1084 Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 4 / Thursday, January 7, 2021 / Notices 

represent minorities, women, and 

persons with disabilities. 

Member Nominations 

Any interested person or organization 

may nominate qualified individuals for 

membership. Interested candidates may 

nominate themselves. Individuals who 

wish to be considered for membership 

on the Urban Ag Advisory Committee 

must submit a nomination with 

information, including a background 

disclosure form (Form AD–755). 

Nominations should be typed and 

include the following: 

1. A brief summary, no more than two 

pages, explaining the nominee’s 

qualifications to serve on the Urban Ag 

Advisory Committee and addressing the 

criteria described above. 

2. A resume providing the nominee’s 

background, experience, and 

educational qualifications. 

3. A completed background disclosure 

form (Form AD–755) signed by the 

nominee https://www.ocio.usda.gov/ 

sites/default/files/docs/2012/AD-755- 

Approved_Master-exp-3.31.22_508.pdf. 

4. Any recent publications by the 

nominee relative to urban agriculture or 

innovations in urban agricultural 

production (if appropriate). 

5. Letters of endorsement (optional). 

Send typed nominations to Ronald 

Harris, Designated Federal Officer, 

Director of Outreach and Partnerships, 

Natural Resources Conservation Service, 

Department of Agriculture, 1400 

Independence Avenue SW, Room 6006– 

S, Washington, DC 20250; telephone: 

(202) 720–6646; email: Ronald.Harris@

usda.gov. Ronald Harris, the Designated 

Federal Officer, will acknowledge 

receipt of nominations. 

Equal Opportunity Statement 

To ensure that recommendations of 

the Urban Ag Advisory Committee take 

into account the needs of underserved 

and diverse communities served by the 

USDA, membership will include, to the 

extent practicable, individuals 

representing minorities, women, and 

persons with disabilities. USDA 

prohibits discrimination in all of its 

programs and activities on the basis of 

race, sex, color, national origin, gender, 

religion, age, sexual orientation, or 

disability. Additionally, discrimination 

on the basis of political beliefs and 

marital status or family status is also 

prohibited by statutes enforced by 

USDA (not all prohibited bases apply to 

all programs). Persons with disabilities 

who require alternate means for 

communication of program information 

(Braille, large print, audio tape, etc.) 

should contact USDA’s Technology and 

Accessible Resources Give Employment 

Today Center at (202) 720–2600 (voice 

and TDD). USDA is an equal 

opportunity provider and employer. 

Dated: December 28, 2020. 

Cikena Reid, 

Committee Management Officer, USDA. 

[FR Doc. 2020–29077 Filed 1–6–21; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 3410–16–P 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Economic Research Service 

Notice of Intent to Request New 

Information Collection 

AGENCY: Economic Research Service, 

USDA. 

ACTION: Notice and request for 

comments. 

SUMMARY: In accordance with the 

Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 and 

Office of Management and Budget 

(OMB) implementing regulations, the 

U.S. Department of Agriculture 

Economic Research Service (ERS) 

invites the general public and other 

Federal agencies to take this 

opportunity to comment on a proposed 

new information collection for a study 

of ‘‘Conservation Auction Behavior: 

Effects of Default Offers and Score 

Updating.’’ 

DATES: Written comments on this notice 

must be received on or before March 8, 

2021 to be assured of consideration. 

ADDRESSES: Address all comments 

concerning this notice to Steven 

Wallander, Rural and Resource 

Economics Division, Economic Research 

Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 

1400 Independence Ave. SW, Mail Stop 

1800, Washington DC 20250–0002. 

Submit electronic comments to 

steve.wallander@usda.gov . 

All written comments will be 

available for public inspection during 

regular business hours (8:30 a.m. to 5:00 

p.m. (Eastern time), Monday through 

Friday). To arrange access to the 

comments, contact Steven Wallander at 

the email address listed above. 

All responses to this notice will be 

summarized and included in the request 

for Office of Management and Budget 

approval. All comments and replies will 

be a matter of public record. Comments 

are invited on: (a) Whether the proposed 

collection of information is necessary 

for the proper performance of the 

functions of the agency, including 

whether the information shall have 

practical utility; (b) the accuracy of the 

agency’s estimate of the burden of the 

proposed collection of information, 

including the validity of the 

methodology and assumptions used; (c) 

ways to enhance the quality, utility, and 

clarity of the information to be 

collected; and (d) ways to minimize the 

burden of the collection of information 

on those who are to respond, including 

use of appropriate automated, 

electronic, mechanical, or other 

technological collection techniques or 

other forms of information technology. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For 

further information contact Steven 

Wallander at the mailing address listed 

above or by phone: (202) 694–5546. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Title: 

Conservation Auction Behavior: Effects 

of Default Offers and Score Updating. 

OMB Number: To be assigned by 

OMB. 

Expiration Date: Three years from 

approval date. 

Type of Request: New information 

collection. 

Abstract: In accordance with the 

Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 (Pub. 

L. 104–12) and OMB regulations at 5 

CFR part 1320 (60 FR 44978, August 29, 

1995), this notice announces USDA 

Economic Research Services’ intention 

to request approval from the Office of 

Management and Budget (OMB) for a 

new data collection effort. 

This data collection will use an online 

simulated auction experiment with 

former participants in the USDA 

Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) 

general signup and university students 

to (1) study the anchoring effect of using 

a high-scoring default offer in the CRP 

enrollment software rather than an 

active-choice default, and (2) study how 

the timing of information about final 

ranking score in the software influences 

responsive to baseline ranking scores. 

Outputs for the experiment will be used 

to inform potential updates to the CRP 

software and enrollment software as 

well as future lab experiments on 

general conservation auctions. 

USDA’s Conservation Reserve 

Program (CRP) enrolls environmentally 

sensitive cropland in long-term 

contracts. Enrolled landowners receive 

annual rental payments for establishing 

the approved conservation vegetative 

cover and not farming the land. Most 

land is enrolled through the CRP 

General Signup, a multi-unit, sealedbid, reverse auction. Offers are ranked 

on both quality and price. Participants 

can increase the probability that their 

offer is accepted by agreeing to a higher 

quality conservation cover practice or 

lowering their asking price (annual 

payment). By encouraging better 

practices and lower payments, the 

auction design improves the cost 

effectiveness of the CRP. 


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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 4 / Thursday, January 7, 2021 / Notices 1085 

The CRP general signup is a fairly 

complex decision environment in which 

participants must decide whether to 

select one of several dozen possible 

higher cost but higher scoring practices 

and whether to ask for lower annual 

rental payments in order to increase the 

likely that their offer is accepted into 

the program. A larger literature in other 

domains finds that in complex decision 

environments the initial option 

presented can have a significant 

anchoring effect in which final choices 

are closer to that default option than 

they would be otherwise. The current 

CRP general signup software uses an 

‘‘active choice’’ default, in which the 

cover practice and annual rental choices 

are initially blank. Additional literature 

on complex decision-making 

environments finds that the way in 

which information is provided can 

influence outcome. The current CRP 

general signup software provides 

participants with their ranking score at 

the end of a series of offer selection 

screens. Providing live updating of that 

score earlier in the software could make 

respondents more sensitive to the 

underlying program incentives. 

Using a stylized version of the 

enrollment software to create a 

simulated (artefactual) CRP auction, the 

study will experimentally test the 

impacts on final practice and payment 

offers from two behavioral 

interventions: (i) A high-quality default 

starting offer; and (ii) live updates on 

the offer score at the point of offer 

selection. In addition, to assess the 

external validity (generalizability) of 

conducting experiments with students, 

a common practice in the literature on 

conservation auction design, this study 

will run the experiment with both a 

sample of university students (drawn 

from the full population of 

undergraduate and graduate students at 

the University of Delaware) and a 

sample of former participants in the 

General Signup to test whether the two 

populations respond differently to the 

behavioral interventions. 

The information to be collected in this 

proposed initiative is necessary to test 

the expected behavioral responses to 

these changes in the auction 

information environment. Such 

responses cannot be estimated using 

observational data because there is not 

systematic variation in the information 

environment. In addition, such 

responses cannot be estimated using 

mathematical programming models 

because the underlying psychological 

drivers of anchoring effects are highly 

context specific. By using experiments, 

we will be able to identify whether the 

effects observed in other complex 

decision-making environments are also 

likely in the context of a large 

conservation auction like the CRP. We 

plan to use these experiments to inform 

possible future redesigns of the CRP 

general signup software and enrollment 

process by the Farm Service Agency 

(FSA), future experiments using 

simulated conservation auctions, and 

the overall effort to extrapolated from 

the larger literature on conservation 

auction experiments that relied 

primarily on students as subjects. 

Participation in this experiment will 

be voluntary, and subjects will be 

recruited using multiple waves of mail 

and email communications. During each 

session, subjects will participate in four 

rounds of a conservation auction: One 

practice round and three actual rounds. 

Within each round, subjects will be 

assigned a different field for potential 

enrollment and, based on the 

characteristics of that field, will make a 

decision about which conservation 

cover practice to select and what annual 

rental payment to ask for. Sessions will 

be conducted using an on-line auction 

portal developed by the University of 

Delaware. Participants can sign into the 

web page and make their offers at any 

point during a two-week enrollment 

period. Recruitment will occur in 

multiple waves until the required 

number of subjects is met. 

Each session will last for an average 

30 minutes, including watching an 

introductory video that explains the 

auction rules and software. Subjects will 

receive a show-up fee of $10. In 

addition to the show-up fee, subjects 

will receive compensation based on the 

decisions they make during the course 

of the experiment. After the enrollment 

period for each recruitment wave closes, 

one of the three auction rounds will be 

randomly selected and the highestranking offers will be ‘‘accepted’’ and 

receive a virtual payment. The number 

of winning offers will depend upon the 

complete pool of bids. Higher quality 

and lower cost offers will be more likely 

to get accepted but will receive lower 

payments if they are accepted. Payment 

levels are higher for the farmer 

population than for the student 

population since the lower level of 

incentives for students is one of the 

major reasons that many conservation 

auction studies use only a student 

population. We expect the winning bids 

to receive an average of $40 for farmers 

and $15 for students, not including the 

show-up fee. In designing our 

experimental procedures and payment 

levels, we took into consideration 

academic standards, statistical power 

considerations, budgetary limitations, 

and discussions between OMB and ERS 

regarding this and other approved 

experimental research. 

Authority: These data will be 

collected under the legal authority of 7 

U.S.C. 2204(a). 

ERS intends to protect respondent 

information under the Privacy Act of 

1974 and 7 U.S.C. 2276. ERS has 

decided not to invoke the Confidential 

Information Protection and Statistical 

Efficiency Act of 2002 (CIPSEA). The 

complexity and cost necessary to invoke 

CIPSEA is not justified given the nature 

of the collection; the collection will be 

conducted by the University of 

Delaware and hosted in non-government 

owned computer systems, where 

CIPSEA compliance cannot be assured. 

Affected Public: Half of the 

respondents will be farmers or farmland 

owners who previously participated in 

at least one CRP general signup. The 

other half will be students at the 

University of Delaware. 

Estimated Number of Respondents 

and Respondent Burden: Since 

recruitment will occur through multiple 

waves to reach the target number of 

participants, the total respondent 

burden for participation time will be 

constant and the total respondent 

burden for recruitment will depend 

upon the participation rate. Under lower 

participation rates, the respondent 

burden of recruitment is higher. Since 

students will be recruited through email 

and farmers will be recruited through 

mail, the burden per subject for 

recruitment is slightly lower (3 minutes) 

for students than for farmers (5 

minutes). For all subjects who opt to 

participate, the expected time to 

complete the experiment online is 30 

minutes. 

Under a conservative assumption that 

the participation rate will be 10 percent 

of the sampled population for farmers 

and 25 percent of the sampled 

population for students, the public 

respondent burden for this information 

collection is estimated to be 2,033 

hours. The calculations are shown in 

the table below based on a sample of 

10,000 farmers that results in 1,000 

farmer participants and a sample of 

4,000 students that results in a sample 

of 1,000 student participants. At higher 

participation rates of 20 percent for 

farmers and 33 percent for students, the 

total respondent burden would be 1,567 

hours. 


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1086 Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 4 / Thursday, January 7, 2021 / Notices 

SAMPLE BURDEN HOURS: 10% RESPONSE RATE FOR FARMERS, 25% RESPONSE RATE FOR STUDENTS

Sample size 

Responses Non-Response 

Count Minutes/ 

response 

Subtotal 

burden 

hours 

Count Minutes/ 

response 

Subtotal 

burden 

hours 

Total 

burden 

hours 

Farmer Population: 

Recruitment ................................................ 10,000 1,000 5 83.3 9,000 5 750.0 833.3 

Participation ............................................... .................... 1,000 30 500.0 .................... .................... .................... 500.0 

Total .................................................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... 1,333.3 

Student Population: 

Recruitment ................................................ 4,000 1,000 3 50.0 3,000 3 150.0 200.0 

Participation ............................................... .................... 1,000 30 500.0 .................... .................... .................... 500.0 

Total .................................................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... 700.0 

Total Both Populations ................ .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... .................... 2,033.3 

Comments: Comments are invited on: 

(a) Whether the proposed collection of 

information is necessary for the proper 

performance of the functions of the 

Agency, including whether the 

information will have practical utility; 

(b) the accuracy of the Agency’s 

estimate of the burden of the proposed 

collection of information, including the 

validity of the methodology and 

assumptions used; (c) ways to enhance 

the quality, utility, and clarity of the 

information to be collected; (d) ways to 

minimize the burden of the collection of 

information on those who are to 

respond, including through the use of 

appropriate automated, electronic, 

mechanical, or other technological 

collection techniques or other forms of 

information technology. Comments 

should be sent to the address in the 

preamble. All responses to this notice 

will be summarized and included in the 

request for OMB approval. All 

comments will also become a matter of 

public record. 

Spiro Stefanou, 

Administrator, Economic Research Service. 

[FR Doc. 2021–00004 Filed 1–6–21; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 3410–18–P 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Forest Service 

Black Hills Resource Advisory 

Committee 

AGENCY: Forest Service, USDA. 

ACTION: Notice of meeting. 

SUMMARY: The Black Hills Resource 

Advisory Committee (RAC) will conduct 

a virtual meeting. The committee is 

authorized under the Secure Rural 

Schools and Community SelfDetermination Act (the Act) and 

operates in compliance with the Federal 

Advisory Committee Act. The purpose 

of the committee is to improve 

collaborative relationships and to 

provide advice and recommendations to 

the Forest Service concerning projects 

and funding consistent with Title II of 

the Act. RAC information can be found 

at the following website: https://

www.fs.usda.gov/detail/blackhills/ 

workingtogether/advisorycommittees/ 

?cid=STELPRD3807565. 

DATES: The meeting will be held on 

Thursday, January 28, 2021, at 5:30 p.m. 

All meetings are subject to 

cancellation. For updated status of 

meeting prior to attendance, please 

contact the person listed under FOR

FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT. 

ADDRESSES: The meeting will be held 

virtually along with a conference call 

line. For virtual meeting information, 

please contact the person listed under 

For Further Information Contact. 

Detailed instructions on how to attend 

the meeting virtually will be sent out via 

email with a news release 

approximately one week prior to the 

meeting. 

Written comments may be submitted 

as described under Supplementary 

Information. All comments, including 

names and addresses, when provided, 

are placed in the record and available 

for public inspection and copying. The 

public may inspect comments received 

at the Mystic Ranger District Office. 

Please call ahead to facilitate entry into 

the building. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Kelly Warnke, Committee Coordinator, 

by phone at 605–716–1978 or by email 

at kelly.warnke@usda.gov. 

Individuals who use 

telecommunication devices for the deaf 

(TDD) may call the Federal Information 

Relay Service (FIRS) at 1–800–877–8339 

between 8:00 a.m. and 8:00 p.m., 

Eastern Standard Time, Monday 

through Friday. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The 

purpose of the meeting is to further 

review and recommend projects for 

funding under the Secure Rural School 

allocations to Custer, Lawrence, and 

Pennington Counties for 2017, 2018 and 

2019. 

The meeting is open to the public. 

The agenda will include time for people 

to make oral statements of three minutes 

or less. Individuals wishing to provide 

comments with regards to this meeting’s 

agenda and for comments to be included 

with the meeting minutes/records, 

comments must be submitted in writing 

by Friday January 22, 2021. Anyone 

who would like to bring related matters 

to the attention of the committee may 

file written statements with the 

committee staff before or after the 

meeting. Written comments must be 

sent to Kelly Warnke, Mystic Ranger 

District, 8221 Mount Rushmore Road, 

Rapid City, South Dakota 57702; by 

email to kelly.warnke@usda.gov, or via 

facsimile to 605–343–7134. 

Meeting Accommodations: If you are 

a person requiring reasonable 

accommodation, please make requests 

in advance for sign language 

interpreting, assistive listening devices, 

or other reasonable accommodation. For 

access to the facility or proceedings, 

please contact the person listed in the 

section titled For Further Information 

Contact. All reasonable accommodation 

requests are managed on a case-by-case 

basis. 

Dated: 1/4/2021. 

Cikena Reid, 

USDA Committee Management Officer. 

[FR Doc. 2021–00024 Filed 1–6–21; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 3411–15–P 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Office of Partnerships and Public 

Engagement 

Public 2501 Stakeholder Call 

AGENCY: OPPE, USDA. 


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