
reflected on the state technical committee, they need to engage
there. It could be a state forestry association, it could be
California Rice. All of those folks have seats at the state
technical committee. We are requiring our State
Conservationists to review and seek input from their state
technical committee, which is that very large swath that
includes universities, non-governmental organizations, state
agencies, and local conservation districts, gather it up there
and set their priorities.
So, there is an opportunity there for those to be infused
in it. Now is the time. Do not wait. Now is the time. You can
always share information with us about better ways to do
conservation. So, now is the time to do it. We do plan, our
work right now is to have that component of EQIP operational in
the first quarter of calendar year 2021.
Mr. LaMalfa. Okay.
Mr. Norton. We will have it running this fiscal year, but
we are not going to be able to get it out as an advertised
enrollment option here in the first quarter.
Mr. LaMalfa. We can expect then that D.C. is going to be
pretty deferential to the state level once they have had this
back and forth, this input with each other at the state level?
D.C. is more likely to bless what the state says and not----
Mr. Norton. Yes, sir.
Mr. LaMalfa. Yes.
Mr. Norton. We are going to put out parameters and we are
working on that policy. We expect the final rule to be out in
the next several weeks, and it will be clear about the
regulation around this incentive payment option. We will have
some parameters. Yes, there is a range of things that could
happen, and then they can pick the practices and then they will
also be a part of constructing the payment rate that would be
associated with that practice, and whether it is a 5 year
payment, 10 year payment, or some increment in between.
We talk about forest stewardship, which is important to
you. You can enroll a piece of ground, a forest piece of ground
in this program and only do certain practices like once every 3
years. You wouldn't make a payment every year, but you could do
a long-term contract with the authority and actually have a
schedule so that if they need to do something once every 3
years, a prescribed burn or something like that, it can be in
the contract as an incentive payment. But we can also do annual
payments for other things.
Mr. LaMalfa. Yes, whatever makes sense in the situation.
Mr. Norton. Right.
Mr. LaMalfa. All right. Thank you for that, Chief Norton,
and I will yield back. Thank you, Madam Chair.
The Chair. Thank you so much.
Well, Chief Norton, thank you so much for being here today.
Thank you for spending the morning with us, answering our
questions, and again, we appreciate all your work as you
continue to settle into the job, particularly during this
challenging time. Thank you for your time, and we look forward
to continued conversations with you.
Mr. Norton. Thank you very much.
The Chair. Thank you.
I would now like to welcome our second panel of witnesses.
Thank you for being here today.
I recognize the gentlewoman from Iowa, Representative Axne,
to introduce our first witness, Mr. Palmer.
Mrs. Axne. Thank you, Chair Spanberger. It is my honor and
privilege, of course, to introduce Tim Palmer, a constituent of
mine from Madison County, and President of the National
Association of Conservation Districts.
Tim operates a 1,200 acre row crop and cow/calf operation,
and he served on the Madison County Soil and Water Conservation
District Board since 2003. In addition, he was appointed to the
Iowa State Soil and Water Conservation Committee from 2012 to
2014, and Tim has been a vocal leader for Iowa producers and
has extensive knowledge of conservation practices.
Tim, I believe the last time I saw you was an event with
Under Secretary Northey last August in Des Moines, if I am
correct. It is great to see you now before the Committee, and I
so look forward to our discussion. Thank you so much for
joining us. We appreciate it.
Mr. Palmer. Thank you so much for the warm welcome.
The Chair. Our second witness I have the honor of
introducing, Mr. Steve Patterson.
I am happy to welcome Mr. Patterson because he is a
constituent of Virginia's 7th District. Mr. Patterson has
served as a Senior Vice President of Marketing Communications
and Government Affairs at Southern States Cooperative since
2001. His experience includes 35 years in business and
agronomy, and he has earned numerous certifications in
agriculture, including certified crop advisor and professional
agronomist, as well as nutrient management consultant. Mr.
Patterson, thank you for joining us here today. We are pleased
to have you.
Our third witness is Dr. Karen Waldrop. Dr. Karen Waldrop
serves as Chief Conservation Officer for Ducks Unlimited,
Incorporated, and operates as a strategic leader and member of
DU's executive leadership team. Dr. Waldrop received her Ph.D.
in wildlife biology and forest resources, from Clemson
University, and both her M.S. in wildlife biology and forest
resources and B.S. in forest resources from the University of
Georgia. Prior to joining DU, Dr. Waldrop served as the Deputy
Commissioner for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife
Resources.
Our fourth witness is Mr. Jonathan Coppess. Mr. Coppess is
on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, and the Director of the Gardener Agriculture Policy
Program, and the author of, A Legislative and Political History
of the Farm Bill. His previous roles have included Chief
Counsel for the Senate Committee on Agriculture, and
Administrator of the Farm Service Agency at USDA. Mr. Coppess
grew up on his family farm in western Ohio and holds a J.D.
from the George Washington University Law School.
We will now proceed to hearing your testimony. Each witness
will have 5 minutes, and when 1 minute is left, the light will
turn yellow, signaling time is close to expiring. You should be
able to see that time keeper on your screen before you.
Mr. Palmer, please begin when you are ready.
STATEMENT OF TIM PALMER, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF
CONSERVATION DISTRICTS, TRURO, IA
Mr. Palmer. Chair Spanberger and Members of the
Subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to testify today.
My name is Tim Palmer, and with my family, we operate a farm
near Truro, Iowa, south central Iowa. We produce corn,
soybeans, oats, hay, and beef cattle. Conservation has been a
core tenet of our farming operation since its founding.
I currently serve as the President of the National
Association of Conservation Districts. NACD represents
America's 3,000 conservation districts. Conservation districts
are local units of government established under state law to
carry out natural resource management programs at the local
level.
While I would like to keep my oral comments today
specifically to the challenges and successes of conservation
programs in 2020, I would note the importance to conservation,
of the conservation delivery system, and NACD's role in it.
As a farmer, I like to think of myself as an eternal
optimist. I am going to begin my testimony with the successes
of conservation in 2020. Although the pandemic has posed
challenges to conservation delivery, the adoption of
conservation practices provides opportunities to strengthen
both our natural resources and our local economies.
Implementing conservation practices makes operations more
resilient, whether facing weather extremes or economic
challenges.
In 2017, NACD and Datu Research released a set of case
studies detailing the budget data on producers' adoption of
soil health practices, such as cover crops and no-till. These
showed that although planting costs increased by up to $38 per
acre, yearly net income increased to $110 per acre, and
efficiency is an important buttress against external shock to a
farm operation, whether it is from weather events and from
economic factors.
One important effect of conservation that is rarely
discussed is the effect on local economies. Conservation has a
positive impact on local communities. Conservation practices
require technical assistance equipment, and technical
assistance inputs to implement, and become a driver of economic
health. And when once installed, these practices ease the
burden on local infrastructure, such as bridges and culverts,
assisting local governments responsible for these structures.
It is clear to me that conservation has a crucial role to
play, not only for the benefits to the environment, but as an
engine as we look to recover and rebuild our economy.
Now, for the challenges.
NRCS staffing continues to be a challenge. Conservation
delivery relies on adequate field staff. Demand for technical
assistance has remained constant or increased, while staffing
levels have declined. I hope Congress will continue to support
the USDA in streamlining the process of hiring new employees.
Congress should encourage even greater direct hiring authority
for NRCS field staff.
One tool that has allowed conservation districts to help
meet landowners' needs is NACD's Technical Assistance Grant
Program. Since 2018, NACD has worked in partnership with NRCS
to administer grants to conservation districts and other local
conservation entities. These funds are matched by state and
local contributions. By empowering local decision-makers to
prioritize funding where they need it, NACD's Technical
Assistance Grant Program has helped temporarily improve
staffing where it is needed the most.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has presented a new set of
challenges for conservation delivery. NRCS and conservation
districts have instituted face-to-face work that, while
important, have disrupted operations. Conservation districts
are also concerned about the impact of state and local budget
cuts. We worry that the pandemic-caused revenue shortfalls and
associated budget cuts for state and local governments will
trickle down to districts that receiving funding from our state
and our county. Any cut in district staff will have a direct
effect on the delivery of farm bill conservation programs.
I appreciate the invitation to speak before the
Subcommittee this morning on a topic that is so close to my
heart, and I look forward to answering any questions that you
might have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Palmer follows:]
Prepared Statement of Tim Palmer, President, National Association of
Conservation Districts, Truro, IA
Good morning, Chair Spanberger, Ranking Member LaMalfa, and Members
of the Subcommittee. Thank you for the opportunity to testify on the
challenges and successes of conservation programs in 2020. My name is
Tim Palmer, and with my family, we operate a farm near Truro, Iowa. We
produce corn, soy, oats, hay and beef cattle.
Our farm was founded in 1958 by my father, and I joined the
operation in 1974 after high school. Conservation has been a core tenet
of our farming operation since its founding. In the 1960s, my father
began by adding ponds, managing livestock water, and using terraces to
control runoff. Now, our current conservation practices include
terraces, waterways, filter strips and ponds, as well as rotational
grazing for the cattle herd. On our operation, we have used the
Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Environmental Quality
Incentives Program (EQIP). Currently, my farm is enrolled in EQIP to
improve habitat for pollinators.
In 2003, my interest in conservation led me to serve on my local
conservation district board--the Madison County Soil and Water
Conservation District (SWCD). Like many others, I had almost no concept
of my local conservation history. I ran for my district board to learn
more about NRCS and state conservation programs. Learning from the
long-time local board members about the county's conservation history
and how the conservation partnerships within the state work was an
invaluable education. I became involved with my state association of
conservation districts, Conservation Districts of Iowa, serving in
several leadership capacities, including state association president,
and learning more about the national association in the process.
I currently serve as the President of the National Association of
Conservation Districts (NACD). NACD is the nonprofit organization that
represents America's 3,000 conservation districts, their state and
territory associations, and the more than 17,000 men and women who
serve on their governing boards. Conservation districts are local units
of government established under state law to carry out natural resource
management programs at the local level. Conservation districts work
with millions of cooperating landowners and operators to help them
manage and protect land and water resources on all private lands, and
many public lands, in the United States. I first joined the NACD Board
of Directors in 2009, and I have served as an Executive Board Member,
First Vice-President, and I began my presidency term in February 2019.
Conservation District History
Conservation districts were created as a result of the Dust Bowl,
shortly after the Soil Conservation Service (SCS), now called the
Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). This was a time before
the major conservation programs we know today were established. The SCS
was charged with demonstrating soil conservation practices for farmers
whose topsoil was literally blowing away.
When the SCS was created, President Franklin Roosevelt understood
that these new Federal employees would need local partners to be
successful. In 1936, President Roosevelt recommended the Standard State
Soil Conservation Districts Act be signed into law by all state
governors. This act gave states a step-by-step guide to create
conservation districts and listed their powers and responsibilities.
Less than a week after receiving the draft language, Arkansas became
the first state to enact legislation regarding conservation districts.
The first conservation district, Brown Creek SWCD, was established in
North Carolina on August 4, 1937. By July 1, 1945, all 48 states had
passed district-enabling acts. There are now nearly 3,000 conservation
districts across the country, including conservation districts in all
U.S. territories and a number of Tribal conservation districts, all
governed by a local board of supervisors.
Just as the SCS has evolved into the NRCS we know today,
conservation districts have grown and evolved as well. Originally
created to be the local partner for conservation, districts now have
the formal role of convening and managing Local Work Groups. These
groups bring together local stakeholders to set priorities for
conservation programs within the conservation district based on input
from the citizenry. When we discuss locally-led conservation, it is
this Local Work Group process that brings the local voice to
conservation programs. Input from Local Work Groups directly impacts
the criteria used to rank conservation program applications and,
ultimately, which applications are funded.
Although created because of the Dust Bowl, conservation districts,
as well as USDA, now have a much broader focus than just soil erosion.
Conservation districts address water quality, water quantity, wildlife
habitat, forestry and other resource concerns. Conservation districts
work with NRCS and other Federal agencies such as the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA); state agencies; and local governments and
partners. Conservation districts are uniquely able to bring all of
these partners together to address a range of resource concerns on both
private and public lands.
Conservation Delivery in Action
It is important for the Committee to understand how important
technical assistance is to the successful implementation of
conservation planning and farm bill conservation programs. You cannot
simply cut a check and say `go forth and do good;' landowners need the
technical expertise to implement these conservation systems. Often,
landowners need the technical assistance as much as or more than the
financial assistance provided by farm bill conservation programs. The
conservation delivery partnership between conservation districts, state
conservation agencies and NRCS, which has existed for decades and is
trusted by landowners across the country, is the gold standard.
Conservation districts and NRCS work together closely to provide
conservation planning and technical assistance, implement conservation
programs, and address local natural resource concerns.
Conservation districts and NRCS are usually co-located in county
offices, and through cooperative agreements, many conservation
districts assist in implementing NRCS programs. Conservation districts
work with landowners to address resource concerns, help landowners
apply to conservation programs, and implement practices on cooperators'
land. Even though they have separate employers, conservation district
and NRCS employees work hand-in-hand to deliver the customer service
our farmers and ranchers need and deserve. To the clients who come into
the offices, there is often no distinction between the different staff
that assist them.
This exceptional technical assistance requires extensive training,
and many conservation districts have skilled staff who have completed
the same training as NRCS employees. In fact, NACD has a cooperative
agreement with NRCS to send conservation district employees to NRCS's
Conservation Planning Boot Camp in Lincoln, Nebraska. As part of this
agreement, NACD is able to fund travel and expenses for conservation
district employees to attend the 3 week long training course, and NRCS
holds space open specifically for conservation district employees.
Conservation district employees are also able to take the many courses
available to NRCS employees conducted on the state level, as well as
available online courses.
Challenges to Conservation Delivery
Successful conservation delivery relies on adequate field staff to
work with landowners and implement programs. Currently, NRCS is about
2,000 employees short of their employment cap, based on the agency's
own workload analysis of the technical support needed to fulfill
program requirements. Although over 1,000 new staff members have been
hired, the agency is just keeping up with attrition. Those 2,000
unfilled positions are a hiring backlog that has persisted for several
years. NRCS simply cannot hire fast enough to meet their own needs. The
current staff are insufficient to meet the demand for conservation
planning and implementation of farm bill conservation programs at
Congressionally authorized funding levels.
Conservation districts have stepped up to help fill this gap.
Conservation district staff have always been involved in implementing
Federal conservation programs. However, conservation district staff are
taking on a greater share of conservation delivery across the country.
Although we would much rather see NRCS fully staffed, America's
conservation districts are ready and willing to continue assisting in
meeting the needs at hand.
One tool that has allowed conservation districts to rise to meet
landowners' needs is NACD's Technical Assistance Grant Program. Since
2018, NACD has worked in partnership with NRCS to administer between
$9-$15 million per year to conservation districts, state and territory
associations, and other local conservation entities like resource
conservation and development councils (RC&Ds). These funds are matched
by over $3-$5 million during each of these 3 years through state and
local contributions. This funding is used to hire staff in the highest
workload priority areas to help deliver EQIP and the Conservation
Stewardship Program (CSP), as well as provide Conservation Technical
Assistance (CTA) to landowners. As of the end of June 2020, NACD and
NRCS's funds have provided nearly 300 full and part-time positions
across the country, and those grant-created positions have worked more
than 640,000 hours during a period of just over 2 years. These
technical assistance staffers are tasked to improve customer service
and reduce workload pressure. Their efforts have assisted with more
than 14,000 conservation plans and 30,000 EQIP contracts and have
delivered conservation systems on more than 1.5 million acres of
American working lands.
Thomas Jefferson SWCD is Virginia's first awardee from NACD's
Technical Assistance Grant Program and is a prime example of what these
funds are meant to address. The SWCD was awarded funding in June and
has already started their work to place staff in the Louisa and
Charlottesville SWCD offices to increase technical assistance and
general outreach to the small farms in the area. Their goal is to
increase participation in CSP for the conservation district's entire
service area.
One of the hallmarks of this program is that each conservation
district is able to use the funds to address their most pressing
issues. The Glenn County Resource Conservation District in California
has used the funds to hire engineers to design EQIP practices. Yet, the
Sonoma Resource Conservation District, also in California, has taken a
different approach, hiring foresters to work with landowners on
management concerns. By empowering local decisionmakers to prioritize
funding where they need it, NACD's technical assistance grant program
has helped to temporarily improve staffing where it's needed most.
Staffing at NRCS is an issue in which this Subcommittee has taken
an interest in the past. Demand for technical assistance has remained
constant or increased while staffing levels have declined. I hope
Congress will continue to support USDA in streamlining the process of
hiring new employees. Congress should encourage even greater direct
hiring authority for NRCS field staff.
The current COVID-19 pandemic has also presented a new set of
challenges for conservation delivery. County service centers have
remained available to customers, although they have adopted procedures
to assure safety for customers as well as employees. This means
customers need to make an appointment, and there are limitations on how
many employees or customers can be in an office at the same time.
Although meetings with producers in the field are still allowed, there
are also restrictions in place on how many people can ride in a single
vehicle and where they can sit. Staff have been conducting much more
business by phone and online than they have in the past, and I'd say
that overall, conservation district staff are rising to the challenge
this new situation has posed quite admirably. However, these
restrictions have proven disruptive to normal operations in many county
service centers.
Another concern for conservation districts stemming from the
pandemic is the impact of state and local budget cuts. Already, a
number of conservation districts have needed to furlough staff members
because of budget considerations. Conservation districts are concerned
that revenue shortfalls and associated budget cuts for state and local
governments will trickle down to conservation districts that receive
funding from their state and/or county. For many conservation
districts, this non-Federal funding is used to pay for a district
manager and to ensure that someone is answering the phones and
responding to customers. Cuts to district funding at the state and
local level hit at the heart of district operations and may impact
capacity for Federal conservation delivery as well.
Financial aid for state and local governments has been considered
as Congress continues to debate additional COVID-19 relief legislation.
There are many places where state and local governments will consider
budget cuts without additional aid; please know that conservation
districts are one of these places. Additional state and local
government funding is needed to ensure that conservation districts can
continue to deliver conservation over the next few years.
Current Opportunities
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has posed many challenges to
conservation delivery, the adoption of conservation practices provides
opportunities to strengthen both our natural resources and our local
economies. Implementing conservation practices makes operations more
resilient, whether facing weather extremes or economic challenges, like
many farmers and ranchers are currently facing.
In 2017, NACD and Datu Research, LLC released a set of 3 year case
studies on four corn and soybean farms in the Upper Mississippi River
Basin, detailing year-by-year budget data on their adoption of cover
crops or no-till.[\1\] These farmers shared decisions they made and
why; how adoption affected income and yields; and what they learned.
Each case study uses budget analysis to measure yearly changes in
income that the farmer attributes to adoption, compared to the pre-
adoption baseline.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ https://www.nacdnet.org/soil-health-research/.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The major takeaways were that although planting costs increased by
up to $38 per acre:
Fertilizer costs decreased by up to $50 per acre;
Erosion repair costs decreased by up to $16 per acre;
Yields increased by up to $76 per acre; and altogether[;
and]
Yearly net income increased by up to $110 per acre.
That increased income and efficiency is an important buttress
against an external shock to farm and ranching operations, whether
that's from weather events, like the derecho we experienced in Iowa
this year, the catastrophic wildfires many states continue to
experience in the West, or from the economic fallout of trade wars or a
pandemic. NACD is currently working to expand these soil health case
studies to include other regions and cropping systems across the
country.
The economics of conservation are particularly important, because
producers need to be profitable to invest in conservation. Even with
Federal cost-share, conservation practices require a financial
investment by the producer themselves. When a producer is struggling
just to pay the costs of production, conservation will certainly be cut
from the budget.
Conservation also has a positive economic impact on the local
communities where it is underway. Conservation practices require
technical assistance, equipment and inputs to implement. Local
advisors, like engineers, agronomists and wildlife specialists, are
employed to aid conservation adoption. Many practices require
specialized equipment to plant crops or maintain structures like small
watershed dams. Some practices require inputs as well, such as seed or
plantings. All these necessities become a driver of economic
development, helping to bolster both the land and the local economy.
And once installed, these practices ease the burden on local
infrastructure, such as bridges and culverts, assisting the local
governments responsible for these structures. It is clear to me that
conservation has a crucial role to play, not only for benefits to the
environment, but as an engine as we look to recover and rebuild our
economy.
I appreciate the invitation to speak before the Subcommittee this
morning on a topic that is so close to my heart and look forward to
answering any questions you might have.
The Chair. Thank you very much, Mr. Palmer.
And Mr. Patterson, please begin whenever you are ready.
Mr. Patterson. Can you hear me okay?
The Chair. Yes, we can.
STATEMENT OF STEVE PATTERSON, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING,
COMMUNICATIONS, AND GOVERNMENT
AFFAIRS, SOUTHERN STATES COOPERATIVE, HENRICO, VA
Mr. Patterson. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Chair
Spanberger, and thanks to all the Members of the Subcommittee
on this very important subject. I appreciate the opportunity to
share some of the things we are doing in Virginia to help with
conservation and water quality issues across the Commonwealth,
some of which are successes and some of which are challenges.
My name is Steve Patterson. I serve as the Senior VP of
Marketing, Communications, and Government Affairs at Southern
States, which is a 97 year old farmer-owned cooperative based
in Richmond, Virginia, and reside in the 7th Congressional
District as was mentioned earlier. I am a 35 year veteran,
graduate of the University of Kentucky in agronomy, which is
the study of the science and economics of food and fiber
production. Earlier in my career, I was a regional agronomist
and during that tenure, I had the opportunity to earn the
qualifications of certified crop advisor, certified
professional agronomist, and nutrient management specialist in
Virginia and Maryland. It was one of the hardest exams I have
ever taken, by the way, but it was very good.
I share that information because I want you to know that I,
and Southern States, understand and care about the nature of
nutrients and the nature both on growing crops and for
affecting water quality via leaching and/or runoff in these
types of things. It is very important that we understand those
things, because it affects our streams, rivers, bays,
estuaries.
I also had the opportunity to be part of the launch of
precision ag technology on the East Coast, which allows for
much more precise applications of nutrients in farmers' fields,
based on an intense soil testing methodology and variable rate
equipment technology. This allows for prescriptive rates of
nutrients to be applied in different parts of the same field
based on intensive soil testing, whereas before this technology
was available, the same amount may be applied across the whole
field, which was not good for the crop or good for the farmer's
economics. We now have over 1 million acres under some form of
precision ag technology across our operating territory, a
number of agronomy specialists that work with farmers every day
on soil testing, nutrient management plans, improving crop
yields, while also mitigating nutrient leaching or transport
via erosion in the water system.
As leaders, we are working with new product technology that
shows promise of delivering slow release nitrogen to crops,
while at the same time reducing leaching of nitrogen by
approximately 49 percent. This is a potential game-changing
product that is coming down the pike. Better yet, this product
originates from waste materials and reduces the amount of
material going into landfills, creating a more circular economy
and also adding more organic matter to the soil and improving
soil health.
I am proud to say we are partnering with the Virginia
Department of Conservation to: reduce leaching and runoff of
nitrogen, phosphorus, sediment; spread the message of the
importance of soil testing, nutrient management, no-till
practices, utilizing grass buffer strips, cover crops; and the
4R's of nutrient management: the right source, the right rate,
the right time, and the right place. Virginia's goal of
achieving 85 percent of the acreage in the Chesapeake Bay
Watershed to have a nutrient management plan by 2025 is
definitely doable, but only if private and public organizations
work together. We need continued cooperation from our partners
at the NRCS, Department of Conservation and Recreation in
Virginia, the Soil and Water Conservation Districts, and
industry to achieve that goal.
As I already mentioned, continue to increase funding for
conservation programs from the state and Federal Governments is
needed to reach those goals. This is especially true in a time
of a pandemic and prolonged downturn in the farm economy, which
farmers have limited resources. Nutrient management is the kind
of practice we embrace. It aligns with our goal to recommend
products and services that are agronomically-sound,
environmentally-responsible, and cost-effective for our
farmers. They are site-specific and based on factors such as
soil and manure samples, timing and rate of application. We,
along with all these organizations we mentioned, including
land-grant universities, provide crucial technical assistance
to our farmers to implement these practices, but there remains
a shortage of qualified planners that needs to be addressed
moving forward. That is one of our big challenges. We need more
trained professionals in the field providing these services to
our farmers.
It is very important as we move forward that agriculture
has a seat at the table discussing climate change, that
decisions are based on sound science, and that decisions
protect the economic livelihood of our farmers. We are proud to
work with organizations such as the Ag Retailers Association,
the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, Farm Bureau, and
Virginia Agribusiness Council on these issues, because we are
all much stronger working together versus a fragmented approach
across various organizations.
American agriculture is a modern-day success story. Our
farmers produce the world's safest, most abundant food supply
for consumers at prices far lower than the world average.
Cooperatives have been at the forefront of proactive work to
improve the environment in the communities they serve. From
pest management to nutrient management, from the development of
cutting-edge technologies to the implementation of wide area
conservation practices, farmer cooperatives have the expertise
and the credibility to serve as the best source for information
regarding production practices. This is the reason we have been
around for almost 100 years. Our farmer-owners trust us to help
them with the complexities of crop and livestock production,
and the necessity of improving water quality in our respective
states while producing profitable and sustainable yields.
Thank you again for the opportunity to be here today, and I
will stop there and take any questions at the right time. Thank
you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Patterson follows:]
Prepared Statement of Steve Patterson, Senior Vice President,
Marketing, Communications, and Government Affairs, Southern States
Cooperative, Henrico, VA
Thank you, Chair Spanberger, and thank you to all the Members of
the Conservation and Forestry Subcommittee for being here today.
I appreciate the opportunity to be with you and to share some of
the things we are doing in Virginia to help with conservation and water
quality issues across the commonwealth.
My name is Steve Patterson, and I currently serve as the Senior
Vice President of Marketing, Communications and Government Affairs at
Southern States Cooperative, a 97 year old farmer owned cooperative
based in Richmond, Virginia and reside in the 7th Congressional
District.
I am a 37 year veteran of Southern States, a graduate of the
University of Kentucky in Agronomy, which is ``the study of the science
and economics of growing food and fiber,'' and earned an MBA from
Virginia Commonwealth University.
Earlier in my career, I served as a regional agronomist for
Southern States and during that tenure, I had the opportunity to earn
the qualifications of Certified Crop Advisor and Professional
Agronomist via the American Society of Agronomy, along with becoming a
Nutrient Management Specialist in the states of Maryland and Virginia.
I share that information because I want you to know that I, and
Southern States, understand, and care about the nature of nutrients and
the effect they have both on growing crops and on the water quality of
our streams, rivers, bays and estuaries.
I also had the opportunity to be part of the launch of precision
agriculture technology on the East Coast, which allows for much more
precise applications of nutrients in farmers' fields based on an
intense soil testing methodology and variable rate equipment
technology. This allows for prescriptive rates of nutrients to be
applied in different parts of the same field, based on intensive soil
testing, whereas before this technology was available, nutrients would
not be properly applied to the crop or good for the farmer's economics.
Today we have over 1 million acres under some form of precision ag
technology, a number of Certified Crops Advisors and agronomy
specialists that work with farmers every day on soil testing, nutrient
management plans, and improving crop yields while also mitigating
nutrient leaching, volatilization or transport via erosion in the water
system and eventually into the Chesapeake Bay. As leaders, we are
working with new product technology that shows promise of delivering
slow release nitrogen to crops while at the same time reducing leaching
of nitrogen by approximately 50%, a potential game-changing event.
Better yet this product originates from waste materials and reduces the
amount of material going into landfills, creating a more ``circular
economy.''
I am proud to say we are partnering with the Virginia Department of
Conservation to work together to reduce leaching and runoff of
nitrogen, phosphorus and sediment, and spread the message of the
importance of soil testing, nutrient management plans, no-till
practices, utilization of grass buffer strips and cover crops, and the
``4Rs'' of nutrient management (the right source, right rate, right
time and right place.) Virginia's goal of achieving 85% of the acreage
in the Chesapeake Bay watershed to have a Nutrient Management Plan by
2025 is definitely doable--but only if private and public organizations
work together toward that common goal. We need continued cooperation
from our partners at the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS),
DCR, the Soil and Water Conservation Districts and industry to achieve
that goal. Continued and increased funding for our conservation
programs from both the state and Federal Governments is needed to reach
the goals. This is especially true in a time of pandemic and a
prolonged downturn in the farm economy, in which producers have limited
resources.
Nutrient management planning is the kind of practice Southern
States embraces--it aligns with our company's goal to recommend
products and services that are agronomically-sound, environmentally-
responsible and cost-effective for our growers. They are site specific
and based on factors such as soil and manure samples, timing and rate
of application. We, along with NRCS, Soil and Water Districts as well
as our land-grant universities, provide crucial technical assistance to
our farmers to implement these practices, but there is still a shortage
of qualified planners that will need to be addressed moving forward. We
need more trained professionals in the field providing these services
to our farmers.
It is very important as we move forward that agriculture has a seat
at the table discussing climate change, that decisions are based on
sound science, and that decisions protect the economic livelihood of
our farmers.
We are proud to work with organizations such as the Ag Retailer's
Association, National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, Farm Bureau, and
the Virginia Agribusiness Council on these issues, as we all are much
stronger working together versus a fragmented approach across various
industries and organizations.
American agriculture is a modern-day success story.
America's farmers produce the world's safest, most abundant
food supply for consumers at prices far lower than the world
average. Farmer cooperatives are an important part of the
success of America's food supply chain.
Farmer cooperatives like Southern States have been at the
forefront of proactive work to improve the environment in the
communities they serve. Our goal is to support science-based,
achievable, and affordable environmental policies and
initiatives. From pest management to nutrient management, from
the development of cutting-edge technologies to implementation
of area-wide conservation practices, farmer cooperatives have
the expertise and the credibility to serve as the best source
for information regarding production practices.
This is a reason we have been around for almost 100 years--our
farmer owners trust us to help them with the complexities of crop and
livestock production and the necessity of improving water quality in
our respective states while producing profitable and sustainable
yields.
Thank you for the opportunity to present this to you today and
please advise how we can help, going forward.
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Steve Patterson,
Senior Vice President, Marketing, Communications, and Government
Relations,
Southern States Cooperative.
The Chair. Thank you so much, Mr. Patterson.
And thank you, Dr. Waldrop. Please begin when you are
ready.
Dr. Waldrop. Thank you very much. Can you hear me okay?
The Chair. We can.
STATEMENT OF KAREN A. WALDROP, Ph.D., CHIEF CONSERVATION
OFFICER, DUCKS UNLIMITED, MEMPHIS, TN
Dr. Waldrop. Great, wonderful. Chair Spanberger, Ranking
Member LaMalfa, and Members of the Committee, thank you so much
for providing this opportunity for Ducks Unlimited to testify
today.
It certainly has been a challenging year, so we really
appreciate the chance to talk to you today about some of the
great conservation work that we have been able to deliver
during these very trying times.
Since 1937, Ducks Unlimited has conserved, managed, and
restored wetlands and associated habitats for North America's
waterfowl. However, wetlands also provide a lot of benefit for
people in ways that we have not even really, a lot of people
are not aware of, either directly or indirectly, from things
like flood control or water quality improvement, erosion
control, or even recreation like hunting, kayaking, and
wildlife watching. We can only achieve our mission of
conserving waterfowl habitat through diverse public and private
partnerships. Specifically, the USDA and NRCS have been
fantastic partners in our conservation delivery efforts
throughout the years, and we certainly cannot appreciate them
enough during these difficult times with the pandemic.
Ducks Unlimited and many other midsize nonprofits have been
hit particularly hard by COVID-19 restrictions on gatherings.
For example, at Ducks Unlimited we had to cancel thousands of
events this past year--fundraising events that cost millions in
event income that we were expecting for our budget this past
year. However, a bright spot during these difficult times has
been our continued conservation delivery by our dedicated team
who--they stayed in campers and trailers and ice fishing houses
to be able to continue their important conservation work
throughout this pandemic, and we are very proud of the work
that they have done and the sacrifices that they made.
Much like our friends in the farming and ranching community
who have been severely impacted by COVID-19, DU continues to
deliver, no matter the hurdles that we face. Some ag groups are
even doubling down, like the National Cattlemen's Beef
Association. They are working on sustainable multiple use
practices. And we even just recently signed an MOU with them
outlining our shared commitment to cultivate healthier
ecosystems, wildlife populations, and economies through active
management like cattle grazing.
It is not only through the partnerships that we have
created with producers and the dedicated NRCS staff, without
those partnerships and those dedicated NRCS staff across the
country, we wouldn't have been able to deliver our conservation
efforts and continue them today.
Just 2 weeks ago, NRCS announced that DU and our partners
had been awarded an $8.7 million RCPP grant to develop a
producer-focused program to improve soil quality in the
prairies of the Dakotas and in Montana. And this program will
offer interested farmers and ranchers technical assistance and
financial assistance to adopt soil health practices, and this
was alluded to earlier by Chief Norton and Congresswoman
Pingree as well.
One area where our partnerships are really taking off,
another area is in Iowa, and where we have been working with
the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship
recently to help deliver and aid in Iowa's nutrient reduction
strategy. Additionally, in coordination with these great
government partners, we have been able to team up with some
great corporate partners like Nestle Purina, Wells Fargo, and
Microsoft to kind of help scale up the conservation delivery in
the area because it is to meet effort demand by producers as
well.
These wetlands, as they are created, natural wetlands help
reduce the nitrates in the water, resulting in cleaner water.
But also since approximately 1.5 million gallons of water can
be held in just 1 acre of wetland, wetlands also do an amazing
job of reducing flooding and soil erosion during heavy rainfall
events.
Another partnership that DU is extremely proud of--it has
been mentioned a couple of times--is our ongoing collective
rice efforts that are vitally supported by NRCS and through the
RCPP. USA Rice, Ducks Unlimited, and supporters are in the
process of delivering conservation on nearly 800,000 acres in
six major rice-producing states, mostly in the Southeast and in
California. The Rice Stewardship Partnership was created to
support farmers first, and that is something that DU takes a
lot of pride in. In fact, Al Montna, DU's Senior Vice President
for Policy, is deeply involved in the Rice Stewardship Program,
and he is a prominent rice farmer in the Sacramento Valley as
well.
DU strongly believes in these and other voluntary
incentive-based conservation programs like ACEP. When producers
are given economically viable options to improve their land
through conservation practices, they support and seek these
programs, and DU will continue to follow the lead of our
agriculture partners and urge Congress to continue to support
these critical conservation tools.
In closing, Ducks Unlimited is proud and grateful to be
carrying on our mission during this pandemic. We greatly value
our producer partners who are stewards of these lands, and we
rely on our partners to help to conserve and restore waterfowl
habitat to benefit both wildlife and people. Thank you for the
opportunity to speak to you today, and we look forward to
continuing our partnership with NRCS and helping America's
farmers and ranchers sustainably produce the food, fiber, and
fuel that we all depend on. I would be happy to answer any
questions at this time.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Waldrop follows:]
Prepared Statement of Karen A. Waldrop, Ph.D., Chief Conservation
Officer, Ducks Unlimited, Memphis, TN
Chair Spanberger, Ranking Member LaMalfa, and Members of the
Committee, thank you for providing Ducks Unlimited the opportunity to
testify today to discuss the ``Challenges and Successes of Conservation
Programs in 2020.'' This year has certainly been different than any of
my previous 17 years in conservation, so we really appreciate the
opportunity to talk about the important work we've been able to deliver
under these trying times.
I am Dr. Karen Waldrop, Chief Conservation Officer of Ducks
Unlimited. I operate as the strategic leader for our national and
international conservation programs, including science and habitat
conservation operations, as well as lead our regional offices across
the country that focus on conservation delivery. I received my Ph.D. in
Wildlife Biology/Forest Sciences from Clemson University and both my
M.S. in Wildlife Biology/Forest Resources and B.S. in Forest Resources
from University of Georgia. Prior to joining DU in 2019, I served as
the Deputy Commissioner for the Kentucky Department of Fish and
Wildlife Resources.
Ducks Unlimited is the world's leader in wetlands and waterfowl
conservation. DU got its start in 1937 during the Dust Bowl when North
America's dr[o]ught-plagued waterfowl populations had plunged to
unprecedented lows. Starting in 1937 and continuing to today, Ducks
Unlimited conserves, restores and manages wetlands and associated
habitats for North America's waterfowl. These habitats also benefit
other wildlife and people. We know that Ducks Unlimited can only
achieve our vision of wetlands sufficient to fill the skies with
waterfowl today, tomorrow and forever through diverse public and
private partnerships to address the full range of factors that affect
waterfowl habitat. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the
Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) are fantastic partners for
this nation's conservation delivery.
Wetlands benefit people in many ways, either directly or indirectly
through flood control (by storing water during flood events), water
quality improvement (by naturally removing nitrogen and phosphorus),
erosion control, and provide opportunities for other forms of
recreation, like hunting, fishing, kayaking or wildlife watching.
Wetland protection and restoration work conducted by DU, NRCS and
producers provide wetland-based water solutions for people and
wildlife. For example, when we build or restore wetlands in the
Mississippi Alluvial Valley, these wetlands can temporarily store flood
waters during high runoff events, preventing downstream flooding and
erosion. Or when our teams construct wetlands in the Midwest, the
result is lower levels of contaminants in the water because of the
natural ability of wetlands to filter out these pollutants. Similarly,
when rice fields are flooded, not only is food available for ducks but
flooding helps prevent erosion and controls weeds, so fewer chemicals
are needed.
Ducks Unlimited and many other mid-sized nonprofits have been hit
particularly hard by many of the government closures and restrictions
to prevent the spread of [COVID]-19. Not being made eligible for the
Paycheck Protection Program because we had over 500 employees when the
COVID-19 pandemic started has certainly limited available financial
relief, either. As it has across the world, the coronavirus pandemic
has negatively affected Ducks Unlimited, especially in our fundraising
efforts. DU relies heavily on our event-based fundraising that
generates more than $50 million on an annual basis. Our events bring in
tens of millions of dollars in major gift payments, as well as
thousands of regular memberships that are normally renewed through
local event attendance. This spring, the pandemic severely limited our
traditional event fundraising and it continues to do so today. Due to
government restrictions, DU has been forced to cancel over 2,000 in-
person events losing at least $17 million in expected event income
through June 30 alone. Furloughs, drastic budget cuts, and
unfortunately layoffs are becoming part of the new reality for most
nonprofit organizations around the country. That includes DU. However,
a bright spot during these difficult times has been our continued
conservation delivery. It is only through the partnerships we've
created with producers and the dedicated NRCS staff throughout the
country that this conservation has been possible. Much like our friends
in the farming and ranching community, DU continues our important work
in the countryside where fresh air and open spaces limit the dangers
presented by a virus.
Just 2 weeks ago, NRCS announced that DU and our partners had been
awarded a $8.73 million Regional Conservation Partnership Program
(RCPP) grant to develop a producer-focused program, Scaling Soil Health
in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR). The program will offer farmers and
ranchers technical and financial assistance, advanced training and
mentorship to increase the adoption of soil health practices in the PPR
of North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana. This will be a significant
opportunity for DU to help more producers access the education and
financial support they need to adopt soil health practices. Along with
our great partners, we will work with interested farmers and ranchers
to help them improve soil quality and wildlife habitat on their lands
and produce positive economic results. A diverse array of partners on
the project include the South Dakota Grassland Coalition, North Dakota
Grazing Lands Coalition, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Beadle
Conservation District, Millborn Seeds, state game & fish agencies and
others. This type of partnership and collaboration on behalf of
America's farmers, ranchers and wildlife would not be possible without
the help and foundation that is the NRCS.
Partnership is what drives DU's conservation delivery. One area of
the country where our partnerships are really taking off is in Iowa,
where DU has been working with the Iowa Department of Agriculture and
Land Stewardship (IDALS) to help deliver the Conservation Reserve
Enhancement Program (CREP). Many of the wetlands created through this
program collect tile drain water and use natural wetland processes to
breakdown nitrates into inert nitrogen gas. A properly designed wetland
can remove 30-70% of nitrates and 90% of herbicides. So far, the CREP
program has constructed just over 100 wetlands treating approximately
100,000 acres of farmland in central Iowa over 15 years. To meet the
goals of Iowa's Nutrient Reduction Strategy, we will need approximately
5,000 wetlands to treat runoff from 5-10 million acres. The popularity
of this program continues to grow as farmers receive an easement
payment to restore wetlands on what is most often marginal farmland.
DU, in coordination with IDALS and USDA have been able to bring in
diverse corporate partners like Wells Fargo, Microsoft and Nestle
Purina to help scale up the conservation delivery effort to meet
producer demand.
An example of partnership driven conservation delivery work that DU
is extremely proud of is our ongoing collective rice efforts that have
been vitally supported by NRCS through the RCPP. USA Rice, California
Rice Commission and Ducks Unlimited are in the process of delivering
conservation on more than 790,000 acres on nearly 1,000 farms. Ducks
Unlimited and USA Rice Federation's Rice Stewardship Partnership was
created to support farmers first, and this is an effort that DU takes
pride in. Coordinating with NRCS field offices and Soil and Water
Conservation Districts, DU's conservation staff is improving customer
service by meeting farmers right in the field where they are to better
understand their challenges and opportunities. These on the ground
conservation practices address a number of natural resource concerns
but, perhaps most importantly, support farmers' livelihoods by
minimizing their risk and offering income diversification to their
farming operations. These practices are especially important this
Summer in the face of multiple storms impacting the Gulf Coast.
Approximately 1.5 million gallons of floodwater is stored in 1 acre of
wetland. When Hurricane Sally, Hurricane Laura, and other storms made
landfall in these Gulf states, existing wetlands created by these very
same farm bill programs played an important role in limiting the
severity of flooding in some areas. For example, when Sandy hit the
Atlantic coast in 2012, an estimated $625 million in flood damage was
prevented across 12 states in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United
States thanks to coastal wetlands. While it would be unrealistic to
suggest that the presence of wetlands could ever eliminate flooding
caused by hurricanes and tropical storms entirely, they have proven to
help save millions of dollars by protecting our coastlines and acting
as natural reservoirs during severe storms.
Last month, Ducks Unlimited signed a Memorandum of Understanding
(MOU) with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, The Public Lands
Council and Safari Club International to outline the groups' shared
commitment to conservation of natural resources through sustainable
multiple use. The MOU outlines the groups' efforts to cultivate
healthier ecosystems, wildlife populations, and economies through
active management like livestock grazing. Hunting, fishing and managed
grazing are all key components of successful, comprehensive management
plans for our nation's lands and resources. The MOU highlights decades
of successful voluntary conservation programs and formalizes a
partnership to allow these groups to coordinate projects in the future.
Cattle and beef producers, hunters and other conservationists, will
continue to engage in conservation partnerships that maintain wildlife
habitat, honor the cultural and historical value of landscapes and
empower local communities and rural economies. Cows and ducks get along
great. We know that when we have ranchers and cattle on the landscape,
we have grasslands and wetlands. That means waterfowl and other
wildlife have places to nest, breed, forage, rest and migrate.
Conservationists and ranchers are linked arm in arm in keeping family
farms on the landscape, with vibrant grasslands intact and functioning
for the good and well-being of us all.
Increasing and improving conservation delivery during the COVID-19
crisis drives economic activity to rural areas and provides ecosystem
services like flood protection to urban areas at the same time. One
such project that is a good example of this is the instillation of two
bridges in the Yolo Bypass Wildlife Area in California. A 350 ton
hydraulic truck crane placed precast concrete bridges that replaced
narrow pipes regularly blocked by beavers and debris, improving
drainage and water supply to the wildlife area. The bridges are part of
a $4 million project scheduled for completion in October. The
investments in infrastructure will create 200 acres of new wetlands,
improve management for rice fields, reduce on-site flooding and improve
access for environmental education programs.
Another great example of conservation on working lands is USDA's
newly released Prairie Pothole Water Quality and Wildlife Program,
which will invest millions into voluntary protection of wetlands in the
Prairie Pothole Region. Producers will be eligible to receive payment
for wetlands less than 2 acres in size wholly within privately owned
working cropland. This new program will be carried out through our
continued partnership with producers and NRCS to get the most value out
of each acre for farmers and ranchers while also conserving waterfowl
habitat.
Ducks Unlimited believes strongly in the idea of voluntary,
incentive-based conservation programs. When given an economically
viable opportunity to improve their land through conservation
practices, producers have proven to have a strong appetite for these
programs year after year. Voluntary, perpetual wetland and agricultural
land easements offered through NRCS are great examples of popular
conservation programs that producers continue to seek out. Best among
these ``working lands'' easements are those that protect wetlands,
prime soils, and other conservation values without compromising a
landowner's ability to sustainably, and prosperously, produce food and
fiber. In fact, there continue to be waiting lists of producers to gain
access to wetland easements as demand far exceeds supply. DU will
continue to follow the lead of our partners in agriculture and urge
Congress' continued support of these critical conservation tools.
We often talk about the good work of DU in regions like the Lower
Mississippi River, but DU is also helping to deliver innovative Wetland
Reserve Easements in Northern California. Through a collaborative
effort between NRCS, Feather River Land Trust, Northern Sierra
Partnership and the Nature Conservancy; Ducks Unlimited is working to
rehabilitate the Decker Dam in the Sierra Valley of northern
California. This area is an important spring and fall migration area
and supports important local nesting and brood-rearing. The dam
structure has existed since the 1930s to provide water for livestock
and flood irrigation to more than 330 acres of wet meadow pasture in
the immediate vicinity, but also to help maintain irrigation capacity
to over 1,000 acres of wet meadow pasture upstream of the structure on
neighboring ranches. Over time, the structure has become dilapidated
and no longer functions at its original intended capacity. DU is
providing technical engineering services to help design a rehabilitated
structure that will restore the original capacity for flood irrigation
purposes and wildlife habitat benefits.
Agricultural Land Easements have also proven to be an important
tool in the toolbox for producers and conservationists alike in
California and across the country. More than 95% of the historic
wetlands in the Sacramento Valley have been lost, and wintering
waterfowl, shorebirds and other waterbirds are now heavily dependent
upon rice lands to meet their nutritional needs.
About 68% of the nutritional needs of wintering waterfowl in the
Central Valley are being met by agricultural lands, primarily rice.
However, most of the rice lands in this area have no long-term
protection and the Central Valley is one of the nation's most
threatened farming regions. Establishing conservation easements on
wildlife-friendly agricultural lands is an effective way to provide
long-term protection to important Pacific Flyway habitat while allowing
those lands to remain in private ownership and wildlife-friendly
agricultural production. Easements help to keep farmers and ranchers on
the land, help producers manage risk, and give ranch and farm families
the opportunity to raise the next generation on the farm.
ACEP-WRE is one of our nation's most successful voluntary
conservation programs. The program restores previously converted
wetlands and provides willing landowners and producers a financially
viable alternative to farming marginal land with low or negative
profits while still retaining property ownership. It is also a sound
investment of taxpayer dollars and serves to help focus Federal
investment in commodity and crop insurance on the most productive lands
for agriculture. In fact, a study recently conducted by Doug Lawrence,
a noted natural resource program economist, suggested that when land is
voluntarily enrolled in WRE, there is a significant savings in
government expenditures of commodity and crop insurance programs on
these lands. This analysis estimates that enrolling 100,000 acres of
cropland in WRE would save approximately $292 million over 10 years.
For example, enrollment of 1 acre of cropland in WRE saves $53 per acre
per year from those programs. 100,000 acres of enrolled cropland will
yield a savings of approximately $292 million. In addition to these
benefits to taxpayers, WRE also improves water quality and creates
habitat for migratory birds, at-risk species, and resident wildlife,
which in turn boosts rural economies as sportsmen and other wildlife
enthusiasts recreate on these lands.
Ducks Unlimited has been uniquely successful in continuing to carry
on our mission during the COVID-19 pandemic. We seek to help farmers
and ranchers that face similar immense financial challenges to continue
to feed and provide for our nation. DU greatly values our producer
partners who are the stewards to the wetlands and grasslands needed for
waterfowl to feed and nest successfully. Whether through the obvious
recreation opportunities and waterfowl habitat protections offered by
wetlands, or the more discrete benefits provided by the many ecosystem
services that the average person likely doesn't even know they benefit
from, wetlands are the answer for a lot more problems than you'd think.
Perhaps now more so than ever, we rely on our public and private
partnerships to continue to deliver on our mission to conserve and
restore waterfowl habitat that provides countless benefits for both
people and wildlife.
Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. Please don't
hesitate to ask if you have any questions that I may be able answer.
The Chair. Thank you, Dr. Waldrop.
And Mr. Coppess, please begin when you are ready. You are
recognized for 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF JONATHAN W. COPPESS, J.D., ASSISTANT
PROFESSOR OF LAW AND POLICY, DEPARTMENT OF
AGRICULTURAL AND CONSUMER ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS,
URBANA, IL
Mr. Coppess. Great. Thank you, Chair Spanberger, Ranking
Member LaMalfa, and Members of the Subcommittee. Greetings from
the kind of weirdly quiet campus of University of Illinois, and
thank you very much for inviting me to testify today.
I am going to focus my remarks on working lands
conservation, and I want to try to use a lens based on
competition. If I may, I would like to ground my remarks a
little bit in the learned experiences of my dad, Bill Coppess.
My family's farm, as you mentioned, is in western Ohio, and I
got to admit that most of what I know about farming and
conservation, I can credit to him. Look, I am not at all
objective, but I would argue that my dad represents the best in
American farmers. He is a natural contrarian and experimenter,
as well as a committed conservationist who has lived out the
basic concept that is he sees it as his responsibility to leave
things better than he found them.
A couple of examples: In 1998, he convinced my grandfather
at the time to go all in on no-till, replacing all the tillage
equipment to avoid even being tempted to go back on no-till. He
is also one of the first in our area, if not the first, to
start experimenting with cover crops. In fact, he and my
brother added wheat to the operation, corn and soybean farm,
around 2007 in order to break up the rotation and improve the
ability to establish cover crops. We have had some pretty
amazing experiences with cover cropping over the years.
But you know, they have never really done better than break
even on the wheat, even as they progressed around cover
cropping itself. And that leads me to this comment I want to
make about competition.
Here is another story. About a dozen years ago, they took
on a new lease. The soils on the fields were in pretty bad
shape, and so they went to work using no-till and cover crops
to improve soil health and soil quality. A couple of years ago
then, one of the larger, more aggressive farmers in the area
wanted that lease and offered them much higher cash rent. Now
look, to the landlord's credit, he appreciated what Dad and my
brother were doing and he stuck with them and they kept the
lease. But please recognize that had the other farmer
succeeded, years of work and sunk in costs invested to improve
the health and quality of those soils would have gone to the
next farmer, the new tenant, who would benefit from that work
but was probably unlikely to continue it. And this is kind of
that tough reality around competition, particularly at the
local level on things like cash rent, as well as what farmers
are willing and able to pay for those rare fields that actually
come up for sale. These are common advantages for larger
investment farmers who are able and willing to bid up and then
spread out the costs on a larger acreage footprint. I wouldn't
dismiss some of the contribution we are seeing from the
expanded amount of payments going in.
Look, conservation takes work. It adds risk and management
complexity. The farmer has to be willing to experiment and
learn by trial and error. And more, right after more than 30
years of no-till and more than a dozen years of using cover
crops, Dad still hears significant skepticism around the area.
The self-assured assuring themselves and anyone who will listen
that it just won't work.
Conservation comes with costs, real costs. It is an
investment that will not likely be returned at any crop year,
and probably unlikely to ever exceed the total cost.
Consider some of the budget analysis that I want to
highlight from my colleague, Dr. Gary Schnitkey, here at
Illinois, looking at Midwest corn and soybean farms. He is
finding right now negative returns for 2018 and 2019. Those
returns have been offset somewhat by the positive returns for
soybeans, but it is a negative on corn and positive on
soybeans. But much of the worst of this has been prevented by
the really large payments that we have seen come out the last
couple of years. And so, as he looks forward with 2020 and
2021, he is forecasting a worsening situation, the degree of
bad really depending on the amount of payments that may or may
not be there.
For example, in 2019 for Illinois, if we blend the corn and
soybean budgets together to 50/50 rotation, the farm would lose
about $100 per acre without any Federal payments, but falls
just above the break-even point, around $5 an acre with those
payments. We see that significant situation. It should go
without saying that losing money per acre makes for a rather
difficult management situation. Now try adding costs for
conservation practices. If you are investing in conservation,
you are unlikely to have room in the budget to pencil out top-
dollar land purchases or top-dollar cash rents. You are not out
there buying the new equipment, and that can have a cascading
series of consequences, some of which may be more painful than
others. And there are only so many options for cutting costs.
Each can have implications for the farmers' ability to compete,
and that can be magnified as we add costs through conservation.
But how do we help farmers adopt conservation and stay
competitive? Clearly, cost-share Federal systems can really
help, if it is available. For example, Illinois EQIP might pay
$45 an acre for cover crops, which would make up the difference
for the cost of that, but is there ever enough funding
available to hit the acreage we need? For example, the last 10
years or so we have averaged about $13 million per year, so at
$45 an acre, that is only 288,000 acres. Half of it for
livestock, we are down to less than 150,000 acres. In a state
like Illinois that has 24 million acres of cropland, it would
probably take about $1 billion a year just to cover the cover
crops.
This is kind of where I am sort of making an argument for
rethinking in some form or fashion some of the working lands
conservation policies and doing so in a way that better blends
elements of risk: Price, yield, revenue. Those are the focus of
farm programs and crop insurance.
I also want to briefly raise the need for more research,
and in particular, more and better data. The 2018 Farm Bill
made strides in that way around data. The data that crosses the
lines between conservation and crop insurance, risk management,
financial management and more that really is comprehensive
around this farming operation.
I also just want to highlight a couple quick examples
around research and demonstration, one of which is the
Precision Conservation Management Project led by the Illinois
Corn Growers, and has received RCPP funding and is really
designed to help blend that financial management and the
conservation adoption management process. And also, I get kind
of lucky timing. Today, a project I am a part of is launching a
web-based cover crop decision support tool for farmers in
Illinois to allow them to get a sort of dashboard readout of
what modeling work or simulated cover crops are doing in those
fields. We will have a farmdoc daily article on that later
today that will provide the website and more information.
Let me just conclude with reiterating this perspective from
the farmer around working lands conservation. The importance of
those policies being relevant to issues of risk and competition
and helping adopt conservation and better compete in what is
becoming an increasingly difficult farm economy, which has been
discussed across the board. Policies that better blend farm
risk and conservation should result in a much better return on
that taxpayer investment, and there are as many ways to achieve
this as there are program components. Ultimately, the challenge
we have here is we look at these policies as on the farm
program and support side, these are very relevant to the
farmers' operation, but they raise questions about the returns
to the taxpayers. On the conservation side, we have clear
return to the taxpayer, cleaner water and less soil erosion.
But, we're challenged at times if it's relevant to the farmer
and this focus on issues of risk and management. Blending these
and looking for ways to do so, and I have a few ideas in my
written testimony. I am happy to take questions about them.
But, there is a lot here that we can explore and work with or
work towards, particularly should the next farm bill discussion
begin anytime in the near future.
With that, I am sorry I went over. I appreciate the
opportunity to be here and take questions. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Coppess follows:]
Prepared Statement of Jonathan W. Coppess, J.D., Assistant Professor of
Law and Policy, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics,
University of Illinois, Urbana, IL
Chair Spanberger, Ranking Member LaMalfa, and Members of the
Subcommittee:
Thank you for inviting me to testify today in this hearing on the
``Challenges and Successes of Conservation Programs in 2020.'' I am
currently on faculty at the University of Illinois in the Department of
Agricultural and Consumer Economics.
The focus of my work is on Federal agricultural policy and
agricultural law; I teach two courses and have a partial Extension
appointment with much of that dedicated to working with the farmdoc
project team, including articles for farmdoc daily. Much of my research
is on the history and development of American farm policy, including
conservation.
My remarks today will seek to discuss contemporary conservation
issues with some application of the history and development of policy.
I will focus my remarks almost exclusively on working lands
conservation.
If I may, I would like to begin with a bit of a story. Much of what
I understand about farming and conservation I credit to my father, Bill
Coppess. I grew up on my family's farm in western Ohio and, while I'm
not at all objective, I would argue that my Dad represents the best in
American farmers. He is a natural contrarian and experimenter, as well
as a committed conservationist who lives out a basic concept: he sees
it as his responsibility is to do leave things in a better place than
when he found them.
In 1988, as he and my Grandfather were guiding the farm out of the
economic crisis of that decade, Dad convinced Grandpa that they should
switch to no-till farming. Up to that point, I have strong memories of
riding tractor in the fall to plow the harvested field and multiple
times in the spring, tilling it up before planting. I recall snow with
layers of dirt in it blowing against the barn wall in winter; and the
pulverized soil ahead of the soybean drill.
As Dad tells it, he convinced Grandpa that they had to dive all the
way in and not merely transition. They sold all of the tillage
equipment to purchase a no-till planter and drill, and they never
looked back. But to this day, Dad can talk about the farmers in the
area who swear no-till simply won't work and the landlords he had to
convince that it wasn't trash on the fields, that he wasn't being lazy,
but that it was important for the soil even if it didn't look as nice
as the well-tilled fields.
I remember the pride he took in the return of earthworms to the
field in large numbers and what they were doing for the soil.
He put in grass waterways and buffer strips along the creeks and
ditches and was an early adopter of the Conservation Security Program
after it was created in the 2002 Farm Bill.
In fact, CSP helped he and my brother add wheat to the corn and
soybean rotation around 2007 in large part to begin cover cropping
practices because they established better in July than in the fall.
He was one of the first, if not the first, to start experimenting
with cover crops in our area. This practice has also been met with much
skepticism; the self-assured assuring themselves and anyone who would
listen that it just would not work, as well as having to explain it to
landlords.
Cover crops really brought out his experimentational side, from
adding radishes and field peas only to have the rotting plants in the
spring raise concerns that there were gas leaks, to various grasses and
mixtures.
One spring when he couldn't terminate annual rye in time, they went
ahead and drilled soybeans into the standing rye; it turned out to be
some of the best soybean yields they have yet had and the mat of dead
rye helped suppress weeds.
Walking fields at home a fence line isn't necessary, I can tell
when one of our fields ends and the neighbor's begins by the feel of
the dirt and the sounds--in our fields are insects but it is eerily
quiet in the neighbor's.
I tell these stories not just to brag on Dad--although I'm happy to
do that--but for a point about what it currently takes for conservation
to succeed in farming and what it takes for a farmer to succeed with
conservation.
It takes more work and it takes more than work; you have to be
willing to experiment and tinker; learn by trial and error, often no
small amount of error. You have to be willing to have those around you
tell you that you are wrong and explain it (sometimes painstakingly).
It also takes money.
While I would consider the family farm successful, I'd guess that
Dad has never made as much money as some of the larger, more aggressive
farmers in our area. He didn't buy new pickup trucks or turnover
equipment regularly; we never owned a boat.
But, it is another anecdote on which I want to focus because it
continues to run through my head.
Over a decade ago, they began leasing a new farm and the soil was
in bad shape. He had to convince the landlord to accept no-till and
cover cropping but over quite a few years he could show some
improvements in the soil in those fields.
But a new challenge hit; one of the large, aggressive farmers in
the area wanted the acres and offered a much higher cash rent, at a
level Dad wasn't paying and couldn't pay.
With the larger farmers this is not an uncommon advantage; they are
often able and willing to bid up cash rent and then spread out the
additional costs across a larger acreage footprint. I also wouldn't
dismiss how increasing farm program payments might contribute to this
as well.
To the landlord's credit, he had come to respect what Dad was doing
for the soil and while the rent increased it didn't increase all the
way and Dad kept the lease.
But, had the other farmer succeeded, he would have taken over the
lease and benefitted from nearly a decade of work and investment to
improve the soils. And he likely would have returned it to the state
Dad found it in when he first began farming it.
And these are what make functional and strong conservation policy
incredibly important but also realistically difficult.
It is a lot of work. But it is also an investment, one that will
not pay off for years and many practices are unlikely to ever cover
their costs.
It adds risk, like not being able to terminate a cover crop in
time. Waterways, buffers and filter strips take acreage out of
production that would produce a crop, even if at lower yields; but they
also mean having to plant and harvest around them.
But it is the competitive risk that I would argue does not get
talked about enough; this competitive risk is certainly not considered
sufficiently in farm policy, conservation, payments and crop insurance.
The farmer adopting conservation books additional cost in the
operation's management and finances; cost-share only goes so far and,
as will be discussed below, can be incredibly limited.
The 5 year contracts under CSP are helpful, but the program has
long been challenged with paperwork issues and other bureaucratic costs
(changing rules; spotty implementation; etc.). And it struggles in the
reality of leasing, landlords and tenancy.
But even a CSP payment may not make up the difference.
And like my landlord story, it is very possible that a farmer and
the taxpayer can invest in years of conservation on a farm but have it
all lost to a more aggressive farmer who will pay a higher cash rent,
skip the conservation work and maximize what he can get out of the
ground.
Farming is hyper competitive, especially at the local level and
among neighbors. Much of it comes through competition over cash rents
and the increasingly rare farmland sales. If you are investing in cover
crops and conservation you are unlikely to have the room in the budget
to pencil out top dollar land purchases or cash rent; and that has a
cascading series of consequences, some more painful than others.
If anecdote is insufficient, the numbers bear this out.
My colleague, Dr. Gary Schnitkey is arguably the foremost expert on
Midwest row crop farm management and budgeting issues. I'm including
his revenue and cost projects for central Illinois corn and soybean
farms for 2018 through the 2021 projections from a recent farmdoc daily
article (Figure 1).\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Schnitkey, G., K. Swanson and N. Paulson. ``Release of 2021
Crop Budgets.'' * farmdoc daily (10): 143, Department of Agricultural
and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
August 4, 2020, https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/08/release-of-
2021-crop-budgets.html.
* Editor's note: the article titles are hyperlinked. However, the
hyperlink for the article also follows the date of publication;
historically, the hyperlinks are published in parenthesis, in this
publication they are not.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Figure 1. Schnitkey, et al. (2020), crop budgets, farmdoc daily
Table 1. Revenue and Cost Projections for Central Illinois, Northern Illinois, 2018-2021P
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Corn Soybeans
------------------------------------------------------------------------
2018 2019 2020P 2021P 2018 2019 2020P 2021P
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yield per acre 214 191 210 212 67 58 62 62
Price per bu $3.60 $3.66 $3.25 $3.40 $9.27 $8.81 $8.25 $8.50
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
$/acre $/acre $/acre $/acre $/acre $/acre $/acre $/acre
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Crop revenue $770 $699 $683 $721 $621 $511 $512 $527
ARC/PLC 0 10 35 30 0 10 35 30
MFP payments 1 75 0 0 111 75 0 0
CFAP payments 0 26 0 0 0 11 0 0
Other Federal aid \1\ 0 0 80 0 0 0 80 0
Crop insurance proceeds 6 12 0 0 6 10 0 0
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gross Revenue $777 $822 $798 $751 $738 $617 $627 $557
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Fertilizers 126 134 125 123 32 34 31 31
Pesticides 61 54 60 60 36 33 36 36
Seed 112 107 112 113 66 63 73 73
Drying 15 28 15 15 0 1 1 1
Storage 10 10 10 10 4 4 4 4
Crop insurance 24 23 23 22 16 15 15 14
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total direct costs $348 $356 $345 $343 $154 $150 $160 $159
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Machine hire/lease 24 26 26 26 21 22 22 22
Utilities 6 6 6 6 5 5 5 5
Machine repair 28 27 27 27 24 23 23 23
Fuel and oil 21 17 17 17 18 14 14 14
Light vehicle 2 2 2 2 1 2 2 2
Mach. depreciation 63 58 58 57 54 49 56 56
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total power costs $144 $136 $136 $135 $123 $115 $122 $122
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hired labor 23 23 23 23 20 20 20 20
Building repair and rent 6 9 9 9 3 4 4 4
Building depreciation 16 15 17 17 8 8 8 8
Insurance 10 10 10 10 10 10 10 10
Misc. 10 9 9 9 10 9 9 9
Interest (non-land) 23 26 26 27 19 22 22 22
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total overhead costs $88 $92 $94 $95 $70 $73 $73 $73
Total Non-Land Costs \2\ $580 $584 $575 $573 $347 $338 $355 $354
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Operator and Land Return \3\ $197 $238 $223 $178 $391 $279 $272 $203
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cash rent 253 253 253 253 253 253 253 253
========================================================================
Farmer Return \4\ ^$56 ^$15 ^$30 ^$75 $138 $26 $19 ^$50
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ Other Federal aid is built in for 2020 based on expectations. No programs have been legislated or announced.
\2\ Sum of direct, power, and overhead costs.
\3\ Equals gross revenue minus total non-land costs, and represents a return to the land owner and farmer.
\4\ Equals Operator and land return minus cash rent.
Source: Historical values come from Illinois Farm Business Farm Management (FBFM). Summaries can be found in a
paper entitled ``Revenues and Costs for Illinois Grain Crops'' available in the management section of farmdoc.
That budget analysis for 2019 corn includes $699 per acre in crop
revenue, with $356 per acre in direct operating costs, another $136 per
acre for power costs, and overhead costs of $92 per acre. Once cash
rent is factored in at $253 per acre, the farm would be losing $138 per
acre. In 2019, he is factoring in $123 per acre in Federal assistance
for the farm budget to get back close to break-even (^$15/acre).
Soybeans fare a bit better at $26 per acre return but only because
of Federal payments and lower costs for soybeans: take out the payments
and the $511 per acre in crop revenue is consumed by costs, with cash
rent being the largest and the farmer loses $80 per acre.
If we blend these into a 50/50 corn and soybean rotation, the farm
comes out at a loss of $109 per acre without Federal payments but
barely pulls above break-even at $5.50 per acre.
It should go without saying that losing money per acre makes for a
difficult management situation.
Try adding costs for conservation.
There are only so many options for cost reductions: for corn,
fertilizer, pesticide and seed costs make up a significant share.
Gary and the team have done a lot of work on cost cutting efforts,
including: tillage; \2\ fertilizer; \3\ and harvest operations.\4\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\2\ Swanson, K., G. Schnitkey, N. Paulson, C. Zulauf and J.
Coppess. ``Cost Management: Tillage Operations.'' farmdoc daily (10):
151, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, August 18, 2020, https://
farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/08/cost-management-tillage-
operations.html.
\3\ Schnitkey, G., L. Gentry and S. Sellars. ``Cutting Fertilizer
Rates to Save Costs.'' farmdoc daily (10): 155, Department of
Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, August 25, 2020, https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/08/
cutting-fertilizer-rates-to-save-costs.html.
\4\ Swanson, K., G. Schnitkey, N. Paulson, C. Zulauf, J. Coppess
``Cost Management: Harvest Operations.'' farmdoc daily (10):158,
Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, September 1, 2020, https://
farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/09/cost-management-harvest-
operations.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
And, still, cash rents remain a substantial factor in the
budget.\5\ And it is one that may be increasingly difficult to manage
as record levels of Federal payments are made to farmers--it is tough
to negotiate lower rents when the landlord knows you are getting $80 to
$100 per acre in Federal payments promoted with great publicity.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\5\ Schnitkey, G., K. Swanson, C. Zulauf, N. Paulson and J.
Coppess. ``Cash Rents in 2020 and 2021.'' farmdoc daily (10): 147,
Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, August 11, 2020, https://
farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/08/cash-rents-in-2020-and-2021.html;
Schnitkey, G., D. Lattz, K. Swanson and C. Zulauf. ``Cash Rents in 2020
and 2021 Projections.'' farmdoc daily (10): 165, Department of
Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign, September 15, 2020, https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/
09/cash-rents-in-2020-and-2021-projections.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most straight forward practice is adding cover crops to the
rotation. Previous work with Gary and other colleagues on this for the
2018 budgets remains informative. If the corn budget estimate at the
time was about an $89 per acre loss, adding a cereal rye cover crop and
including a credit for nitrogen pushes the loss to $108 per acre, or
about an additional $20 per acre loss.\6\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\6\ Swanson, K., G. Schnitkey, J. Coppess and S. Armstrong.
``Understanding Budget Implications of Cover Crops.'' farmdoc daily
(8): 119, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University
of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, June 28, 2018, https://
farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2018/06/understanding-budget-implications-of-
covercrops.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Figure 2. Swanson, et al. (2018), farmdoc daily
Table 3. Corn Revenues and Costs, Central Illinois High Productivity 2018 Baseline Corn Budget Compared to
Budget with Cover Crops
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Baseline Rye + N Rye/Vetch Rye/Vetch + N
Budget Cereal Rye Credit Blend Credit
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yield per acre 205 205 205 205 205
Price per bu $3.60 $3.60 $3.60 $3.60 $3.60
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Gross revenue $738 $738 $738 $738 $738
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Fertilizers 130 130 130 130 130
N Credit 0 0 ^9 0 ^18
Cover Crop Seed 0 15 15 45 45
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Total direct costs $372 $387 $378 $417 $399
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Drilling 0 13 13 13 13
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Total power costs $121 $134 $134 $134 $134
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Total non-land costs $563 $591 $582 $621 $603
Operator and land return $175 $147 $156 $117 $135
===================================================================
Farmer Return ^$89 ^$117 ^$108 ^$147 ^$129
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To be fair, these are merely estimates and averages across multiple
(although actual) farms and they are only snapshots; much depends on
individual farm management.
But the challenge for conservation on working lands is clear: it
adds costs, more work, additional risk and more management complexity.
And these get translated into the competition issue as amongst farmers,
locally, nationally and around the world.
I argue that these are the critical factors relevant to working
lands conservation policy and it all can be understood by the issue of
competition.
Look again at cover crops. This is a critical practice for reducing
nutrient loss from farm fields, especially tile-drained fields in
places like central Illinois. The research on this is relatively clear
and getting better.\7\ In short, a cover crop growing during the fallow
season scavenges residual nitrogen (or nitrogen applied in the fall)
and stores it in the plant biomass. Nitrogen held by the plant is not
available for export by precipitation and spring melt and is thus
prevented from being lost to waterways. Among the benefits, cover crops
can improve the overall health of the soil by adding soil organic
matter, improving water retention or holding capacity and potentially
provide some weed suppression. They also capture and store carbon in
their biomass.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\7\ I pulled together a lot if it for an earlier law review
article. See, Coppess, Jonathan W. ``A Perspective on Agricultural
Policy in the Age of Nutrient Loss.'' Drake J. Agric. L. 23 (2018): 29.
Some of the best work on cover crops is being led by Dr. Shalamar
Armstrong at Purdue University. See e.g., Ruffatti, M.D., Roth, R.T.,
Lacey, C.G., & Armstrong, S.D. (2019). ``Impacts of nitrogen
application timing and cover crop inclusion on subsurface drainage
water quality.'' Agricultural Water Management, 211, 81-88. Nevins,
Clayton J., Corey Lacey, and Shalamar Armstrong. ``The synchrony of
cover crop decomposition, enzyme activity, and nitrogen availability in
a corn agroecosystem in the Midwest United States.'' Soil and Tillage
Research 197 (2020): 104518. Roth, Richard T., et al. ``A cost analysis
approach to valuing cover crop environmental and nitrogen cycling
benefits: A central Illinois on farm case study.'' Agricultural systems
159 (2018): 69-77.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
The benefits to the farmer are likely small and incremental, taking
years of cost to get improvements in soil health while other farmers
make up deficiencies with fertilizer and intensity in the short run
allowing them to out-compete.
For cover crops, the most immediate and significant benefits accrue
off the farm, however. Less nitrogen in the waterways improves drinking
water, lakes and rivers, and should contribute to a decrease in hypoxic
or dead zones such as in the Gulf of Mexico, or algal blooms such as in
western Lake Erie.
A cost-share program such as the Environmental Quality Incentives
Program (EQIP) can certainly help; at $45.34 per acre for a basic cover
crop practice in Illinois the payment should cover the cost
differences.\8\ According to NRCS data, Illinois has averaged about $13
million per fiscal year in EQIP financial assistance. At that payment
rate, the program could pay for 288,677 acres of cover crops in
Illinois; according to the Census of Agriculture, there is just over 24
million acres of cropland in Illinois. By statute, 50% of EQIP funds
are marked for livestock cutting the total potential for EQIP cover
crops down to 144,339 acres or about 0.6% of the cropland in the state.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\8\ U.S. Dept. of Agric., Natural Resources Conservation Service,
Illinois Payment Schedules, https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/
detail/national/programs/financial/?cid=nrcs
eprd1328235 (accessed, Sept. 28, 2020).
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
This highlights another challenge for conservation policy; there
has yet to be enough funding available to sufficiently meet the need.
For EQIP to pay for cover crops on all 24 million acres of cropland in
Illinois would cost over a $1 billion each fiscal year.
Nationally, we've averaged just over 330 million acres of total
cropland used for crops and about 250 million in the major row crops;
320 million acres of harvested cropland per the 2017 Census.
Take the Conservation Stewardship Program as another example; at
the $18 per acreage average payment rate, the 320 million acres of
harvested cropland would require $5.76 billion each fiscal year, which
exceeds the entire baseline for conservation programs in the farm bill
(average $5.4 billion per fiscal year).
The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the 2018 Farm Bill
will spend an average of $20 billion each fiscal year on farmers
through ARC/PLC program payments, crop insurance and conservation.\9\
This comes out to about 42% of the funds on crop insurance, 31% of the
funds on ARC/PLC, and the $26.8 billion for conservation over 5 years
constitutes 27% of the funds.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\9\ Congressional Budget Office, ``Details About Baseline
Projections for Selected Programs: USDA Mandatory Farm Programs''
(March 2020): https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2020-03/51317-2020-03-
usda.pdf.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
According to USDA records, the average acres insured by crop
insurance from 2010 to 2019 was 286 million and the average base acres
for ARC/PLC was 253.5 million, while the average acres under
conservation contracts was just over 50 million; working lands programs
account for about half (24 million acres) of the conservation total.
Figure 3 provides the annual acreage per category.
Figure 3. Total Acres by Category (USDA)
Total Program Acres
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
(USDA: RMA, FSA, NRCS).
Clear from this overview, the acres enrolled in conservation
programs lag far behind the other two categories and far in excess of
the differences in funding. If we use harvested cropland in the 2017
Census for comparison, insured acres are 89% of total harvested, base
acres are 79% and conservation acres are 16% of total harvested.
The history of each category of policy development may offer some
insights into these disparities. All three categories of programs
originated with the New Deal efforts of the 1930s.
Farm support policy was enacted in 1933 with the Agricultural
Adjustment Act. Within 5 years, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938
had established the basic parameters of the parity system: price
supporting, non-recourse loans (forfeiture if prices were below loan
rates); acreage allotments for reduction or diversion; and marketing
quotas if approved by farmer referendum. In 1973, Congress modified the
system significantly by prioritizing income supporting deficiency
payments when prices were below a target price. Loan rates were
established below target prices as a further backstop on low prices.
Finally, the system of payments was decoupled by the 1996 Farm Bill,
which was modified in 2002 by reintroducing target prices; the 2008,
2014 and 2018 Farm Bills also included revenue-based (prices times
yields) policy, known known as Agriculture Risk Coverage (ARC).
Throughout the more than eighty years of farm support policy, low
prices has been the overwhelming focus.
Crop insurance was first created in the Agricultural Adjustment Act
of 1938 but was initially only for wheat. It would develop slowly;
little used, expensive and ineffective, the George H.W. Bush
Administration proposed eliminating it in favor of ad hoc disaster
assistance in 1990. It was the Agricultural Risk Protection Act of 2000
that installed crop insurance as the primary risk management vehicle.
Critical were the permanent inclusion of revenue-based insurance
policies with major crops in many areas able to insure up to 85% of
their revenue, as well as a substantial increase in the amount of the
insurance premium covered by the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation.
Today, on average, 62% of total premiums are paid for by the Federal
taxpayer. Here again, the increase in crop insurance participation can
be partially linked to the inclusion of price risk in the form of
revenue policies.
Conservation policy developed in an entirely different manner. It
first came into existence as a soil erosion control policy during the
catastrophic dust storms of the Dust Bowl with the Soil Erosion Control
Act of 1935. Less than a year later when the Supreme Court nullified
the 1933 AAA as unconstitutional, Congress responded immediately by
enacting the Soil Conservation and Domestic Allotment Act of 1936. The
1936 Act paid farmers to reduce planting of crops considered soil-
depleting (e.g., corn, wheat and cotton) and increase planting of soil-
conserving crops (e.g., grasses and legumes). Notably, Congress
appropriated roughly $500 million for the program, which adjusted for
inflation to 2020 dollars would be over $9 billion per fiscal year. The
goal of the program, however, was less about conservation than about
helping farm income by reducing planted acres of oversupplied
crops.\10\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\10\ See, Coppess, J. ``The Conservation Question, Part 2: Lessons
Written in Dust.'' farmdoc daily (9): 200, Department of Agricultural
and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
October 24, 2019, https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2019/10/the-
conservation-question-part-2-lessons-written-in-dust.html; Coppess, J.
``The Conservation Question, Part 3: Lessons in Settling Dust.''
farmdoc daily (9): 210, Department of Agricultural and Consumer
Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, November 7,
2019, https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2019/11/the-conservation-
question-part-3-lessons-in-settling-dust.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conservation was effectively replaced by the 1938 AAA and then
largely lost during World War II and the Korean War. It was the Soil
Bank program created in the Agricultural Act of 1956 that re-instituted
a version of conservation policy. The Soil Bank included two programs:
(1) the acreage reserve paid farmers to reduce planted acres of
oversupplied program crops by diverting them into conservation purposes
in a short-term (3 years or less) contracts; and (2) a conservation
reserve paid farmers to remove less productive acres from farming and
place them in a long-term (up to 10 years) contract and under
conservation cover. The Soil Bank was inexplicably short-lived; the
acreage reserve was not renewed for the 1959 crop and the conservation
reserve was allowed to expire after 1960.\11\ At its peak, the acreage
reserve removed just over 21 million acres from production and the
conservation reserve peaked at 28.7 million acres in 1960.\12\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\11\ See, Coppess, J. ``The Conservation Question, Part 5: Seeds of
the Soil Bank.'' farmdoc daily (10): 3, Department of Agricultural and
Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, January
9, 2020, https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/01/the-conservation-
question-part-5-seeds-of-the-soil-bank.html; Coppess, J. ``The
Conservation Question, Part 6: Development of the Soil Bank.'' farmdoc
daily (10): 13, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, January 24, 2020, https://
farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/01/the-conservation-question-part-6-
development-of-the-soil-bank.html; Coppess, J. ``The Conservation
Question, Part 7: Losing the Soil Bank.'' farmdoc daily (10): 31,
Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, February 20, 2020, https://
farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/02/the-conservation-question-part-7-
losing-the-soil-bank.html.
\12\ See, Coppess, J., G. Schnitkey, N. Paulson, K. Swanson and C.
Zulauf. ``Production Controls & Set Aside Acres, Part 1: Reviewing
History.'' farmdoc daily (10): 117, Department of Agricultural and
Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, June
26, 2020, https://farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2020/06/production-
controls-set-aside-acres-part-1-reviewing-history.html; Coppess, J.
``The Conservation Question, Part 4: An Overview of Acres.'' farmdoc
daily (9): 215, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, November 14, 2019, https://
farmdocdaily.illinois.edu/2019/11/the-conservation-question-part-4-an-
overview-of-acres.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Importantly, both the 1936 and 1956 programs used conservation as a
method to remove acres from production because of an oversupplied
commodity situation; this was conservation in service to price support
policy. It was the Food Security Act of 1985 that built the foundation
of modern conservation policy. During the depths of the 1980s farm
economic crisis, Congress created the modern Conservation Reserve
Program (CRP), as well as conservation compliance. CRP pays an annual
rental payment to remove environmentally sensitive acres from
production for 10 to 15 years. Conservation compliance is a quasi-
regulatory policy that requires compliance for eligibility for Federal
farm payments and, since 2014, for the crop insurance premium subsidy.
Compliance is based on having a plan to control erosion in place for
highly erodible land (HEL), and for wetlands, eligibility is lost if
wetlands are drained for farming or if previously drained wetlands are
used for production.
CRP as created in 1985 was also an acreage reduction program,
albeit with a stronger focus on conservation and the environment.
Working lands conservation was not implemented until decoupling of farm
policy in 1996 with EQIP, and then with a major increase of funding in
the 2002 Farm Bill, as well as creation of the Conservation Security
Program (CSP). The 2008 Farm Bill modified CSP and renamed it the
Conservation Stewardship Program, with a goal of increasing acres by
roughly 10 million each year.
A review of the history and development of these policies helps
highlight the significant challenges for working lands conservation
policy. Acres enrolled in conservation are far below program and
insured acres but bringing them to an equivalent level with payments
would likely be prohibitively expensive in the baseline. As such,
funding is insufficient to meet the need on the scale of acres that
remain in production.
Possibly more important, working lands conservation lacks any
connection to farm risk issues that are the most relevant to the
farmers who would necessarily undertake the conservation practices.
Farm support programs have always involved market price risk in some
form or fashion; crop insurance acceptance and popularity took off when
price risk was incorporated through revenue-based policies. Working
lands conservation policies do not incorporate price or yield, or
revenue, risks.
And here we arrive at the most fundamental issue for all of farm
policy. Farm program payments are relevant to the farmer but cannot
answer the toughest question: what is the return on the taxpayer's
investment? The massive increase in payments by the Trump
Administration only magnifies this challenge. Crop insurance can answer
this question better because it is an insurance program helping farmers
remain in operation after disaster strikes in a crop year (yield losses
or in-crop year price losses).
Conservation policy can answer that question, funds paid to achieve
conservation on working lands represent an important return on the
taxpayer investment. Working lands are a large source of nutrient
loading that cause problems for water quality, as well as for soil
erosion and for the need for irrigation in the drier climates. Working
lands conservation policy is not, however, as relevant to the farmer
because it does not incorporate prices or yield risk, and with
insufficient funding it is not able to reach the scale and scope
necessary for the conservation challenges. At the farm level, the lack
of relevance to risk and the shortfalls in funding limit the ability of
conservation policy to help those farmers adopting conservation
practices on working lands compete with other farmers who do not.
One argument for reconsidering conservation policy results from
these observations. If working lands policies incorporated elements of
price and yield (or revenue) risk, they would be more relevant to the
farmers. For one thing, conservation assistance would increase in years
of low prices and incomes (or revenue) but decrease in years when the
farmer received strong revenue or income from higher prices. It would
also help with scale and cost; more acres could receive conservation
practices but at a far lower cost in the CBO baseline, similar to how
farm programs and crop insurance operate.
An example can be found in a concept introduced during the 2018
Farm Bill debate but which was not included in the bill. Illinois
Representatives Bustos and Bost introduced H.R. 4988, the
``Conservation Assistance Loan Act of 2018.'' In full disclosure, I had
the privilege to work on this concept with Illinois Farm Bureau, and
they advocated including it in the 2018 Farm Bill. I raise it here more
as an example and for general consideration.
In short, the conservation option in the MAL program would permit
farmers who agree to undertake conservation practices to receive a
higher loan rate. The bill used a floating average based on 75% of the
national average marketing year average price for the previous 5 years
to set the loan rate. For example, for corn in 2020 that loan rate
would be $2.67 per bushel instead of $2.20 per bushel. In addition, if
the producer agreed to plant cover crops the loan rate would include an
additional $0.20 per bushel.
Critical to this is how the loan program works. The farmer borrows
at the loan rate on bushels already harvested and in the bin. Nine
months later when the loan is to be repaid, the average prices at the
time determine repayment. If prices are above the loan rate, the farmer
repays the entire loan (plus minimal interest). If, however, the prices
are below the loan rate the farmer pays back at the lower market price
and the rest of the loan is forgiven (a loan gain). This provides some
buffer against price risk and for a farmer adopting conservation, the
higher loan rate would be a better buffer.
It is an example of one way to begin thinking about incorporating
price and/or yield risk into working lands conservations (or vice
versa). It also serves as an example about how programs could be
designed to help level the competitive playing field; a farmer
receiving a higher loan rate because she or he is implementing
conservation practices would improve their competitive position as
compared to farmers who did not implement the practices and received a
lower loan rate. The basic aspects of this concept could be generally
applicable across programs or policies.
For what it is worth, I tend to think that a loan concept holds
particular appeal for working lands conservation policy. In short, it
provides funding to the farmer in advance and likely as many
conservation implementation costs are being implemented (e.g., cover
crops). It also avoids some of the bureaucratic challenges about having
farmers check all the boxes in advance; because repayment of the loan
can be tied to performance on conservation practices, the check on
farmer compliance can happen later and based on actual efforts. There
are, of course, many details and issues that would have to be worked
out on any policy along these lines. I raise it not as a fully designed
concept but merely a matter for consideration; food for thought about
how working lands conservation and price or yield risk can be blended
into a single program.
Before I close, and at the risk of crossing Subcommittee
jurisdictional lines, I would like to highlight the vital importance of
research, education, extension, demonstration and outreach to
conservation in general, and to working lands conservation, in
particular. Land-grant universities and the Extension system are
critical partners and leaders but the challenges in the wake of the
[COVID]-19 pandemic are magnifying many underlying issues and
challenges.
For conservation and research, the critical need is data; data that
crosses over with farm programs and crop insurance/risk management;
data from farms and field trials that can be used to demonstrate
further to other farmers; remote sensing data and more. The 2018 Farm
Bill took a big, important step on this front, but more is needed.
In addition, I want to highlight a couple of projects. The Illinois
Corn Growers have taken a significant step towards advancing
conservation and nutrient loss reduction with the Precision
Conservation Management (PCM) project that was accepted in the Regional
Conservation Partnership Program. This is an effort to combine farm
financial data and business operational management with conservation
adoption, implementation and management. It has incredible and
outstanding potential to advance conservation and is already producing
great data and information for farmers to use. Full disclosure, I have
had a minor role in the project and continue to provide in-kind
contributions. For those interested, please check out the website:
https://www.precisionconservation.org/.
Finally, I have been working with a group of programmers and
researchers at the University of Illinois on a project to develop a
web-based decision support tool for cover crop practices in Illinois.
I'm proud to announce that we are launching the web-based tool today
and it can be found here: https://covercrop.ncsa.illinois.
edu/. This project has been a partnership with the National Center for
Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) on campus to take open-source
modeling for in-field cover crop growth and make it usable, accessible
and understandable in a web application. More information will be
forthcoming in a farmdoc daily article that will be published today.
This is merely the first (beta) version of the tool and we will be
improving it, adding functionality and features, and expanding it as we
go forward. I want to think the Illinois Nutrient Research & Education
Council for generous funding and technical advice on this project, as
well as the project team that has done such great work. I think it
holds potential not just for farmers and the increasing adoption of
cover crops, but as a potential example of a method for advancing the
demonstration and translation of agricultural research, helping move
more of it from the laboratories and field trials into the farmer's
hands and fields.
In conclusion, I appreciate the Subcommittee offering the
opportunity to provide extensive thoughts on this important topic. As
you undertake efforts to further consider, and reconsider, working
lands conservation policy, I want to reiterate my encouragement for
taking into that consideration issues of farm-level competition and the
relevancy of the policies and programs to the farmer. Better
incorporation of farm risks such as prices and yields can help with
program design, making it more relevant to the farmers needed to adopt
the practices and likely helping them better compete in the
increasingly difficult farm economy. Doing so might also help expand
conservation practices to far more acres without a substantial increase
in Federal spending. Policies that better blend farm risk issues and
conservation should result in a much better return on the taxpayer's
investment in agriculture. There are as many ways to achieve this as
there are program design components.
The Chair. Thank you so much, Mr. Coppess.
At this time, Members will be recognized for questions in
order of seniority, alternating between Majority and Minority
Members. We will be recognized for 5 minutes each in order to
allow us to get to as many questions as possible. Please keep
your microphones muted until you are recognized in order to
minimize background noise. When 1 minute is left, the light
will turn yellow, signaling time is close to expiring.
I will begin by recognizing myself for 5 minutes, and I
would like to draw on a theme that I heard from Mr. Coppess and
Mr. Patterson.
Mr. Coppess, you told a brief story about the efforts that
your father began undertaking on his farm as early as 1998. New
practices, no-till, cover crop. You mentioned some of the
skepticism that he still continues to experience from his
neighbors.
And then Mr. Patterson, you were talking about the
shortages of qualified professionals, and I was wondering if
both of you could comment on what you see in terms of workforce
needs, in terms of expertise. What are those shortages that we
should be looking at that would ensure that we could continue
moving forward in the conservation space in a place that
benefits the local economy, benefits farmers and producers; and
certainly, has the overall positive benefits of conservation
practices?
And I will open it up to either of you to begin with your
feedback to that very general question.
Mr. Coppess. Steve, go ahead.
Mr. Patterson. Excuse me?
The Chair. I believe he opened it to you, Mr. Patterson,
first.
Mr. Patterson. Okay. I think one of the biggest challenges
based on visiting with people that work with the Commonwealth
of Virginia--the nutrient management specialists that work with
the Commonwealth of Virginia. One of the bigger challenges is
just the number of people that write plans, the people that
[inaudible], and the ability to partner with each other to make
sure we get as much acreage out of these plans we possibly can.
It does go back to what has been mentioned today, which is more
funding, both in the state and the Federal level, going
forward.
The Chair. And Mr. Coppess, would you want to add anything
to that?
Mr. Coppess. Well, I absolutely agree that the personnel on
this is incredibly important. I want to just say briefly that
having had the chance to work with Chief Norton when he was a
detailee on the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
Committee, I appreciated hearing and seeing him today, even
virtually, and know he does great work.
But, as an example of the kind of incredible effort that
comes out of the agencies to help out and help farmers as they
sort through the variety of issues that you need around
managing and putting in place and maintaining conservation
practices. So, that is critical. Natural--the water
conservation districts are incredibly important as well, and
investing in these infrastructures, particularly at this time
with stressed state budgets, as was mentioned, state and local
budget challenges. I see a lot of opportunity there to invest
in the people that help carry this out and help farmers adopt.
The Chair. Thank you very much, Mr. Coppess.
And that leads me beautifully into my next question, which
is focused on COVID-19 and the public health crisis. As you
mentioned, state and local budgets have been hit hard, and
especially when some had only just begun recovering from a
prior economic recession. I have been a strong advocate for
Federal support to state and local governments in any future
COVID relief related package, and given the Soil and Water
Conservation Districts and their dependence on state and local
funds, in addition to Federal resources.
Mr. Palmer, could you comment on what challenges we might
see if there is not additional support to state and local
governments, and what that might mean for conservation efforts
across the country?
Mr. Palmer. Yes, Madam Chair. I thank you for the
opportunity to address this. We have a system that is put in
place based on partnerships. The relationship between the
citizenry of my county with our local Soil and Water
Conservation District board, and our relationship with our
state and national partners. And then that all helps the
producers to better tend their land and provide that safe and
secure food supply that we all rely upon.
Given the fact that budgets are being stressed because of
these outside influences from COVID, the sales tax that is
coming into the State of Iowa is going to be very, very light
compared to what it was just because so many businesses have
been closed. Those dollars, they are going to have to readjust
budgets. They are going to have to look at where they can cut
prices, places where they can make budget cuts. We are very
afraid that that can affect our local county budgets in many
ways, and put more of the management onto the shoulders of our
local citizenry with property taxes and other ways.
The Chair. Thank you very much, Mr. Palmer, and thank you
to the witnesses again for your answers and for being here
today.
I now recognize the gentleman from Georgia for 5 minutes.
Mr. Allen. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, panel,
for being with us today.
My first question is to all of the panelists, and of
course, we heard about the problems with staffing. But from the
standpoint of challenges that you have witnessed that prevent
producers from adopting conservation practices, what is the
resistance to adopting these practices? Could all of you
comment on that, please?
Mr. Patterson. I can comment on that. This is Steve
Patterson.
I specifically asked that question of an individual
[inaudible] here in Virginia, and his answer was kind of
surprising to me. He goes I almost hate to admit this, but the
producer who struggles--myself to talk about himself. Well, for
us, Southern States, the opportunity there is we--I really
think that we need to start communicating more together, and
that means sitting down with the Department of Conservation,
sitting with the NRCS more often. Understanding challenges and
deciding to help bridge the gap. I think we'll get there so we
can help bridge the gap.
Mr. Allen. Would any of the other panelists care to comment
on the challenges with farmers adopting these programs, farmers
and ranchers?
Mr. Palmer. Yes, I would take a shot at that. One thing
that we are dealing with is a generational transition from
older farming ways and habits to different equipment, different
technologies that we are able to work with today, but that
conception that has been supported over time by nutrient
recommendations, other things that we have gotten over time
that have not caught up with the innovation now are still a
hold back to the way things are done.
Also, the disappearance of [inaudible] from our landscape
in Iowa, for example, has really changed the way that light
could be utilized. Where I could use cover crops in my
operation to grow beef, others don't have that luxury, and it
makes it difficult for them to think about growing something
that is going to compete with a crop and the management that
comes along with it without being able to fully realize the
long-term effects of something that they are going to be
starting on the soil and the effects it has on the soil.
Mr. Allen. Mr. Patterson, with regard to the staffing issue
and the advent of technology in dealing with conservation
practices, can you tell me what we have been able to do
technically to accelerate this program and to be good
conservationists, and how that affects staffing and the
abilities of staff to deal with new technologies in the
conservation area?
Mr. Patterson. If I understand your question right, I think
the technologies are being adaptive. I think that I would say
agreement that technology industry into the fields, such as
precision ag technology, communication technology. Once again,
it is a matter of more of a team effort between government and
industry working together to make sure the producers have all
ends available. And I am not sure I answered your question.
Mr. Allen. Right. Yes, what I was trying to tie together is
the staffing issues versus technology. As we know, technology
can reduce the requirement of the number of people involved in
a process in manufacturing and other industries are adopting
that. But you bring up a really good point, and I will finish
up as my time runs out with this.
It sounds like--well, the biggest problem I have with the
Federal Government is this one size fits all top down approach,
and it really looks like we need to empower our farmers and
ranchers to work together with the Federal Government to come
up with the right practices.
Thank you, Madam Chair, and I yield back.
The Chair. The chair now recognizes the gentlewoman from
Maine for 5 minutes.
Ms. Pingree. Thank you, Madam Chair, thank you to all the
panelists. I really appreciated hearing from all of you, and
thought there was a lot of interesting information there.
Mr. Coppess, you talked a little bit about the point that
programs are about doing the right thing, but also conservation
needs to make financial sense for the farmers, which is
certainly a huge challenge. What potential do you see for
additional incentives for things like carbon sequestration,
either government letter from the private-sector in addressing
that issue, as opposed to another revenue source?
Mr. Coppess. Yes, thank you, Congresswoman. I actually see
incredible potential there, because what we are talking about
setting up a market or getting that market jump-started, is no
small hurdle. I don't want to underplay that. But the idea that
those practices began--whether it is ecosystem services or
private market, those practices at the farm level, that extra
work, that extra time, the complexity in management the farmer
puts into it, gets rewarded back based on what they are doing.
It is an incredible opportunity.
I talked about the competitive aspect of farmers. I think
of the idea of a carbon market or ecosystem market as really
turning that farmer competition in a healthy way towards trying
to maximize what they can restore in soils through cover crops
and that sort of thing. I think it is a great opportunity.
Ms. Pingree. Just a quick follow-up. A lot of conversation
goes on about the best kinds of measurements. Is it about
inputs or about performance? Also, who should be engaged in
there? Is there a fair amount of gains? Is this a role for the
USDA? Do you have an opinion on those topics?
Mr. Coppess. USDA would have an important role in all of
that, helping measure it, in helping work with the farmers, and
particularly that technical assistance around adopting those
practices in the field.
A shameless plug, our land-grant universities and extension
system are an incredible partner, along with the Soil and Water
Conservation Districts as well.
Ms. Pingree. And I hope I can at least support your
shameless plug, all the important and under-funded and
underutilized.
Just another thing--and while I appreciate all the other
panelists, I don't want to shun them, but I just have another
question from your perspective.
You have done some analyses on farmers' financial decision
making as we were talking about it, and how these practices fit
into management and budget choices. Can you talk a little bit
about how you consider climate change-related risk, for
example, reduced yields for extended drought like most states
are experiencing--we are even experiencing it in Maine, which
is unusual--when you are conducting those analyses, and just as
a second part of that, how do we make sure the crop insurance
programs recognize the climate-related risks and better
incorporate conservation practices that might mitigate them,
two big explosive topics?
Mr. Coppess. That is a very big and difficult question. I
appreciate it.
We have to do a better job, just to be perfectly frank,
across the board as we examine risks for farming. And it is not
just droughts and wildfires and floods, it is things like the
incredibly short planting season being drastically impacted by
spring rains and that sort of thing. And if you think about a
cover crop practice that you have to terminate in that same
time period, this just adds to that set of challenges.
Beginning to do a lot more, the data issue, the data needs,
like the 2018 Farm Bill included more work around data. To me,
particularly with crop insurance, it is a data intensive
effort, so a lot of that has to be moving in that direction.
But it is a challenge. It is such an unknown, and the more we
build in resilience efforts, the more we are thinking about
this not just in terms of can I get in this year and make it
through, although that can't be discounted, but what does this
mean longer-term? If I can work this in and begin to be more
resilient over the longer-term, those are important factors.
But I don't want to discount the difficulty that is going to
have.
Ms. Pingree. Absolutely, but it is really important.
One last little sort of section of this, and this has come
up with a couple of other people. And again, I am just going to
ask you the question. This whole issue about when you are a
tenant farmer, you are renting, you do those inputs. You really
had a great example of your father's experience. But do you
have a little bit more to say about how to get more landowner
buy-in in those programs, and what way to incentivize that?
Mr. Coppess. Well, I am not sure how necessarily to
incentivize. I think that is a question that is one really to
chew through and work on and wrestle over.
One of the things we have been trying to do through the
Farm Back Project that I also know some schools have been doing
as well is working on that lease. Can we--so we have created
conservation addendums for this sort of model farm leases that
we provide out that are available on the website, and we have
done some webinars around that to say look, this is a contract
between you and the farmer or you and the landlord. The more
you negotiate and talk about these things, explain what you are
doing--which again is an experience my Dad had. The more you
explain no-till, that it is not just leaving trash on the
field, but it is actually doing beneficial work for the soil,
or why is something growing green in early March, right?
Working through those issues in advance in that lease is a huge
step forward for the farmers and the landlord, because they are
working those issues out, and everybody can then better
understand it.
That is one area having the near-term incentives and all
that is a difficult topic to work out.
Ms. Pingree. I totally understand, and again, thank you. I
am out of time, but again, I have a couple of other questions
and I will submit it for the record.
But thank you again to the other panelists, and a
particular shout-out to Ducks Unlimited. You guys do such great
work in all of our states, and I appreciate your plowing
through during this challenging time.
Thank you, Madam Chair. I yield back.
The Chair. The chair now recognizes the Ranking Member for
5 minutes.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you again, Madam Chair.
For Dr. Waldrop from Ducks Unlimited, again, thank you for
being part of this panel here. I wanted to ask you a couple
thoughts about the issue with the Klamath Lake and Klamath
Basin and the refuge up there, and what are your thoughts on,
and what is Ducks Unlimited's view, on what should be going on
there, and what can they do to help push for the water supply
that we need, et cetera? What is DU's involvement on that?
Dr. Waldrop. I don't have a lot of details for you on
Klamath. I know we are involved up there and we are working
with partners and everything. I would have to defer to our
regional specialist for details regarding any of the issues. Is
there something specific regarding that? Are you talking like
as far as water supply and everything else?
Mr. LaMalfa. Well, we have, as you know, a terrible duck
kill up there on the lake with a water supply problem that we
could go all day on that itself here. But the water has to come
through the agricultural system up there in order to reach the
refuges, and the supply was short this season, even though many
of us thought there was plenty of water in the lake. Is DU part
of advocacy for more water through the ag system into the
refuge? Because again, we have a disaster in the Pacific Flyway
in the making with the duck kill going on up there.
Dr. Waldrop. Yes, sir. In that respect, absolutely we are
working, again, with partners and doing other things that we
can do to help deliver water. That is a lot of what we have
been working on as far as projects to help with that water
delivery and to help with the Klamath Lake and refuge, and
ensure that those water supplies are there.
Of course, water is a huge issue in California, as well as
all throughout the western states, so it is something that is
always being worked on and improved. But, through the
partnerships that were encouraged to work on projects that will
help with the water delivery in that situation.
Mr. LaMalfa. Yes, absolutely.
Dr. Waldrop. You are right, it is a big problem, and with
all of the ag partners out there, whether it is rice or
anything else and being able to flood those waters at different
times to provide important nutrients in food and water for
waterfowl is extremely important, which goes back to a lot of
those programs that are so critical in that area and throughout
that region to ensure not only good ag production, but also
with habitat, food, water for waterfowl as well.
Mr. LaMalfa. Yes, the rice is, of course, \1/2\ million
acres of it 2, 3 hours, 4 hours south of that area is a good
partner. A lot of the nesting goes on up north there into
Klamath, but it does emphasize that we need to work with NRCS
to have more nesting and cover to be able to be set-aside,
maybe actually in rice country too, since the lake situation is
pretty dire. Again, I was up there some weeks ago there. We
went out on an airboat and we were recovering a lot of dead
duck carcasses, but also saved some live ones that were
surviving. And they had a duck hospital up there on one edge of
the lake area, and they were getting a 90 percent recovery on
the rescued sick ducks. It was pretty amazing.
But we do need to have maybe more partnership opportunities
with NRCS down in rice country for fallowed ground, and the
ability to have more nesting and more habitat farther down in
the valley too and spread this risk out.
Dr. Waldrop. I think that would be a fabulous idea, and
with a lot of the wetlands being lost all through, Sacramento
Valley and all through there, that rice really has become a
very important part of the nutrient availability, whether it is
in nesting or food availability, much more than it was decades
ago. So, it is very important to those programs.
Mr. LaMalfa. All right. Well, I have already eaten up all
my time, so thank you for that.
I will yield back.
The Chair. The chair now recognizes Representative Axne
from Iowa.
Mrs. Axne. Thank you, Chair Spanberger, and thank you to
all of our witnesses for being here today. I am going to go
straight to my Iowa friend.
Tim, I first want to quickly talk about the derecho that
hit Iowa just a few weeks ago, and certainly I am thankful that
most of our district wasn't as impacted as other parts of Iowa.
But with your position in Iowa agriculture, what have you been
hearing about the recovery efforts for our farmers?
Mr. Palmer. Thanks for that question, Congresswoman. I
don't think anybody knows really what we are dealing with right
now. The recommendations to destroy a crop or try to harvest
it, it is going to be a trail of tears until we get through
well into next year trying to figure out what the effects of
leaving a crop and working it into the soil as opposed to
trying to harvest it. There is just no way to plan for
something like that. Every conservation practice in the world
wouldn't offset the damage that was done there. Hopefully the
nutrients that are recaptured can help buffer the producers
that didn't harvest this year, and with the addition of the
crop insurance, they can survive to grow another year. But it
is going to be very difficult.
Mrs. Axne. Well, thank you for that update. My colleagues
have heard me talk about this before, but just so that everyone
who is watching and who is on this is aware, Iowa has suffered
a rare derecho which swept across the Midwest. We have never
seen this storm before, and unfortunately, we had hardly any
notice to prepare for it. It destroyed farmland, buildings,
equipment, leaving millions without power. Actually for weeks,
thousands still didn't have power. And then of course, last
year we had historic flooding in my district well into
Missouri, which folks are still recovering from. This couldn't
be a more appropriate hearing today because we are seeing these
unusual weather events due to changes in climate happening more
and more, and the more that we can do from a conservation
perspective to help protect against this impact, the better off
we will be.
Tim, I wanted to ask you. You touched upon this in your
written testimony, but I would be interested to have you expand
a bit on it. How can conservation programs make operations more
resilient to help farmers recover from disasters after they
occur?
The Chair. And if I may interrupt quickly? Could all the
witnesses mute their microphones if they are not answering? We
are getting some feedback in the hearing room. Thank you.
Mr. Palmer. Okay. Okay now?
The Chair. Perfect.
Mr. Palmer. Thanks again for the question, Congresswoman.
When you are utilizing the current conservation practices
that we have, we have longstanding conservation practices that
have been vetted and enhanced over for decades. Terraces and
ponds and the structures that we have put on the landscape that
help mitigate the effects of flooding, our P.L. 83-566 Program.
A lot of producers are not in those areas maybe under an
organized watershed program, but their ability to have access
to the technical support to build terraces and waterways and
buffer areas is going to help retain their soil, if they can
retain their soil, it is going to be there for production for
the next year, and more sustainable. And if they add in the
current knowledge that we have with cover crops and soil health
measures, being able to store carbon with growing plants more
of the year, it is going to eventually affect their bottom line
because of the reduced inputs that they are going to be putting
into a crop.
Mrs. Axne. Well thank you, and I also want to make sure
that farmers are part of any climate-focused efforts in
Congress and that our farmers have buy-in as well so we can
work towards that more resilient environment to ensure our
farmers have that opportunity.
Your written testimony succinctly laid out how landowners
work with conservation districts, and you called it a gold
standard. I am so grateful for that.
Can you speak a little bit more to how districts and local
working groups help inform NRCS in delivering the programs
available through the farm bill that can help us create more
buy-in from producers?
Mr. Palmer. Dealing with the COVID problem has really
opened a door for us with outreach to more people with the Zoom
technology where we have the capability of producers and
general citizens that haven't been involved or haven't had an
understanding of what conservation districts can do to make
their own little environment better. We have had the
opportunity to reach out to them and get their input without
trying to set up a meeting where they had to drive and sit
there and wonder what this was all about. But the one-on-one
that we have had the opportunity with is really important. That
local input of what is desired at Madison County, for example,
what resources do we need to treat? We need to be
environmentally sound in our ag production, but the resource
area, the oak savannahs, the wetlands, the things that we can
provide as natural habitat that also have recreational
opportunities, we take that input from them. We turn that into
a plan, but we pass that on to our state headquarters in Des
Moines, it is part of the overall planning for Madison County
and for the state and for the country to take all that local
information, turn it into programs that fit those priorities.
Mrs. Axne. Well thank you. We are out of time so I yield
back, but I am looking forward to working with you more on this
in the future.
Mr. Palmer. Absolutely. Thank you.
The Chair. The chair now recognizes the gentleman from
Ohio.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you, Madam Chair.
My question is for Mr. Coppess. Mr. Coppess, good morning.
While we passed the most recent farm bill not even 2 years
ago, the next farm bill is always in front of us. This summer,
you and your colleagues at farmdoc wrote a piece that world
market conditions suggest set-asides are not an effective farm
policy for corn and soybeans. What led you to this conclusion,
and in your view, if the next farm bill were to go all in on
supply management programs such as acreage set-asides, what
would be the impact on our farmers, our rural communities in
the U.S. as an ag exporter?
Mr. Coppess. Thank you, Congressman, and certainly, the
set-aside issue is no easy matter to unfold. It has a long
history, and so we were trying to break down what the variety
of challenges are. All right, so if you take acres out of
production in America for world-traded commodities, then we are
going to see acreage expand somewhere else. Brazil is a great
example, and if they continue burning rain forests to plant
soybeans, we have not helped anybody's situation out much.
What we were really focusing on was the historic set-aside.
Every farmer puts ten or 15 percent in a set-aside program in
order to be eligible for program assistance, and we find that
it is a challenge around the world market situation. It is a
challenge around even controlling supply. In fact,
historically, set-aside acres have been less than effective in
controlling supply, largely because what you are going to do is
put your worst acres under set-aside and you end up maximizing
production on the acres that remain in farming.
And so, one of the things that we see is just that this
policy, the set-aside, not to reuse the word, it was terminated
in 1996 when we went decoupled acres in a different farm policy
setup. And so, we do not think that there is a real value,
particularly if we are looking to improve prices and those
things.
That being said, I also think, again, talking about
conservation, there may be avenues in which it isn't a set-
aside program, but there are a lot of things we can do in
fields across this country from buffers and waterways and other
things that will be both conservation-focused and work in on
the acres that are farming.
We continue to try to sort this out, and this is a question
that has come up quite a bit from farmers. It is also
indicative of just the tough economic environment they find
themselves in to ask about set-aside.
Mr. Balderson. Okay, thank you.
My follow-up question, you pretty much answered that. I was
asking for what lessons we can learn from the acreage set-aside
programs from the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. If you want to add
to that you could, but thank you.
Mr. Coppess. Thank you, sir. I don't know if I have
anything more I can add to that, so I appreciate it.
Mr. Balderson. Madam Chair, I yield back. Thank you.
The Chair. Excellent. Before we adjourn, I invite the
Ranking Member to share any closing comments that he may have.
Mr. LaMalfa. Thank you, Madam Chair. Again, I am
appreciative of the panel and of Chief Norton's time here
today, as the conservation programs that we know in ag and
rural America have been very helpful in achieving the goal of
habitat for wildlife and waterfowl, as well as make great
partnerships for farmers to keep farming.
As we heard today from USDA Natural Resource Conservation
Service, as well as our partners like Ducks Unlimited and what
that means to us in northern California, but across the whole
fruited plain, it is extremely important. I appreciate this
opportunity today, Madam Chair, for being able to hear them out
and have an interaction and advise and know that our doors are
open for continued work and streamlining improvement and how
the process works.
Thank you again, and I will yield back.
The Chair. Thank you very much.
And to our witnesses, thank you for your testimony today.
This conversation has been so interesting. I have notes
surrounding me, particularly in light of how we could look to
conservation being part of the solution as we look to resolve
and solve for resource challenges, presenting by a rapidly
changing climate and certainly the COVID-19 public health
crisis.
I would like to thank USDA staff and the entire
conservation community, including our farmers who are out there
pushing forward on innovative, on-farm conservation practices,
even amid the uncertainty that we have outlined today. I thank
them for their work in these tremendous times, and I thank all
of the witnesses for your work, your research, your dedication,
and your focus on these vitally important issues. I look
forward to continuing to work with all of you all, as well as
with my colleagues here on the Committee.
As we continue to implement conservation programs under the
2018 Farm Bill, take active measures to continue to protect the
environment and combat the climate crisis, and as we look ahead
to work together towards our economic recovery, these
conversations are so vitally important. And certainly in the
back of all of our minds, informing our future work on future
farm bills. It is a pleasure to have welcomed you all here
today. Thank you for being with us. Thank you for your
testimony, and thank you for your time, and thank you for your
work.
Under the Rules of the Committee, the record of today's
hearing will remain open for 10 calendar days to receive
additional material and supplementary written responses from
the witnesses to any question posed by a Member.
This hearing of the Subcommittee on Conservation and
Forestry is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:54 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]
Submitted Questions
Response from Kevin D. Norton, Acting Chief, Natural Resources
Conservation Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture
Questions Submitted by Hon. Abigail Davis Spanberger, a Representative
in Congress from Virginia
Question 1. While I was pleased to hear in your testimony about how
NRCS was able to step up and help farmers as they adjusted to market
and other disruptions caused by the ongoing COVID-19 public health
emergency, I am concerned about how economic and other uncertainty may
have impacted farmers and producers considering conservation. As such I
am curious to learn more about how conservation programs are being
utilized during this pandemic. To that end, I'd like to request you
provide the Subcommittee with the following data:
The number of qualified and complete applications, both successful
and otherwise, for NRCS conservation programs over the last five years
including 2020. Please also include, if available, the percentage of
these that came from first-time applicants to these conservation
programs.
Answer. Under the Agricultural Management Assistance (AMA),
Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), and Environmental Quality
Incentives Program (EQIP), NRCS received a total of 822,404
applications between FYs 2016 and 2020. Of these, 267,950 became
contracts, constituting 33 percent of the applications received.
A total of 159,772 qualified applications remained in eligible,
preapproved, and approved status. In addition, NRCS evaluated and
categorized 300,073 applications as canceled, deferred, or ineligible.
This set of applications was not funded.
Note: The information regarding first-time applicants is not
readily available from our contracting system. We will analyze
our records and provide a follow-up report that is focused on
first-time applicants.
NRCS Conservation Programs Percentage of Applications Contracted for
Fiscal Years 2016-2020
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Percent of
NRCS Program by Fiscal Applications Contracts Applications
Year Contracted
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agricultural Management 1,056 449 43%
Assistance (AMA) FY
2020
Fiscal Year 2019 783 217 28%
Fiscal Year 2018 839 168 20%
Fiscal Year 2017 1,452 377 26%
Fiscal Year 2016 965 291 30%
-----------------------------------------------
Total AMA 5,095 1,502 26%
-----------------------------------------------
Conservation Stewardship 34,572 12,142 35%
Program (CSP) \1\ FY
2020
Fiscal Year 2019 \1\ 35,615 15,539 44%
Fiscal Year 2018 \2\ 23,081 10,878 47%
Fiscal Year 2017 26,577 12,342 46%
Fiscal Year 2016 30,404 12,336 41%
-----------------------------------------------
Total CSP 150,249 63,237 42%
-----------------------------------------------
Environmental Quality 129,690 35,082 27%
Incentives Program
(EQIP) \3\ FY 2020
Fiscal Year 2019 155,365 43,462 28%
Fiscal Year 2018 101,013 45,374 45%
Fiscal Year 2017 138,837 41,079 30%
Fiscal Year 2016 142,155 38,214 27%
-----------------------------------------------
Total EQIP 667,060 203,211 30%
===============================================
Grand Total 822,404 267,950 33%
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Data Source: ProTracts--REAP Approved
\1\ Includes CSP--Grasslands Conservation Initiative, and CSP--Regional
Conservation Partnership Program data.
\2\ Includes CSP--Regional Conservation Partnership Program data.
\3\ Includes EQIP--Regional Conservation Partnership Program data.
NRCS Conservation Programs Application Status for Fiscal Years 2016-2020
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Applications Status
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
NRCS Program by Fiscal Year Pre-
approved Approved Eligible Deferred Ineligible Cancelled
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Agricultural Management Assistance 0 0 186 69 38 177
(AMA) FY 2020
Fiscal Year 2019 1 0 152 36 52 186
Fiscal Year 2018 1 0 117 70 58 261
Fiscal Year 2017 2 0 183 332 77 354
Fiscal Year 2016 0 0 77 259 63 163
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total AMA 4 0 715 766 288 1,141
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conservation Stewardship Program 7 0 6,238 1,079 2,923 5,322
(CSP) \1\ FY 2020
Fiscal Year 2019 \1\ 25 0 4,940 113 3,1479,994
Fiscal Year 2018 \2\ 0 0 1,291 97 2,318 7,081
Fiscal Year 2017 7 9 2,098 513 2,820 6,786
Fiscal Year 2016 7 0 6,607 926 2,585 5,974
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total CSP 46 9 21,174 2,728 13,793 35,157
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Environmental Quality Incentives 29 3 36,457 7,585 6,611 20,002
Program (EQIP) \3\ FY 2020
Fiscal Year 2019 682 0 47,418 2,710 10,172 26,366
Fiscal Year 2018 10 4 1,511 15,288 12,349 25,715
Fiscal Year 2017 464 17 24,805 18,038 12,429 25,899
Fiscal Year 2016 729 0 25,695 23,208 12,738 27,090
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total EQIP 1,914 24 135,886 66,829 54,299 125,070
=============================================================================
Grand Total 1,964 33 157,775 70,323 68,380 161,370
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Data Source: ProTracts--REAP Approved
\1\ Includes CSP--Grasslands Conservation Initiative, and CSP--Regional Conservation Partnership Program data.
\2\ Includes CSP--Regional Conservation Partnership Program data.
\3\ Includes EQIP--Regional Conservation Partnership Program data.
Question 1a. The share of contracts through EQIP with dropped
practices over the last five years including 2020. Please also include
information on the percentage of these contracts that were ``single
practice,'' ``multiple practices, partial completion,'' and ``multiple
practices, zero completion.'' For those contracts with dropped
practices, please also provide, if available, the percentage of first-
time applicants to the EQIP program included in that category.
Answer. Under the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP),
the Natural Resources Conservation Service contracted a total of
203,211 applications between FYs 2016 and 2020. During contract
administration, 99,769 contracts were completed, 10,992 canceled, and
1,482 terminated. The EQIP contract period is, at a minimum, from the
date of obligation through the last scheduled conservation practice or
activity but may not exceed 10 years.
Note: Single and multiple practice contracts and first-time
applicant data are not readily available through the NRCS
application/contract system. We will analyze our records and
provide a follow-up report that is focused on first-time
applicants.
Environmental Quality Incentive Program Contract Status for Fiscal Years 2016-2020
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of Contracts by Fiscal Year
Contract Status ----------------------------------------------------------------- Total
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Active 4,893 9,775 17,931 24,673 33,696 90,968
Completed 29,337 27,391 24,275 17,418 1,348 99,769
Cancelled 3,388 3,396 2,877 1,294 37 10,992
Terminated 596 517 291 77 1 1,482
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total 33,321 31,304 27,443 18,789 1,386 203,211
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Data Source: ProTracts (October 19, 2020).
Question 2. Are there additional flexibilities that this
Subcommittee should consider for conservation programs that would help
maintain farmer engagement and reduce uncertainty fueled by the economy
or the pandemic?
Answer. NRCS conservation programs embody significant flexibility
to address natural resource concerns. While the NRCS program portfolio
meets a myriad of natural resource concerns at various levels of
stewardship, these programs focus on implementation of practices that
address long-term conservation objectives and were not designed for
expeditiously meeting producers' acute needs for economic recovery
following market disruptions or other economic uncertainty as a result
of a pandemic.
However, given the administrative burden associated with the
statutory requirement that producers meet payment eligibility
determinations, NRCS assistance often cannot be delivered to impacted
producers as quickly as the circumstances warrant. Therefore, we ask
that you consider disconnecting conservation compliance and adjusted
gross income provisions for payments that are directly related to
resolving producers' imminent resource concerns associated with
inventory disruptions resulting from a pandemic. Although there was a
small number of producers requesting such assistance through EQIP in
Fiscal Year 2020, a narrow statutory exemption would enable us to
remove some of the administrative burden for producers who are new
customers but who have imminent needs that need to be addressed
quickly. Authority for USDA, with producer consent, to confirm adjusted
gross income with the Department of the Treasury directly would also
expedite assistance to producers who require time-sensitive adoption of
conservation practices. Additionally, we offer for consideration
adjusting the provisions 1240B(d)(7) of the Food Security Act of 1985,
as amended, to add ``(v) addresses resource concerns related to market
disruptions as a result of a pandemic or other national catastrophe.''
Question 3. The Great Plains is home to iconic species, Native
nations, and rural communities and is an ecosystem in which nature is
essential to culture and livelihoods. A healthy prairie provides clean
water, stores carbon, supports wildlife, and provides livelihoods for
communities; yet since 2014 we've been losing them at an average rate
of four football fields per minute. Drawing on spatial cropland data
collected by USDA, the World Wildlife Fund's (WWF) 2020 Plowprint
Report found that approximately 2.1 million acres of intact grassland
habitat in the U.S. and Canadian Great Plains were plowed for row-crop
production in 2018. In the Northern Great Plains (NGP) region alone,
approximately 550,000 acres were tilled--with wheat production the
greatest driver of grassland loss (41 percent of newly-tilled land)
followed by corn (9 percent) and soy (7 percent). Restoration projects
are our best tool for repairing disturbed grasslands, but there is no
real substitute for landowners, the private sector, and government
working together to keep healthy grasslands from falling under the plow
in the first place.
Please describe how USDA will accelerate the protection of intact
native grasslands, given their importance to producers as well as
conservation and climate objectives?
Answer. USDA is committed to helping America's producers protect
the health and productivity of Great Plains grasslands. Through NRCS,
USDA is working with our partners to identify and address the primary
threats to intact grasslands through science-based technical assistance
and strategic Farm Bill conservation program delivery. These approaches
allow agricultural producers to maintain and improve the productivity
of their operations while also enhancing and conserving grasslands.
As you mention, grasslands are being lost through conversion to
cropland. One of the important programmatic tools that the Farm Bill
provides for conserving grasslands is the Grasslands of Special
Significance flexibility available under the Agricultural Conservation
Easement Program (ACEP) Agricultural Land Easements (ALE). So far, NRCS
has enrolled over 450,000 acres into grassland easements, providing
permanent protection from conversion to cropland or development.
For example, through the Working Lands for Wildlife Sage Grouse
Initiative, NRCS funded and used a model to identify those grasslands
most at risk for conversion to cropland. By using this science to
target enrollment in the Northern Great Plains of Montana, NRCS
partnered with land trusts and producers to accelerate protection of
intact grasslands using ACEP-ALE grassland easements. Targeted efforts
to protect these critical grasslands accounted for fully one third of
the acres enrolled in this program during the 2014 Farm Bill. Among
other outcomes, this effort helped to conserve the longest known
migration route for Greater sage-grouse and contributed to the
protection of a major pronghorn migration pathway.
Technological innovations, fueled by USDA investments, also shed
light on another less well-known source of grassland loss. Data from
the Rangeland Analysis Platform identifies where woody plant
encroachment is threatening intact grasslands at a scale similar to
that of cropland conversion, with trees increasing on over 108 million
acres of Great Plains grasslands. Woody plant encroachment by trees,
like eastern red cedar, takes land out of productive grazing lands and
grassland wildlife habitat.
To address this challenge, NRCS is teaming up with producers and
partners across the Great Plains states to develop a new grasslands
conservation strategy in the coming year. This plan will focus on ways
to reduce the two major threats to grasslands in the region: woody
plant encroachment and cropland conversion. Leveraging Rangeland
Analysis Platform data on woody plant encroachment and cultivation
risk, the strategy focuses on identifying large grassland cores where
proactive Farm Bill investments can keep intact, but vulnerable,
grasslands healthy.
Question 4. How will you work with colleagues across the agency,
and with Congress, to review and align incentives to achieve
sustainable production goals that benefit people and the planet? The
Sodsaver provision is a good example of this in practice, although it
only applies to six states and could be expanded nationwide.
Answer. NRCS has tailored the flexibility available through its
financial assistance and easement programs to facilitate a producer's
transition to comprehensive sustainable management of their operations.
In particular, through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program
(EQIP), a producer may address significant natural resource concerns.
Building upon successfully addressing these resource concerns, NRCS can
then offer an EQIP incentive contract where a producer wishes to
address resources more comprehensively on part of their operation. When
a producer wishes to raise the overall stewardship across the entirety
of their operations, NRCS can offer enrollment in the Conservation
Stewardship Program. NRCS easement enrollment options, through the
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program and the Regional
Conservation Partnership Program, fully support these efforts by
protecting agricultural lands and restoring and protecting
environmentally sensitive lands for future generations. These programs
are currently available across the entirety of the United States.
Interest in voluntary conservation programs remains high with only
one in three applications being selected for funding. Given the strong
competition for funding, NRCS is remaining focused on the locally led
conservation process where priorities and criteria for selection are
identified and influenced at the local levels through local work groups
and State Technical Committees. It is at the local level where
discussions on effective incentives and approaches to conservation
adoption and adaptation begin. The working groups' and committees'
knowledge of local conditions, motivations and partnership
opportunities, coupled with NRCS outcomes information that is released
through the Conservation Effects Assessment Project (CEAP) reports and
through other avenues, analysis available from partners, and feedback
we receive from producers and stakeholders, shapes national policy and
recommendations we provide to USDA leadership for congressional
engagement. In addition, the information we learn from the Conservation
Innovation Grants provides valuable information regarding the effects
of conservation efforts on agriculture production and the condition of
our natural resources. We are working to make the results of these
grants available more readily to the public through a public database
that is targeted for release in calendar year 2021.
The Farm Service Agency's (FSA) Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)
is another key tool in achieving sustainable production goals. CRP
helps protect the long-term health of soil by taking environmentally
sensitive lands out of production and establishing land cover. In
addition to conserving and improving the soil, land enrolled in CRP
improves water quality, enhances wildlife population, provides
pollinator forage habitat, sequesters carbon, and reduces downstream
flood damages. FSA works closely with stakeholders on how best to
manage the program while maximizing agricultural and environmental
benefits.
Question 5. Chief Norton, the 2018 Farm Bill authorized increased
payments for ten high-priority practices under EQIP with flexibility
for state determination of these practices. Up to 90% of the total cost
of a practice may be covered for practices that improve water quality
and quantity--which as you know, is pressing resource concern across
Virginia. Can you touch on how NRCS is working with State
Conservationists and Technical Committees to identify eligible
practices and make payments available to producers?'
Answer. State Conservationists, in consultation with the State
Technical Committees, may select up to ten high priority practices for
increased payment rates of up to 90 percent. NRCS State
Conservationists must publish their list of conservation practices
designated as high priority practices and the payment rates on the NRCS
State website.
NRCS developed the following national guidance for selection of
high priority practices in FY 2020--
A high priority practice must meet at least one of the following
criteria:
Addresses specific causes of impairment relating to
excessive nutrients in ground or surface water;
Addresses the conservation of water, to advance drought
mitigation and declining aquifers;
Meets other environmental priorities and other priority
resource concerns identified in habitat or other area
restoration plans; or
Is geographically targeted to address a natural resource
concern in a specific watershed.
In addition, states also could use the following optional criteria:
Practices that are identified through assessments already
completed at the area or state level and which have the
greatest impact on that resource concern;
Practices that have high potential for conservation benefit,
but which are underutilized; or
Practices that already are widespread and common should be
avoided, unless the State determines the practice provides a
specific purpose or identifies a geographic region for which
the practice is underutilized.
Further, states are not required to select high priority practices,
but if they choose to, states can select from one to ten high-priority
practices. Additionally, States can choose a rate that best meets the
objectives and incentivizes the use of the high priority practices, up
to 90 percent.
The payment process to producers for high priority practices under
EQIP is based on the completed practices being certified as meeting
NRCS standards and specifications as part of an EQIP contract.
Question 6. NRCS has recently deployed the Conservation Assessment
Ranking Tool (CART) to facilitate conservation planning and delivery.
Can you provide us with an update on the integration/rollout of CART?
What benefits have been achieved? What efficiencies have been gained?
Answer. NRCS integrated the Conservation Assessment Ranking Tool
(CART) with our Conservation Desktop and launched CART in January 2020.
CART enables conservation planners to implement Farm Bill programs more
efficiently and effectively by providing enhanced methodologies to
assess resource concerns and to rank customer applications against
multiple funding pools simultaneously.
At the end of the FY 2020, NRCS used CART through 5,000 users and
completed 127,000 ranked assessments on over 79 million acres,
evaluating over 11 million resource concerns. This was 159 percent of
the prior year's planning. FY 2020 was a transition year requiring
field staff and partners to learn a new system. As the comfort level
with CART continues to grow, efficiency gains will be fully realized
and are expected to exceed those observed in FY 2020. As we look
towards future implementation of CART, we are excited about adding
additional enhancements and integrations, such as integrating the
environmental reviews, adding detailed surveys, improving outcomes
reporting and client products, incorporating the ability to import and
export user data, and increasing access for partners and Technical
Service Providers (TSPs).
Through CART, NRCS planners are able to help address a variety of
47 resource concerns, across seven land uses, and for 353 conservation
practices, enhancements, and bundles simultaneously. It has modernized
and streamlined NRCS' conservation planning and program delivery,
reduced workload on field staff, and improved the customer experience
by creating an efficient application process. CART methodologies
include utilizing national and local geospatial data, configurable
resource concern questions, configurable conservation practice resource
concern impact points, and configurable funding pools that can be
modified to address local needs.
In addition, CART offers multiple benefits over previous program-
specific conservation planning systems, including:
Streamlined delivery of services and integration of all
financial assistance programs, resulting in one application and
one contract, regardless of program;
A centralized system for financial and technical assistance,
including planning, applications, and ranking;
A simplified, integrated planning and program application
process;
Improved conservation delivery through a program neutral
resource assessment, evaluation of alternatives, and
application ranking in one unified system;
Reduced time between program application and conservation
implementation by eliminating duplicative data entry processes;
and
Locally-led program flexibility, state customization, and
program prioritization based on planning and outcomes.
Traditionally, NRCS clients have had to submit separate
applications for each of NRCS program offerings. CART has established a
system where clients can submit one application for consideration under
different program enrollment options simultaneously (e.g., EQIP--
General, EQIP--Socially Disadvantaged, EQIP--Beginning Farmer, EQIP--
Air Quality, EQIP) thereby reducing the amount of paperwork on our
clients and the administrative workload on our field offices. States
have reported processing time for an application is about 15 minutes.
This results in an estimated 7,500 hours reduction in staff time needed
to help clients progress into the planning process in preparation for
program contracting more quickly.
Additionally, NRCS has traditionally employed over 120 technical
tools to run in the conservation planning process (e.g., Revised
Universal Soil Loss Equation 2 (RUSLE-2), Wind Erosion Prediction
System, Stream Visual Assessment Protocol 2, Pasture Condition Score).
The advent of CART enables planners to take advantage of almost 90-
geospatial layers of data to automate processing calculations during
conservation planning. For example, NRCS conducts two RUSLE-2 runs to
estimate the Soil Conditioning Index for Cover Crop, our highest
invested conservation practice, taking an estimated 60 minutes to run.
This practice was applied 221,672 times in FY 2020; which means to run
RUSLE-2 twice for this practice approximately 221,672 hours were needed
during planning. CART allows planners to select targeted questions,
along with employing geospatial layers, to reduce this amount of time
to a fraction of previous estimates. These gained efficiencies enable a
planner to move a client from program application to program contract
much quicker than in past years.
Question 7. The Conservation Assessment Ranking Tool (CART) has
only been in use since the beginning of this year. As we all learn more
about this new tool, can you discuss CART's role in the Conservation
Delivery process? At which points in the process does CART come into
play? Does CART have any functionality to assess program impacts after
practices have been implemented?
Answer. NRCS traditionally has a nine-step conservation planning
and delivery process that is broken into three phases--
Phase [I]--Collect and Analyze: (1) Identify Problems and
Opportunities, (2) Determine Objectives, (3) Inventory
Resources, (4) Analyze Resource Data
Phase II--Decision Support: (5) Formulate Alternatives, (6)
Evaluate Alternatives, (7) Make Decisions
Phase III--Implementation and Evaluation: (8) Implement the
Plan, (9) Evaluate the Plan
CART fits into Phases I and II. For Phase I (Collect and Analyze),
planners answer questions in CART about the existing condition of the
client's site and identify potential resource concerns for assessment.
Thresholds are used to compare the existing condition of the site to
ideal conservation levels that meet NRCS planning criteria. For Phase
II (Decision Support), planners can select planned conservation
practices in CART and compare the overall results to formulate and
evaluate alternatives to help client's meet conservation objectives.
CART, along with Conservation Desktop, supports the conservation
planner through the entire Conservation Planning Process. Initially
CART assists the conservation planner with capturing resource inventory
information from the farm, obtained either through a field visit or
client interview. CART uses this information to assess the conservation
needs on the farm and helps the planner explore various conservation
practices, activities, and systems to address the concerns. CART then
evaluates all NRCS programs for assistance options and ranks the plan
within all the relevant programs.
CART is geared towards better science and data driven conservation
planning, which is in line with the multi-agency Conservation Effects
Assessment Project that quantifies the environmental effects of
conservation practices and programs. Presently, CART provides more
information about the landscape in which conservation practices are
applied and the proposed effects. NRCS is currently working to further
integrate Conservation Effects Assessment Project effects with this
information to better report the impacts of conservation practices.
Question 8. I understand that USDA service centers are gradually
beginning to reopen, with some available for in-person appointments and
some available only for phone appointments. What factors are counties
taking into account before the decision is made to reopen a USDA
service center for in-person appointments? What percentage of USDA
service centers are offering in-person appointments?
Answer. Factors that we consider before the decision is made to
reopen a USDA service center for in-person appointments include:
The operational need to return employees to the office;
Availability of masks for returning employees;
Availability of cleaning supplies or a scheduled cleaning
service;
The ability of a facility to increase the number of
employees present and still maintain appropriate social
distancing;
The status of state and local orders regarding COVID-19; and
The evaluation of community readiness for reopening,
focusing on a 14 day downward trend in new COVID-19 or no new
COVID-19 cases in the community in the last 14 days.
As we have progressed through the COVID-19 pandemic, we have
discovered that a simple downward trend in cases is not a full
assessment of community readiness. We have added an analytical
dashboard that provides a current 7 day rolling average of the number
of new COVID-19 cases per 10,000 residents in each county. Drawing on
several of the major risk models, we have utilized a rate of 1 case per
10,000 residents per day as a trigger level for additional assessment.
A facility with a 2 week downward trend in cases and a case rate below
2.0 per 10,000 residents per day can request reopening. If the number
is above 1.0 per 10,000 residents per day, we examine the change in the
number of new cases over a 14 day period and whether there are any
mitigating factors (such as a prison, college or nursing home with a
high case load).
USDA's Farm Production and Conservation Mission Area (FPAC) is
using a multi-phase reopening plan, in accordance with USDA guidance.
All facilities which reach Phase 2 can admit visitors by appointment.
FPAC is tracking 2,730 total facilities. As of October 14, 2020, 1,243
or 45 percent have reached Phases 2 and 3 and are allowing in-person
visitors.
Question 9. In the aftermath of Hurricane Laura, many Louisiana and
Arkansas producers are still assessing and repairing damage to their
farms. Can you discuss the NRCS emergency programs that are available
to help farmers recover from hurricane damage?
Answer. NRCS makes available the Emergency Watershed Protection
Program (EWP Program), including EWP Program--Recovery and EWPP--
Floodplain Easements for states impacted by hurricanes. NRCS conducts a
damage assessment of the area impacted by the hurricane and works with
local sponsors to implement recovery measures. NRCS may also work
directly with landowners impacted by repeated flooding by offering
EWP--Floodplain easements.
Though not an emergency program, NRCS State Offices have also
responded by using EQIP funds and conservation practices that can be
implemented quickly to assist farmers and ranchers respond to resource
concerns created by hurricane damage. Recognizing the trend and the
need to be able to respond more quickly, NRCS updated its EQIP policies
to give States additional flexibilities to assist producers with
addressing the unique resource concerns created by natural disaster
events. This includes expedited announcement of funding opportunities
and delegating authorities.
At this time, Arkansas and Louisiana have not requested additional
EWP funds or EQIP funds above their general EQIP allocation to address
Hurricane Laura, but States can still request additional assistance
once their damage assessments are completed.
Question 10. This has been an especially challenging year for
wildfire, with over 42,000 fires having burned more than 7 million
acres nationwide so far. Can you discuss the role of NRCS programs in
wildfire recovery and restoration?
Answer. NRCS makes available the Emergency Watershed Program (EWP)
for states impacted by wildfires. NRCS conducts a damage assessment of
the area impacted by wildfire and works with local sponsors to
implement recovery measures.
Although not an emergency program, NRCS State offices have also
responded by using EQIP program funds and conservation practices that
can be implemented quickly to assist farmers and ranchers in addressing
the resource concerns created by damage from wildfire. Recognizing the
trend and the need to be able to respond more quickly, NRCS updated its
EQIP policies to give States additional flexibilities to assist
producers to recover from natural disaster events. This includes
quicker announcement of funding opportunities and delegating
authorities.
At this time, California, Colorado, Idaho, and Washington have
requested additional EQIP funds above their general allocation to
address wildfires. States can still request additional assistance once
their evaluations are complete.
Question 11. Since the launch of farmers.gov in 2018, it seems USDA
has placed increased focus on making services available to farmers
online. Can you talk more about the features that are available to
producers via the farmers.gov website? What feedback has the department
received from producers? Do you anticipate any difficulty as USDA
transitions from the Conservation Client Gateway to farmers.gov?
Answer. USDA launched the Farmers.gov website in February 2018 to
provide farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners with online self-
service applications, educational materials, engagement opportunities,
and business tools to increase efficiency and productivity while
preserving and fostering long-held traditional relationships between
local USDA Service Centers and producers.
The public-facing website also serves as a customer gateway and
informational counterpart to an authenticated, transactional
Farmers.gov portal where USDA customers can apply for programs, process
technical and financial transactions, and manage accounts.
USDA has used feedback from farmers and ranchers--as well as USDA
employees who work directly with customers--to iteratively build the
Farmers.gov website. Major releases are detailed below.
USDA released the original Farmers.gov Disaster Assistance
Discovery Tool (https://www.farmers.gov/recover/disaster-
assistance-tool#step-1) in June 2018. Farmers who have suffered
damage or loss due to a natural disaster can answer five simple
questions about the disaster event, its impact, and their
location. After submitting their answers, farmers are given
information on USDA disaster assistance programs targeted to
the needs of their specific operation. This tool is meant to
provide immediate online support in times when local USDA
Service Centers could be closed. It is not an eligibility tool,
but instead provides insights into USDA resources for our
customers during a time when support is critical.
The Farmers.gov authenticated portal provides farmers and
ranchers a personalized account to securely conduct business
with USDA from their home or agricultural operation.
The Farmers.gov Market Facilitation Program (MFP) page was
launched in September 2018. MFP provided critical financial
support for farmers and ranchers whose commodities were
directly impacted by retaliatory tariffs, resulting in the loss
of traditional export markets.
USDA launched the original Farmers.gov H-2A Visa Program
Page (https://www.farmers.gov/manage/h2a) and H-2A Visa
Checklist (https://www.farmers.gov/manage/h2a/h2a-checklist) in
March 2019. The H-2A temporary agricultural workers program
helps American farmers who anticipate a lack of available
domestic workers fill employment gaps by hiring workers from
other countries. USDA partnered with the United States Digital
Service to develop the H-2A Visa Checklist tool, which brings
program requirements, fees, forms, and important dates into one
location. The checklist tool steps producers through the
process of applying to the program with reminders for specific
deadlines. The subsequent H-2A Visa Case Tracker (https://
h2a.farmers.gov/SelfService/UI/case-tracker) was launched in
2020. This tool allows producers to check the approval of their
H-2A cases with the Department of Labor or U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services.
The ``My Financial Information'' feature was launched in
April 2019. This feature gives farmers and ranchers the ability
to view their farm loan information, interest payments for the
current calendar year (including year-to-date interest paid for
the past five years, loan advance and payment history) and
paid-in-full and restructured loans via their secure
farmers.gov portal account. Account alerts give borrowers
important notifications regarding their loans. For example, an
account alert will be displayed if a loan is past due.
In July 2019, USDA introduced the Farmers.gov Farm Loan
Discovery Tool (https://www.farmers.gov/fund/farm-loan-
discovery-tool) to help producers find information on USDA
loans that best fit their business needs. The Farm Loan
Discovery Tool was developed in collaboration with GSA's
Customer Experience Center of Excellence. Over two years, they
talked with over 100 customers--both internal and external--to
identify commonly asked questions producers have when meeting
with a loan officer. Producers interested in USDA farm loans
can answer five simple questions about what they are looking to
fund and how much money they'd like to borrow. Based on these
answers, they receive farm loan information tailored to their
operation.
In February 2020, the new Conservation at Work video series
was launched on Farmers.gov. under the ``Conserve'' tab.
Conservation at Work, presents short and easy to understand
videos about popular conservation practices directly from the
farmers and ranchers applying them. These videos explain how an
individual conservation practice helps their land and why they
are using it, and accompany a suite of new conservation-focused
information on Farmers.gov including a new Conservation
Concerns Tool to be launched later this year.
In 2020, Farmers.gov served as a critical online resource
for America's farmers, ranchers, and private forest landowners
working with USDA during the coronavirus pandemic. Farmers.gov/
coronavirus was published in March 2020 to deliver information
on USDA program flexibilities and services in response to the
pandemic, including updates to USDA Service Center status. The
associated Service Center Status Dashboard (https://
www.farmers.gov/coronavirus/service-center-status) was
published in June 2020 to provide up-to-date county-level
information on USDA Service Centers across the country. The
initial Coronavirus Food Assistance Program (https://
www.farmers.gov/cfap1) (CFAP) page was published in April 2020.
CFAP provides direct relief to producers who faced price
declines and additional marketing costs due to COVID-19. The
Coronavirus Food Assistance Program 2 (https://www.farmers.gov/
cfap) (CFAP 2) page was published in September 2020 along with
a new tool, the CFAP 2 Eligible Commodities Finder (https://
www.farmers.gov/cfap/tool).
USDA enhanced the Farmers.gov portal in 2020 to enable
producers to manage conservation activities and request
assistance from USDA's NRCS. Through their secure portal
accounts, farmers and ranchers can now view, upload, download,
and e-sign documents; request conservation assistance; request
financial assistance, including submitting a program
application; view and request application details; reference
technical terms and submit questions; access information on
current and past conservation practices; report practice
completion and request practice certification; view detailed
information on all previous and ongoing contracts, including
the amount of cost-share assistance received and anticipated;
and have authority for FSA and NRCS customers to work in the
portal and act on behalf of their active power-of-attorney
entitlements and their current authorities for business
entities. Dedicated customer pages provide map and tabular
views of prior Conservation Assistance Requests, the customer's
Conservation Practices portfolio, their Conservation Documents,
and Conservation Program Contracts including tabular and map
views. The system routes customer requests and signed documents
to servicing NRCS Servicing Offices view direct connections to
the Employee Conservation Desktop. Customers and employees
receive notifications of actions warranting their attention.
Feedback
USDA manages Farmers.gov according to user centered design
principles and engages with America's farmers and ranchers to inform
decisions made for the site.
USDA has leveraged analytics tools, such as Google Analytics and
Google Tag Manager, to better understand the overall performance of the
site and target improvements for specific priority pages. For example,
analysis of searches that did not lead to click throughs led USDA to
add acronyms to program pages and fix bugs related to the service
center locator. USDA also uses a tool to learn how users interact with
them by collecting three main metrics: mouse movement, clicking, and
scrolling. These three metrics are used to generate heat maps that USDA
has used to redesign webpages to make more intuitive for customers.
USDA collected direct feedback from farmers on the initial
prototypes for the H-2A tool. This feedback was analyzed and captured
in a findings and recommendations report which allowed us to address
vital concerns before the development process, and before the tool was
available to the public. Prior to the development of the Farm Loan
Discovery Tool, members of the GSA Customer Experience Center of
Excellence conducted field research across eight states to better
understand the experience of applying for and receiving a direct farm
loan. This research informed development of our Application Quick
Guides and Farm Loan Discovery Tool. And through the use of a feedback
tool on the site, the Farmers.gov team has received relevant
information regarding issues with the site, resulting in improvements
like the new service center locator.
USDA also collected feedback through customer and employee
interviews in multiple states to inform the new conservation features
on the Farmers.gov portal. Customers also provided feedback on key
workflow pre-development visual designs. Staff conducted conservation
content working software pre-release evaluations and demos with small
sets of producers that were well received. Internal evaluations were
conducted with employees, including employees that are also
agricultural producers. Effective communications outreach, demos and
media events in conjunction with Farmers.gov conservation content
releases in late May, August and early October have resulted in a 423%
increase and over 7,400 new Farmers.gov portal users compared to the
prior levels in earlier 2020.
Most recently, FPAC fielded the producer survey from August 2020
through September 2020 to collect feedback from customers at the
transactional and relationship levels. FPAC will conduct analysis of
the FY 2020 survey results and develop action plans to address areas of
opportunity for improvement.
Transition from Conservation Client Gateway
USDA does not anticipate any difficulty as we transition from the
Conservation Client Gateway to Farmers.gov. This new system is more
intuitive than any previous product released, and also includes an
enhanced mobile functionality. The most recent Farmers.gov Conservation
Content Release on October 8, 2020 culminated a series of releases over
the prior 18 months to provide and improve upon all the key customer
facing content formerly available through the NRCS Conservation Client
Gateway. USDA initiated a robust communications strategy that involved
notifying existing Client Gateway customers of the change, posting news
of the transition to Farmers.gov on the Client Gateway website, and
website re-direction.
Existing customers can use the same login and password credentials
to access Farmers.gov as they used in the past for Conservation Client
Gateway and FSA farm+. Web page guidance and an online Service Desk are
in place to assist new and existing customers with questions and issues
that may arise in creating secure access credentials.
Question 12. Field visits are a crucial piece of the conservation
planning process, and I understand that NRCS has continued to carry out
field visits during the public health crisis. Have any adjustments been
made to enable NRCS to continue this very important aspect of
conservation planning? What precautions is NRCS taking to ensure that
employees and farmers both remain safe while performing field visits
during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Answer. NRCS staff have been able to continue conservation planning
and implementation activities during COVID-19. All NRCS field staff
have observed all requirements called for in the USDA Playbook for
COVID-19. Staff have been able to carry out conservation planning
activities while observing social distancing requirement.
At the discretion of the State Conservationist, NRCS employees
traveling to site visits that require more than one employee may travel
in a government vehicle with up to two people. Employees traveling in a
vehicle with more than one person must wear a paper or cloth face
covering while in the vehicle. The wearing of disposable gloves is
encouraged. Time spent in the vehicle should be minimized. The interior
of the vehicle must be cleaned with a disinfectant at the conclusion of
the trip. Employees are reminded that they should maintain social
distancing when outside of the vehicle.
The USDA and FPAC COVID Playbooks limit travel to ``mission
essential, time sensitive'' events.
Travel and training by Facility Status
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Overnight Local Travel/ Local Large
Phase Travel Field Work Training Gatherings
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Phase Zero Overnight Critically Conducting or Attendance at
travel to or needed work attending conferences
from a only. All training in and trade
location in precautions a location shows in a
Phase Zero is must be in Phase Phase Zero
not followed. Zero is not location or
permitted. NRCS permitted. while the
Critical mission attendee's
operational delivery facility is in
exceptions field work Phase Zero is
must be will not permitted.
approved at continue
the State or following
HQ level. appropriate
precautions
.
Phase One Overnight Work that Conducting or In person
travel to or cannot be attending attendance at
from a deferred to training in conferences
location in Phase Two a location and trade
Phase One is or later is in Phase One shows is not
not permitted. is not permitted.
permitted. All permitted.
Critical precautions
operational must be
exceptions followed.
must be NRCS
approved at mission
the State or delivery
HQ level. field work
will
continue
following
appropriate
precautions
.
Phase Two Overnight Routine Conducting or In person
travel to or field work attending attendance at
from a is allowed. training in conferences
location in All a location and trade
Phase Two precautions in Phase Two shows is not
should be must be is not permitted.
kept to an followed. permitted.
absolute
minimum and
must be
approved at
the State or
HQ level.
Phase Overnight Routine Virtual In person
Three travel to or field work training is attendance at
from a is allowed. preferred. conferences
location in All Conducting and trade
Phase Three precautions training in shows is not
must be for must be a location permitted.
an followed. in Phase Exceptions
operational Three is must be
need that discouraged, approved at
cannot be but if the State or
deferred and essential, HQ level.
must be must adhere
approved at to FPAC
the State or mask, social
HQ level. distancing
and hygiene
requirements
. If any of
these
conditions
cannot be
met, the
training
should not
occur.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our precautions have been successful. Following the cautionary
guidelines above, field staff have been able to cover more than 53
million acres with our clients this year in developing conservation
plans. Historically, this number is about 35 million acres.
Additionally:
Over 11 million resource concerns have been evaluated.
114,798 assessments have been completed.
Millions of acres and thousands of producers have been
accepted for enrollment in NRCS programs.
Question 13. USDA launched a customer experience survey last month
to improve services from high impact providers, including NRCS. Has
NRCS received any initial feedback about conservation program delivery?
Answer. We do not anticipate having the results of the survey until
the end of November.
Question 14. The Conservation Agricultural Mentoring Program is a
state-driven program that matches an experienced producer who is
passionate about conservation with an NRCS field employee that is new
to the job or new to the area. The program goal is to have employees go
out on the land with their producer mentor 6-12 times per year. How has
the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the program? Are these field visits
still able to happen?
Answer. COVID-19 has not substantially altered the timelines or
implementation schedule for the Conservation Agricultural Mentoring
Program (CAMP). Social distancing requirements did not hinder the
process of mentor and mentee selection and pairing. Also, initial
interactions and subsequent meetings were able to be held virtually
either through telephone calls or other virtual means. Additionally,
mentees were able to meet with mentors on their property in an outdoor
setting and observing social distancing guidelines.
Question 15. As farmers and ranchers across the country and in my
district look to access conservation assistance and benefit from many
of the important changes included in the 2018 Farm Bill, it is critical
that we are working to reach and support those who have historically
struggled to access USDA assistance, including beginning, socially
disadvantaged, limited resource, women, and veteran farmers and
ranchers. How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected NRCS's ability to do
outreach, particularly to these historically under-served groups?
Answer. Outreach assistance through our partners was modified due
to the COVID-19 pandemic. Entities were able to conduct many of the
outreach activities using virtual technologies. They also conducted
activities in person by limiting group sizes to ensure social distance
requirements and provided PPE materials to attendees. States continued
to utilize partnership efforts with Conservation Districts and
Community Based Organizations to ensure the continuation of outreach
efforts during the COVID-19 pandemic. Efforts were conducted via email,
phone and other virtual meeting platforms to provide conservation
assistance to historically under-served groups.
Question 16. Staffing for NRCS has continued to decline in recent
years. A number of vacancies are at the local field office level. What
impact have these vacancies had on the ability of NRCS to administer
conservation programs and activities for farmers and ranchers?
Answer. NRCS is a locally-led agency and the majority of our
vacancies are in customer facing positions. The impact of these
vacancies on providing technical assistance and delivery of
conservation programs at the local field office level has been
extensive in some cases.
The primary impacts include extended wait times and delays for:
Conservation technical assistance to support farm bill
programs, including conservation practice design, layout and
certification, payment processing, etc.;
Development of conservation plans to address resources
concerns across farm bill programs;
Delivery of up-to-date core science and technology
information for societal and agency needs;
Soil survey, snow survey, and plant materials center
activities;
Follow-up with new request(s) for service;
Effective assistance to key conservation partners, such as
local Soil and Water Conservation Districts; and
Extended response time to natural disasters.
In October 2020, NRCS received approval through the Office of
Personnel Management to fill 1,525 positions through Direct Hire
Authority. Most of these are located in field offices and, when filled
in FY 2021, will fully address the concerns listed above.
Question 17. I know that NRCS has set optimal staffing levels. Can
you tell me the number of current vacancies compared to those optimal
staffing levels? If NRCS is not currently meeting its staffing goals,
when will it be?
Answer. As of October 13, 2020, the current staff onboard was
9,398, resulting in 1,613 vacancies. NRCS received approval on October
9, 2020, to hire 1,525 employees via Direct Hire Authority and is
working aggressively to fill these positions by September 30, 2021.
Coupled with ongoing hiring actions, NRCS projects to reach its
staffing cap by February 2022.
Question 18. Today, U.S. forests and forest products annually
sequester and store almost 15% of U.S. carbon emissions from burning
fossil fuels, how can we utilize conservation programs to build on the
nearly 3 million jobs produced by America's forest sector?
Answer. Through conservation technical and financial assistance,
NRCS provides farmers, ranchers and nonindustrial private forestland
owners direct assistance for implementation of conservation measures.
This assistance ensures economically viable and productive forest lands
as well as protection of critical natural resources. Conservation
implementation results in planting an average of 114,000 acres per year
at an average of 300 trees per acre that sequester approximately half a
million metric tons of carbon per year.
Financial Assistance is provided through the Environmental Quality
Incentives Program (EQIP), the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP),
and the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP). In each case,
NRCS partners with private landowners to achieve their objectives and
meet conservation goals. The programs create jobs in rural communities
by increasing demand for private forestry consultants, field foresters,
and other professionals.
The most common practices installed include:
Tree and Shrub Establishment--planting trees and shrubs to
meet the objectives of the landowner to re-establish productive
forests and provide wide-ranging benefits such as improving
soil health, improving air quality and providing habitat.
Riparian Forest Buffers--tree planting also occurs as part
of riparian buffer establishment, allowing forested buffers to
capture sediment, nutrients, and pollutants from runoff, to
maintain water quality in streams and lakes, and improve
wildlife habitat.
Windbreak and Shelterbelt Establishment--planting rows of
trees and shrubs to reduce wind erosion and to provide shelter
and habitat for livestock and wildlife.
Silvopasture--planting and managing a combination of trees
and forages to meet forestry and livestock management goals.
Partnerships and collaboration are key for NRCS's success on
private forest lands. NRCS works very closely with each state forestry
office to ensure reforestation technical goals are well communicated
and coordinated. NRCS consistently partners with the USDA Forest
Service to collaborate on forestry conservation projects across the
country including reforestation planting for ecological restoration on
both Federal and private lands. Together, with the USDA Forest Service,
NRCS staffs the National Agroforestry Center in Lincoln, Nebraska. The
Agroforestry Center provides technical assistance on windbreak and
silvopasture practices that reduce soil erosion and enhance
agricultural and livestock production. Further, NRCS partners with the
Farm Service Agency by providing technical assistance to their programs
such as the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP). NRCS also partners with
many nonprofit and private entities, where there are shared goals of
voluntary conservation assistance to private lands.
Questions Submitted by Hon. Marcia L. Fudge, a Representative in
Congress from Ohio
Question 1. Across the farm sector, the coronavirus has severely
disrupted supply chains, further exacerbating food insecurity. This
experience places renewed emphasis on the resilience and productivity
of local food systems. Can you outline NRCS' efforts to strengthen
local food systems amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic? Any efforts
specific to northeast Ohio?
Answer. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, NRCS has continued to
deliver its programs and provide service to its customers from rural to
urban communities. Following national guidance and safety guidelines,
employees have continued to work with landowners, stakeholders, and
partners using creative and increasingly virtual methods. This
continuity of service has allowed the agency to provide solutions so
agricultural producers can protect and improve natural resources and
agricultural operations. Working through the locally-led approach,
community stakeholders stayed involved in the planning and
implementation processes to accomplish community goals.
NRCS strengthens local food systems by directly providing
assistance to producers who grow our food, from corn and soybeans, to
apples and blueberries, to eggs and dairy, to sheep and hogs, and
includes organic producers. Through well-known conservation programs
such as the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the
Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), NRCS continues to provide
financial and technical assistance to farmers, ranchers, and forestland
owners. NRCS's conservation practices are used nationwide by our
customers and impact the productivity and resiliency of an agricultural
operation, regardless of size. During FY 2020, NRCS delivered new tools
to farmers through new interim conservation practice standards and
completed review of all conservation practice standards.
Soil health is foundational to every producer's enterprise, impacts
all other NRCS resource concerns, and is at the heart of NRCS
conservation programs. Healthy soils provide weather and pest
resilience, reduce production risk and environmental impacts, increase
productivity and economic and social viability. Throughout the
coronavirus pandemic, NRCS has continued to train its staff and
partners on the components of soil health management systems including
sector-wide training, integration into technology, policy, standards
for assessment and management, outcome monitoring, soil survey
databases, and processes for continuous improvement. Working with
community leaders through the locally-led process, agricultural
producers who best know their land, and staying relevant with an array
of technical knowledge and tools, NRCS has continued to strengthen key
components of the local food system and supply chain--the land, the
grower, and the community.
The establishment of Box and OneSpan allows NRCS customers to
conveniently access, sign, and share documents online. This has
facilitated continued planning and contracting with our producers, who
supply the agricultural products in the food system.
At all levels, and especially at the state and local level, there
are targeted outreach efforts for historically under-served (HU)
producers, which includes individuals identifying as beginning farmer
or rancher, socially disadvantaged farmer or rancher, veteran farmer or
rancher, or limited resource farmer or rancher. NRCS has continued to
engage with and encourage program participation of all producers who
are eligible. In addition, the 2018 Farm Bill included provisions that
address needs unique to HU producers. For example, NRCS gives priority
consideration for proposals that provide outreach to HU groups through
the Regional Conservation Partnership Program (RCPP). Through EQIP,
NRCS offers HU producers the option to use the advance payment option
to increase program accessibility and reduce the initial burden of
paying for up-front costs.
Since February 2020, NRCS has awarded 51 new agreements nationwide
through the Conservation Collaboration Grants (CCG) competitive process
with many projects containing an urban component to develop urban
gardens and establish Seasonal High Tunnels to increase access to
healthy foods in food insecure areas in many states across the U.S. The
CCG opportunity emphasized projects that targeted agricultural
producers in multiple states, including American Indian, socially
disadvantaged, limited-resource or beginning farmers and ranchers as
well as veteran farmers or ranchers.
Through the new Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative
Production (OUAIP), USDA launched a competitive grants program,
cooperative agreement projects in 10 states, and is in the process of
establishing 10 new FSA County Committees for urban agriculture. In
Fiscal Year 2021, we will be establishing a Federal Advisory Committee
for urban agriculture. Both the grants and agreements opportunities
were to support the development of urban agriculture and innovative
production and were targeted to different eligible entities including
nonprofits, American Indian tribes and local governments, and schools
across the country. Both competitive funding programs provided new
opportunities to directly engage and support urban and suburban growers
and stakeholders in their efforts to actively participate in and
strengthen aspects of their local food system.
The OUAIP grants program supports a wide range of activities that
include operating community gardens and nonprofit farms, increasing
food production and access in economically distressed communities,
providing job training and education, and developing business plans and
zoning. Priority was given to projects located in or targeting an
Opportunity Zone, which is a census tract designation for low-income
communities. On August 25, 2020, USDA announced its awarding of $1.14
million for three Planning Projects and approximately $1.88 million for
seven Implementation Projects from across the nation, including the
Famicos Foundation in Ohio.
At the same time, USDA announced that it invested approximately
$1.09 million in Community Compost and Food Waste Reduction projects.
The 13 selected pilot projects develop and test strategies for planning
and implementing municipal compost plans and food waste reduction.
Priority was given to projects that anticipate or demonstrate economic
benefits, incorporate plans to make compost easily accessible to
farmers, including community gardeners, integrate other food waste
strategies, including food recovery efforts, and collaborate with
multiple partners.
The OUAIP also made notable progress towards establishing the
National Advisory Committee for the Secretary of Agriculture (FACA
Committee) and creating 10 new Urban and Suburban FSA County Committees
(UCOCs). OUAIP worked closely with the Farm Service Agency (FSA) to
identify locations for the UCOCs, develop outreach plans, UCOC business
and operation plans, and develop policies--as well as conduct national
trainings and outreach sessions. The County Committees will play a
critical role in advising FSA on how programs meet the needs of urban
growers.
Approximately 500 applications were submitted in response to the
UAIP competitive funding announcement. Of those, 13 were selected for
funding, including the Ohio-based Famicos Foundation's proposal.
Famicos Foundation's mission is to improve the quality of lives in
Greater Cleveland through neighborhood revitalization, affordable
housing, and integrated social services. Community gardens have long
been a critical part of Famicos's work to improve the health and well-
being of people in the neighborhoods it serves. The Community Produce
Garden project activities will include reinvigorating the garden at
Michael R. White STEM School using emerging technologies to produce
food to create healthy, fresh food for area residents, to provide a
STEM education opportunity for area students, to offer jobs to local
youth, and generate income at Famicos's Gateway 105 Market.
Cleveland, Ohio was also selected as one of the first five new
Urban and Suburban FSA County Committees. Additionally, Seasonal High
Tunnels, also called hoop houses or high tunnels, allow crops to grow
in colder weather. Urban farmers can apply for NRCS technical and
financial assistance to purchase and construct Seasonal High Tunnels.
In FY 2020, Ohio NRCS obligated 24 contracts in NE Ohio that included
high tunnels systems for $210,534. By making local produce available
for more months in the year, fewer resources are used to transport food
to plates. Our vision is to make a difference in these communities by
fostering an urban agriculture movement that eliminates food deserts
and helps change the narrative for urban farming.
Question 2. This past August the Farm Service Agency announced the
creation of new county committees focused exclusively on urban
agriculture--including a county committee to be located in my district
in Cleveland, Ohio. My understanding is these committees are organized
through USDA's Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production.
Can you provide us with an update on the formation of these new
committees, including the purpose and how the committee members will be
selected? How does USDA plan to engage/work with local urban
agriculture leaders in Cleveland to ensure the committee adequately
represents and understands the needs of the urban agriculture sector in
the area? Additionally, is the Office of Urban Agriculture engaging in
any cross-agency activity with the Agricultural Marketing Service or
any other USDA agency? Please specify.
Answer. The farm bill authorized the Secretary to establish ten new
Urban and Suburban Farm Service Agency (FSA) County Committees (UCOCs)
as part of a 5 year or longer pilot project. OUAIP worked closely with
FSA to identify locations for the UCOCs, develop outreach plans, UCOC
business and operation plans, and develop policies--as well as conduct
national trainings and outreach sessions. The new UCOCs will help
identify the needs of the growing urban agriculture market and help the
USDA determine how our programs can be enhanced to meet those needs and
provide recommendations to help shape future opportunities. Members
will include local farmers with ties to urban agriculture, innovative
practices, should reflect diversity, including historically under-
served producers, and will be nominated by their peers. Committees
typically include 3 to 11 members who serve 3 year terms.
FSA began accepting nominations on September 8, 2020, for the first
five urban and suburban county committee members. Urban farmers who
participate or cooperate in an FSA program, or are pursuing
opportunities to work with FSA in the county selected were eligible to
either be nominated or nominate themselves or others as a candidate.
Organizations, including those representing beginning, women, and
minority producers, were also encouraged to nominate candidates. To be
considered, a producer must sign an FSA-669A nomination form. The form
and other information about FSA county committee elections are
available at fsa.usda.gov/elections or farmers.gov/urban. The deadline
for submitting nomination forms for these first five urban and suburban
county committees was October 2, 2020. The remaining five will be
established in FY 2021.
These new UCOCs have the opportunity to be dynamic in their role
through this pilot project--existing in ways that are unlike
traditional county committees by engaging with a new customer base,
being a voice of that customer base and helping the USDA shape the
future in our assistance and support of this growing market. Likewise,
these new UCOCs will also serve to fulfill some of the more traditional
roles of a county committee by making decisions on producer
applications, making determinations on production, listening to
appeals, and helping manage the local FSA office.
The new members will receive an in-depth UCOC training on their
roles, rules, policies, programs, and guidelines of FSA and NRCS
programs by working directly with FSA and NRCS staff and/or local
committees and councils. These local committees and councils include
but are not limited to, local USDA Outreach Committees, State Technical
Advisory Committee, State Civil Rights Committee, State Food Advisory
Council, State Public Affairs, Outreach and Program Staff. The UCOCs
will meet quarterly to discuss urban agriculture related issues, the
market and needs, and provide feedback and input on how FSA or other
USDA programs can best meet the needs of the urban agriculture
community and to review current FSA programs. Urban growers, gardeners
and partners include municipal entities, nonprofits, representatives
from an institution of higher education or extension program,
individuals who represent business and economic development,
individuals with supply chain experience, which may include a food
aggregator, wholesale food distributor, food hub, or individuals who
have direct-to-consumer market experience are actively recruited to
participate in these discussions, as well.
The UCOCs will work with state FSA and NRCS leaders to identify key
gatekeepers to invite to the general sessions as well as work with
state NRCS and FSA outreach and communications staffs to develop
outreach and communication tools for promoting these meetings. The
UCOCs, FSA, NRCS and other USDA agencies and local relevant partners,
leaders, councils, and committees will assist the UCOCs in developing a
UCOCs Urban Agriculture and Innovative Production Project Analysis for
their site-specific location. The Project Analysis should be completed
by the end of Fiscal Year 2021.
USDA has established an internal urban agriculture advisory
committee with membership from USDA agencies that have a mission which
services urban agriculture and innovation. The OUAIP Committee will
provide guidance to the OUAIP Designated Federal Official and develop
recommendations on applicable policy for USDA leadership. To ensure the
committee's success, members have been appointed with skills to engage
technical, subject matter, and policy expertise in the area of urban
agriculture. This collaboration across all relevant USDA agencies
highlights USDA's commitment to fulfilling these requirements.
The agencies represented on the committee are: Agricultural
Marketing Service, Agricultural Research Service, Animal Plant Health
Inspection Service, Economic Research Service, Farm Service Agency,
Food and Nutrition Service, Foreign Agricultural Service, Forest
Service, National Agricultural Statistics Service, National Institute
of Food and Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, Risk
Management Agency, Rural Development, Office of the Chief Economist,
Office of Partnership and Public Engagement, and the Office of Tribal
Relations.
The OUAIP Committee will develop an outreach plan and provide
specific details on resources and commitments of the individual
agencies to carry out collaborative efforts supporting urban and
innovative agriculture. Additionally, the OUAIP Committee will develop
recommendations on priorities and mechanisms for achieving statutory
requirements.
Question 3. In an effort to assist under-served & socially
disadvantaged minority farmers, USDA established a technical assistance
cooperative agreement program. Many awardees are minority Community
Based Organizations (CBO's) such as the Federation of Southern
Cooperatives. However, it has recently come to my attention that at
least 12-15 of these established agreements are currently experiencing
delays in having their awards executed. Some CBO's like the Federation
of Southern Cooperatives, who assists with the coordination of the
Seasonal High Tunnel program in the district that I represent, have
been approved since March but have yet to receive their award. Can you
provide us me with a status update on the existing agreements between
USDA and minority CBO's, including those impacting my district?
Answer. Due to the sheer volume of agreements to be processed,
several were not completed by September 30, 2020. Twelve agreements did
not get processed. Of these, nine were minority Community Based
Organizations. The grants team identified issues that needed further
clarification, and those issues are currently being addressed.
Specifically, NRCS is working with the FPAC Business Center to get the
remaining agreements expeditiously executed, including the Cleveland
High Tunnel project.
In FY 2020, NRCS entered into 44 national-level partnership
agreements with minority organizations with an investment of
approximately $23 million to assist the agency in conducting program
outreach to historically under-served populations. By strengthening
existing partnerships and establishing new partnerships with public and
private entities, NRCS extended its reach to a broader cross-section of
the American public. Through these partnership efforts, NRCS is
successfully demonstrating how its many unique conservation programs
play a vital role in helping address natural resource, economic and
social challenges faced in rural, suburban and urban landscapes. As a
result, NRCS is: (1) Demonstrating the connection between food,
agriculture, community and a sustainable environment; (2) Expanding
access to affordable fresh and local foods; and (3) Stimulating
economic development.
Question 4. The 2018 Farm Bill established the Clear Lakes
Estuaries and Rivers initiative or the CLEAR30 pilot program. The
program is devoted to practices that offer water quality protection and
is limited to the Great Lakes and the Chesapeake Bay regions. Can you
please explain the role of NRCS in providing land eligibility
determinations, conservation planning, and practice implementation?
Answer. The FSA is responsible for the land eligibility
determination for all of Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) offers,
including CLEAR30 offers. The NRCS conducts a field visit and provides
to FSA a technical description of the CRP practice condition at the
time of CLEAR30 enrollment. If the cover has been maintained and
managed, then FSA will ask NRCS to write up a conservation plan for the
CLEAR30 offer. If additional practices are needed, NRCS will provide
technical assistance to the producer for practice implementation.
Questions Submitted by Hon. Chellie Pingree, a Representative in
Congress from Maine
Question 1. I've been pushing for NRCS to adopt composting as a
conservation practice for several years now. I was encouraged to see
that you recently issued an interim conservation practice for soil
carbon amendments, including compost and biochar.
Can you give me an update on that interim practice? What feedback
have you gotten from stakeholders so far? How many states have adopted
it? When could we expect to see this as an approved practice
nationwide?
Answer. The practice is in the early stages of planning. While none
have been installed yet, use of the interim practice standard will be
available for EQIP incentive payments in the states that have adopted
it in FY 2021. There has been a tremendous amount of positive feedback
from stakeholders across the country, including Organic Farming
Research Foundation, National Center for Appropriate Technology,
National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, and National Sugarbeet
Association. In addition, West Sugar Association, Crystal Sugar
Cooperative, US Biochar Initiative, and US Composting Council expressed
interest.
Interim conservation practice standard Soil Carbon Amendment (Code
808) has been authorized for use in CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, ID, IL, IN, MA,
MD/DC, MI, MT, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OR, UT, VT, and Caribbean Area (Puerto
Rico and Virgin Islands). Interim standards are approved for states to
use for 3 years. At the end of the 3 year trial, states can then
recommend that the interim be converted to a national standard or
archived based on experience with the interim standard. Any state can
add the existing interim practice if it fits their need and provide
evaluation of the interim practice.
Question 2. The 2018 Farm Bill requires NRCS to offer conservation
practice payments in advance to limited resource, socially-
disadvantaged, veteran, and beginning farmers when they enroll in EQIP.
What outreach has NRCS done to make sure these producers are aware
of this option? How many producers enrolling in EQIP have been able to
take advantage of the advance payments?
Answer. NRCS has taken this farm bill provision very seriously and
has developed a campaign to ensure historically under-served (HU)
producers (including limited resource, socially disadvantaged, veteran
and beginning farmers and ranchers) are made aware of the advance
payment option. NRCS has provided more than 110-contact hours (almost
three full weeks) of training to State, Area, and Field Offices related
to provision of the 2018 Farm Bill. Advanced Payments have been
included in this training to inform states how internal information
technology applications are being updated to incorporate this
provision, which cost components of a conservation practice (e.g.
materials, labor, equipment for installation) are eligible for advanced
payments.
Field Offices provide advanced payments recipients with a copy
relevant fact sheets, and other conservation practice implementation
requirements to help them ensure practice installation follows
established standards and specifications. Historically under-served
producers who elect to take advantage of this provision will have up to
90 days to finalize conservation practice installation. Participants
who elect to waiver this provision have this information documented in
their conservation plan schedule of operations. With the training
provided, field offices are conveying information to applicants who
qualify for this provision on an individual basis.
To ensure each HU producer program participant is aware of the
advance payment option, NRCS has updated business tools to record the
HU producer's election to receive an advance payment, on a contract
item basis, at the time of obligation. This business tool update also
applies to any future contract modifications. Additionally, if a HU
producer elects not to receive an advance payment at the time of
obligation, the HU producer can still request the advance payment prior
to implementing the practice.
Since passage of the 2018 Farm Bill, NRCS has 1,478 contracts that
include obligations in the amount of $60.4 million. The agency
anticipates these numbers will increase during the course of the 2018
Farm Bill as more participants become aware of this provision and field
offices become more proficient with communicating, executing, and
certifying these business practices.
Response from Jonathan W. Coppess, J.D., Assistant Professor of Law and
Policy, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics,
University of Illinois
Questions Submitted by Hon. Abigail Davis Spanberger, a Representative
in Congress from Virginia
Question 1. Drawing on your experiences, how can economic
downturns, like the one we are currently facing, impact decisions
farmers are making regarding conservation practices? Do we generally
anticipate farmers or producers to increase or decrease their usage of
conservation practices during economic downturns? Would you say
conservation programs today are resilient to the variable economic
climates faced by farmers?
Answer. Much depends on the individual farmer and farm management,
as well as the severity of the downturn. In general, an economic
downturn would be expected to significantly challenge decisions
regarding conservation practice adoption and the management of
conservation efforts. Farmers who have adopted conservation practices
and incorporated them successfully in their farm management are
unlikely to make drastic changes to reverse what has been adopted, but
they may hold off on further adoption or expansion. Farmers who were
looking to adopt are likely to hold off or reconsider. The challenge
for conservation practices are that much of the benefit is incremental
and spread out over a longer time horizon while the costs are immediate
and annual; management complexity and additional risk are also
immediate and ongoing. Similar to any investment in the farm, the
farmer will need to weigh additional investments against the financial
and other challenges in the downturn.
One method for thinking through these issues is around the topic of
competition and, in particular, competition as it plays out on the
local level with matters like cash rent. A farmer investing in
conservation efforts (both time and money) will have fewer resources to
invest in additional rental acres or increased cash rent; conservation
investments might have to take priority over other capital investments
like equipment or storage. While this is unlikely to drive a farmer out
of farming right away, it could slowly erode the farmer's competitive
position or make it difficult to weather downturns and other
challenges. Farmers are, however, very good at adapting and innovating
such that the competition issue should not be overstated or
misunderstood. It is likely a longer run issue where the farmer
adopting conservation will experience an erosion in their competitive
position. At the very least, the competition issue raises substantial
questions for farmers and for policy and it is an area that would
benefit from further analysis and evaluation.
As for current conservation programs, I would argue that they
represent important and valuable investments. For working lands
programs, there are opportunities to improve their responsiveness to
economic changes faced by farmers which will, in turn, make the
policies and programs more relevant to more farmers. Looking to
commodity programs and crop insurance, we have a long history
highlighting the critical factor that crop prices play in policy design
and the counter-cyclical elements of commodity policies. Crop
insurance, for example, similarly gained popularity with the
introduction of revenue policies that incorporated crop year price
risk. From these lessons, there is much to learn for conservation
policy and program design.
Question 2. In your testimony you mentioned the bill from Reps.
Bustos and Bost, H.R. 4988, the ``Conservation Assistance Loan Act of
2018.'' Are there any other pieces of legislation that you would
encourage this Subcommittee to consider to better ensure that
conservation programs address farm-level competition and remain more
relevant to decisions being made by farmers on a daily basis?
Answer. With the caveat that I have not reviewed all bills or
proposals, there are some notable examples of which I am currently
aware. One example is ``The Farmer-Driven Conservation Outcomes Act''
introduced by Representatives Fudge and Thompson (H.R. 6182), as well
as Senators Casey and Capito (S. 3429). Additionally, legislation that
looks to increase and improve Federal investments in soil health will
be important, especially those that seek innovative methods for helping
farmers with the investments necessary. I note specifically your bill
``The Healthy Soil, Resilient Farmers Act of 2020'' (H.R. 8057) and
Senator Wyden's ``Healthy Soils Healthy Climate Act'' (S. 4850). These
bills are valuable contributions to the discussion and further the
thinking around conservation policies and programs.
Question 3. In your opinion, do you believe our conservation
programs provide enough certainty or support for farmers and producers
who wish to engage in conservation over the long run? If not, what
could be done to increase certainty for farmers and producers as it
pertains to conservation?
Answer. Much depends on the program; long-term contracts such as
under CSP or CRP provide plenty of certainty. For working lands, I
contend that the policies need to better incorporate risk issues like
market prices to better perform in a counter-cyclical manner, helping
the farmer in downturns when the costs for conservation investments are
likely to be more significant. This might, somewhat ironically, appear
to decrease certainty in terms of level of support each year but would
be more relevant to farm risk issues and could improve certainty to
farm management over the longer-term.
Question 4. In your testimony you describe a model of working lands
conservation programs that would better internalize yield and price
risks into their design. Given the current economic downturn, could you
describe how policies of this type might help ensure that conservation
incentives are more resilient to economic shocks?
Answer. Including price risk, for example, would peg the
conservation assistance to market prices. In short, this would mean
that conservation assistance would increase as prices decreased in a
counter-cyclical manner much like title I commodity programs currently
operate.
Question 5. Are there any other changes you'd recommend we make to
conservation programs that would both increase farmer participation and
make them more resilient to uncertainty--whether economic, or related
to the impacts of the climate crisis on crops, or otherwise?
Answer. I hesitate to make recommendations in general. I would like
to have more analysis and debate about the potential for a counter-
cyclical design in working lands policies. This would also apply to
policies designed to address the climate crisis through the potential
for capturing carbon in soils and fields.
Question 6. As you know, conservation programs can help build farm
resilience, boost profits, and stimulate local economies. Obviously,
the COVID-19 crisis has presented farmers with a set of challenges
unlike any they may have seen before. How can conservation programs be
used as a tool to help farmers through the current public health
crisis?
Answer. Conservation programs represent important Federal, public
investments in farming and food production. To the extent they help
farmers manage through downturns like what we are experiencing with
COVID-19, they are incredibly important tools. They not only help the
farmer through the crisis but they are also investments in conserving,
sustaining, improving and making more resilient our vital natural
resources such as soil and water. A crisis can often risk these longer-
term and important efforts; short-term thinking in a crisis can create
longer-term problems. Conservation can help avoid such problems and may
offer further methods for supporting farmers and conserving natural
resources that provide important returns on the taxpayer investment.
Question 7. I often say that farmers are the original
environmentalists and conservationists. However, too often, the work of
our nation's growers and producers goes unnoticed in the context of
combating the climate crisis through the management of natural carbon
sinks. While there are outside markets for carbon offsets generated
through healthy soil and other agriculturally based practices, these
markets can be difficult to navigate and require farmers to follow
rigid protocols that are not always designed with the farmer in mind.
It's for this reason that I joined my colleague Rep. Bacon (R-NE) and
Senators Braun (R-IN) and Stabenow (D-MI) in introducing H.R. 7393, the
Growing Climate Solutions Act which would create a certification
process for third-party verifiers of carbon offsets at USDA. The bill
also creates a virtual one-stop shop to help connect farmers with these
markets and provide information about carbon offset protocols that
would be managed by USDA with the farmer in mind.
Would passing something like the Growing Climate Solutions Act help
farmers access carbon offsets? How might this additional revenue source
change on-farm decisions regarding participation in USDA's working-
lands conservation programs?
Answer. I think that the ``Growing Climate Solutions Act'' and
other potential legislative vehicles could help advance on-farm efforts
to address the climate crisis by moving forward the ability of farmers
to receive revenue for their efforts. As mentioned before, farmers are
incredible competitors and Federal policies that incentivize
competition around addressing carbon and climate, as well as supporting
farmers who innovate in that space will help unleash the competitive
nature of farmers on this vast, complex problem. Even early steps
present the potential for substantial changes and advances; investments
magnified by competition across agriculture.
Question 7a. It is important that the price of carbon offsets
always reflect the benefits they offer to the climate. However, were
USDA to add climate mitigation to its existing mandate for conservation
programs or in the future were to establish a climate-specific program,
how might we ensure that the category of on-farm risks, like price and
yield, that you reference in your testimony are also internalized into
the program without risking the integrity of a carbon price signal?
Answer. I would argue that incorporating farm risk factors into any
such efforts represent a critical question and area for further
evaluation and analysis. I do not have answers but welcome the
questions and efforts in this direction. I think one place to start
would be the incredible work and thought along these lines that
currently exists, and continues, at universities. I also think there
are important lessons from the history and development of current
policies that can be applicable, as well as provide cautionary lessons.