AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD 

AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED 

AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 

HEARINGS 

BEFORE A 

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND 

DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES 

JACK KINGSTON, Georgia, Chairman 

TOM LATHAM, Iowa 

JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri 

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama 

CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming 

ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi 

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

SAM FARR, California 

ROSA L. DELAURO, Connecticut 

SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR., Georgia 

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio 

NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mr. Dicks, as Ranking 

Minority Member of the Full Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees. 

MARTIN DELGADO, TOM O’BRIEN, BETSY BINA, and ANDREW COOPER, 

Staff Assistants 

PART 7 

NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE 

( 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Appropriations 


srobinson on DSK4SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
PART 7—AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, 

AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 


srobinson on DSK4SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD 

AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED 

AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 2012 

HEARINGS 

BEFORE A 

SUBCOMMITTEE OF THE 

COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS 

FIRST SESSION 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD AND 

DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES 

JACK KINGSTON, Georgia, Chairman 

TOM LATHAM, Iowa 

JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri 

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama 

CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming 

ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi 

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

SAM FARR, California 

ROSA L. DELAURO, Connecticut 

SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR., Georgia 

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio 

NOTE: Under Committee Rules, Mr. Rogers, as Chairman of the Full Committee, and Mr. Dicks, as Ranking 

Minority Member of the Full Committee, are authorized to sit as Members of all Subcommittees. 

MARTIN DELGADO, TOM O’BRIEN, BETSY BINA, and ANDREW COOPER, 

Staff Assistants 

PART 7 

NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE 

( 

U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

66–636 WASHINGTON : 2011 


srobinson on DSK4SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS 

HAROLD ROGERS, Kentucky, Chairman 

C. W. BILL YOUNG, Florida 1

JERRY LEWIS, California 1

FRANK R. WOLF, Virginia 

JACK KINGSTON, Georgia 

RODNEY P. FRELINGHUYSEN, New Jersey 

TOM LATHAM, Iowa 

ROBERT B. ADERHOLT, Alabama 

JO ANN EMERSON, Missouri 

KAY GRANGER, Texas 

MICHAEL K. SIMPSON, Idaho 

JOHN ABNEY CULBERSON, Texas 

ANDER CRENSHAW, Florida 

DENNY REHBERG, Montana 

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas 

RODNEY ALEXANDER, Louisiana 

KEN CALVERT, California 

JO BONNER, Alabama 

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio 

TOM COLE, Oklahoma 

JEFF FLAKE, Arizona 

MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida 

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania 

STEVE AUSTRIA, Ohio 

CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming 

TOM GRAVES, Georgia 

KEVIN YODER, Kansas 

STEVE WOMACK, Arkansas 

ALAN NUNNELEE, Mississippi 

————— 

1 Chairman Emeritus 

NORMAN D. DICKS, Washington 

MARCY KAPTUR, Ohio 

PETER J. VISCLOSKY, Indiana 

NITA M. LOWEY, New York 

JOSE ́ E. SERRANO, New York 

ROSA L. DELAURO, Connecticut 

JAMES P. MORAN, Virginia 

JOHN W. OLVER, Massachusetts 

ED PASTOR, Arizona 

DAVID E. PRICE, North Carolina 

MAURICE D. HINCHEY, New York 

LUCILLE ROYBAL-ALLARD, California 

SAM FARR, California 

JESSE L. JACKSON, JR., Illinois 

CHAKA FATTAH, Pennsylvania 

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey 

SANFORD D. BISHOP, JR., Georgia 

BARBARA LEE, California 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

MICHAEL M. HONDA, California 

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota 

WILLIAM B. INGLEE, Clerk and Staff Director 

(II)


srobinson on DSK4SPTVN1PROD with HEARING
(1) 

AGRICULTURE, RURAL DEVELOPMENT, FOOD 

AND DRUG ADMINISTRATION, AND RELATED AGENCIES APPROPRIATIONS FOR 

2012 

TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2011. 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE—NATURAL 

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT 

WITNESSES 

HARRIS SHERMAN, UNDER SECRETARY, NATURAL RESOURCES AND 

ENVIRONMENT 

DAVE WHITE, CHIEF, NATURAL RESOURCES CONSERVATION SERVICE 

MICHAEL YOUNG, BUDGET OFFICER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

OPENING REMARKS

Mr. KINGSTON. The committee will come to order. 

We are pleased today to have Mr. Harris Sherman, Under Secretary for the Natural Resources Conservation Service; and also 

Dave White, who is the chief; and Mr. Mike Young, who is just a 

regular. Could not go through a week without having a hearing up 

here. 

But we appreciate the good work that the NRCS does. And the 

Natural Resources and Environment mission is always a solid one. 

It is one that works with farmers and provides technical assistance, 

which—it appears that often farmers these days are more fearful 

of the government, and they do not see it the way they used to, in 

terms of, okay, this is helpful on things that I want to accomplish. 

But NRCS does work closely with private landowners, and we appreciate that. The budget also is a decrease of about $100 million from 2010 

because of the proposed cancellation of three programs. And we 

think that that is helpful under this environment. And we look forward to your testimony. 

It is an interesting week. We were just commenting, Mr. Under 

Secretary, this is the last hearing, and we will be going to markup 

in the next couple of weeks. Today, the budget comes out. This Friday, the CR is either settled or the gap becomes wider. We don’t 

know. And the backdrop of Libya and everything else, these are interesting times. 

So we look forward to your testimony. 

Mr. Farr. 

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Mr. FARR. I have no opening remarks. I will just take it to questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Okay. 

Mr. Under Secretary, your testimony has been summarized, so 

you are welcome to abbreviate it as much as you feel comfortable 

doing. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Okay, thank you. 

STATEMENT BY MR. SHERMAN

Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. It is a pleasure for Chief 

White and I to be here today to present our budget to the committee. 

I would like, at the outset, just to emphasize the mission of the 

Natural Resources Conservation Service—NRCS. It is about voluntary conservation of private farms, ranches, and forests. It is 

about stewardship of the Nation’s water resources, soils, wetlands, 

wildlife, vegetation, and other natural resources. And it is about 

conservation that we believe keeps agriculture strong and well-positioned, while providing jobs to rural America. 

It is also important to emphasize the context in which these programs exist. Seventy percent of the United States is in private 

landownership. That is about 1.4 billion acres. I think it is fair to 

say, over the past hundred years, much of the emphasis on conservation and stewardship has been about our public lands. But, 

today, I think there is a recognition that our private lands are 

often the lands in greatest risk, and they are lands where these 

conservation efforts will produce the greatest gains. 

NRCS is uniquely positioned to do good work in these areas. 

Today, we have a remarkable suite of conservation programs. 

These are programs that affect every geographic area of the United 

States. They are highly diverse in their functions and their applications. And I think it is fair to say there is high demand from landowners to the technical and the financial assistance that we provide. 

There are tens of millions of acres now benefitting from flagship 

conservation and easement programs. You are very familiar with 

these. They have many alphabet names to them, but Environmental Quality Incentives Program—EQIP—Wetlands Reserve Program—WRP—the Conservation Stewardship Program—CSP—the 

Conservation Reserve Program—CRP—and many others are part 

of this panoply of programs that we are providing. 

And the programs are delivering major benefits. In 2010 alone, 

farmers installed conservation practices on 14 million acres of cropland. NRCS enrolled 25 million acres into the Conservation Stewardship Program in 2010. And we are very proud of the fact that 

our Wetlands Reserve Program enrolled 270,000 acres into the program during 2010. 

The National Resources Inventory that was released in 2010 and 

our recent Conservation Effects Assessment Program—CEAP— 

studies in the Chesapeake Bay and the Upper Mississippi River, 

clearly show that there are significant reductions that occur to 

sediment, nitrogen and phosphorus in our waterways as a result of 

these conservation practices. And so, too, we are starting to stem 

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the tide of fragmentation and development of our farms, ranches 

and private forests. 

I was struck recently by the statistic that one-third of the land 

ever developed in the United States occurred between 1982 and 

2007, a 25-year period. Forty million acres were removed from the 

rural land base during this period of time, 12 million acres of 

which relates to prime farmland. So I think NRCS is uniquely positioned to help to deal with these issues of fragmentation and development of our rural land base. 

The 2012 budget is a continuation of the core NRCS programs. 

As you have mentioned, we have had to make some painful, difficult choices, but, in these budgetary times, we were left with no 

choice. We are proposing the elimination of several of our 2012 discretionary programs. This includes support for the Resource Conservation and Development—RC&D—councils, support for the watershed and flood control projects, support for the watershed rehabilitation programs, a Grazing Land Conservation Initiative, and 

the earmarks associated with the Conservation Operations budget. 

At the same time, we are proposing modest, strategic efforts to 

improve our efficiency and our effectiveness in the conservation delivery programs. Chief White will talk more about the Strategic 

Watershed Action Teams. We would like to continue to expand 

their work. The streamlining of our business models to enhance 

conservation delivery, the so-called Conservation Delivery Streamlining Initiative—CDSI—program. Greater assistance in our assessment programs, the CEAP programs, which demonstrate what 

is working, what is not working, and how can we accordingly improve our programs. And lastly, a USDA-coordinated IT infrastructure modification which will allow NRCS to better communicate 

and work with the Farm Service Agency—FSA—and Rural Development—RD. 

Overall, the 2012 budget will reflect an 11 percent reduction in 

our discretionary budget from 2010 levels to $899 million. And on 

the mandatory side, the President’s budget is at $3.6 billion, with 

$124 million for technical assistance as part of the CRP program. 

This level reflects an increase of prior years, although it is below 

authorized levels, particularly with respect to EQIP and to the 

Wetlands Reserve Program. 

I should mention that, as part of our efforts, in addition to the 

core programs, we are continuing to focus on landscape scale initiatives, better targeting within regions, better coordinating programs 

and coordinating practices. We believe this will pay greater dividends. 

Currently, we have some 10 landscape scale initiatives under 

way. A number of them deal with river basin programs, such as 

Chesapeake and the Upper Mississippi River and the Bay Delta; 

some that deal with wildlife, with respect to the Migratory Bird 

Habitat initiative or the Sage-Grouse initiative; and some that deal 

with forestry and vegetation, such as the Longleaf Pine and the 

New England and New York Forestry programs. We think these 

are innovative programs. We think that they are incorporating new 

tools, such as certainty and safe harbor agreements. And we are 

excited about where they are going. 

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So let me just conclude my opening statement by saying we think 

this is a balanced, strong budget, and we look forward to responding to your questions. 

I know Chief White also, if he can, would like to have a few 

opening comments. 

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Mr. KINGSTON. Without objection. 

STATEMENT BY MR. WHITE

Mr. WHITE. Wow. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Farr, Mr. 

Graves. You know, looking around here, I have to tell you, I never, 

ever expected I would be sitting in this chair. This is really like a 

dream come true for me. And thanks for having me. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? 

Mr. WHITE. This is a great thing. I mean, I wish you guys would 

bring me up more often because there is so much cool stuff happening in conservation I would like to share with you. 

Now, I was trying to think about how I would approach this, and 

I know you would probably like to have, like, a middle-aged bureaucrat read numbers to you for five minutes. But I thought, no, 

why don’t I do something different? So I would like to share two 

things with you that are going to give you an idea of what we are 

doing on the land. 

You should have some color photographs in front of you. And, basically, it is a series of before-and-afters of what conservation is 

looking like. 

SAGE-GROUSE INITIATIVE

And Mr. Sherman mentioned sage-grouse. And Mr. Kingston, 

you, in your opening remarks, talked about how people, farmers 

and ranchers are more fearful of the government than they used 

to be. And I want to talk to you a little bit about sage-grouse and 

how we are trying to change the paradigm of how this Nation approaches threatened and endangered species. 

The sage-grouse is an iconic species. It is found throughout 11 

western States. There used to be millions of them; now we are 

down to about 200,000. For several years, it has been on the candidate list as a potential listing as threatened/endangered. Last 

year, the Fish and Wildlife Service made the determination it is 

warranted to be listed but precluded because they have higher-priority species. 

So we have, essentially, a couple of years to work on this bird 

species. And our goal is nothing less than to prevent the listing of 

the sage-grouse. And I don’t mean that through any nefarious 

measures, but, rather, to make the habitat so darn good as to preserve the species that the listing will become unnecessary. 

And the reason this is important is, many of you were here when 

the spotted owl was listed, back in the early 1990s, and how the 

listing of the spotted owl really disrupted forestry throughout the 

Northwest—people thrown out of work, a lot of anger. The sagegrouse has the same potential as the spotted owl, but it covers 10 

times the area. Because of the fragmented ownership, with Federal 

private lands throughout the West, it would completely disrupt 

ranching in the western United States as we know it. 

So we are working with the partners. We have great support 

from the Fish and Wildlife Service. They have issued the first-ever 

conference reports that says, if a person works with us on sagegrouse, even if the bird is listed, they won’t have any further regumstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPRO

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lation. They are trying to take some of the ‘‘black helicopter’’ fear 

out of these issues. 

The Bureau of Land Management—BLM—has given us their 

data. The State Fish and Wildlife Service have shown us where the 

core areas are. We know now, if we can protect 25 percent of the 

core areas, we can preserve 75 percent of the species. 

The cool thing about this is, we are not talking about providing 

palliative care for every sage-grouse that is alive today. There will 

be energy development in the West. We need wind energy, we need 

oil and gas. There will be areas that will be developed. Our cities 

will grow. But if we do this right, we can preserve the species. 

And we can do it in an atmosphere of trust and cooperation. We 

have the wholehearted support of other Federal agencies, State 

agencies, governors, and private groups; both agricultural and conservation groups are 100 percent behind this. So we are doing it 

in an atmosphere of trust and cooperation. 

Mr. Harris mentioned the Strategic Watershed Action Teams, 

where we are going to try and leverage Federal dollars with private 

and local dollars to get more boots on the ground. In the sagegrouse area, we offered $4 million as potential match. Partners 

there came up with 45, 46, more than 50 percent match, to get 

range conservationists, some biologists to work with ranchers. 

We are getting support from people we never thought about, like 

the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Mule Deer Foundation, because if you protect this one species, you are also providing 

habitat for hundreds of others. 

So instead of battle lines being drawn, Mr. Chairman, we are trying to focus on cooperation and trying to do things that really matter for the American people. 

CONSERVATION DELIVERY STREAMLINING INITIATIVE

The other thing I would like to talk to you about is a little initiative we have mentioned in there, the Conservation Delivery 

Streamlining Initiative. We believe—essentially, we have a problem. We are stuck with business models and processes that are 

from 1950, 1960, 1970. They are not serving us well. We are redesigning those for the future. 

What we would like to do is have clients—farmers, ranchers—be 

able to sit at their homes, come into our system, look at their conservation plans, look at their contracts, find out where a cost-share 

check is, find out when they have a practice due, and make that 

available to every one of our clients. 

We would like to have a unified desktop, which would free up our 

people from duplicative data entries. We are going to go in the 

whole area of mobile computing. There is no reason why, when we 

go out to a farm and, working with the rancher, why they can’t just 

sign up for an EQIP contract. We can rank them and do the contract right there on the spot and just have them start work tomorrow or the next day. 

There are all kinds of stuff like that. And I guess the reason this 

is important is, you know as well as anyone, the world population 

is projected to rise to 9 billion. We are going to have to have huge 

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cent increase in production by the year 2030. That is less than two 

decades. 

And how are we going to do that? How are we going to increase 

our food supply, make room for all these wonderful critters we live 

with, have clean air, clean water, and healthy environment, and do 

it in harmony with a productive, vibrant agriculture that is going 

to feed us and part of the world? And I think, with your support, 

we can do this. You are the ones providing the resources. I am very 

grateful for it. 

And, with that, Mr. Kingston, I will conclude my remarks and be 

ready to answer any questions. 

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RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank both of you. 

And I wanted to ask right off the bat, on some of the programs 

that you are proposing elimination of RC&D, I want to clarify for 

the record the situation in terms of what would happen if your proposal is accepted. Do the people lose their jobs? Can they be transferred within the agency? You know, what is the situation? And 

what happens for the rest of the year? 

Mr. SHERMAN. Do you want to take it? 

Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir. 

It is about a $50 million account. We have about 391 people involved. It would be our intent to reprogram, reposition these people 

within the agency. Some of them may be transferred. Some of them 

would stay in the same office. Some would move to a local field office. 

We have looked at the jobs, their qualifications. Many of them 

would fit right into conservation operations work or farm bill work. 

A lot of them are biologists, soil conservationists, agronomists. So 

the disciplines they have we would need. 

We would also probably go for early-out/buy-out authority, Mr. 

Kingston. There are over 100 of these people that are eligible right 

now for retirement, so we think we could reduce the ranks some 

that way. 

But, essentially, it would be our intent that no one would lose 

their job and that we would reposition the people within the agency 

doing other work. 

Mr. KINGSTON. How does a buy-out work? Just walk me through 

an example. 

Mr. WHITE. Mr. Vilsack has made the commitment that he wants 

all USDA to have the same parameters, so NRCS treats its people 

the same as RD or Extension or whatever. In the past, how it has 

worked is a buy-out would give you an incentive to retire. If you 

would leave now, you would get a buy-out check. And, in the past, 

it has been somewhere in the neighborhood of $25,000. 

So if you look, we are about halfway through the year. If someone is making, say, $100,000 a year, for $25,000 they would be 

gone, and we would actually have a financial savings, even in this 

year if we move quickly. But it is an incentive for them to do that. 

The same with an early-out, an incentive for someone who is 

going to retire early and take a reduction in their retirement. 

Mr. KINGSTON. What about the RC&D councils? And how many 

are there? 

Mr. WHITE. Three hundred and seventy five. 

Some of those councils would survive; some would not. 

My best guess would be, if you look at what the RC&D organization has done, they have a thing called Circle of Diamonds, a certification program for councils where they have to meet all kinds 

of financial and different kinds of criteria where they are really up 

to snuff. There are about 140 of them that have this Circle of Diamonds certification. My guess would be, those would be the healthiest and most robust councils. 

Mr. KINGSTON. And those have NRCS employees supporting their 

efforts, correct? 

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Mr. SHERMAN. Yes, our support for these councils is in the form 

of providing coordinators for the councils and, often, office space. 

So, again, our hope is that, if this funding is not available, these 

councils will find a way to continue that coordination. And they 

clearly will qualify for other Federal programs, but—— 

Mr. KINGSTON. Uh-huh. 

Mr. SHERMAN [continuing]. At least in terms of providing the coordination—— 

Mr. KINGSTON. So they keep their TSP, they keep their—— 

Mr. SHERMAN. That is correct. 

Mr. KINGSTON [continuing]. Retirement, and they move into a 

different—unless they take the early-out, which those hundreds 

were. 

Out of the $50 million, $51 million, how much is personnel costs? 

Mr. WHITE. Eighty percent. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Eighty percent? 

Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir. 

Mr. KINGSTON. And the President’s budget also proposed—well, 

I mean, you are the President’s budget. So it is eliminated in H.R. 

1. If H.R. 1 passes with it eliminated, how does that affect you midstream here? 

Mr. SHERMAN. Well, I think the significance of H.R. 1 versus the 

President’s budget here is that we would prefer to have time to implement this phase-down. And under H.R. 1, it would come immediately. It would present some real hardships, to make this transition as quickly as it does. But the President’s budget does call for, 

during 2012, this phase-down. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Okay. 

Well, my time has expired. Mr. Farr. 

WATERSHED AND FLOOD PREVENTION OPERATIONS

Mr. FARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Heretofore, I have been one of your biggest supporters, and after 

reading about the way you are cutting this thing, I am not sure I 

support you anymore. 

You know, you are cutting this watershed program, and you cut 

the earmarks. We put together the model for the whole country out 

in my district, with eight counties involved. We had a watershed 

management plan. It has been in operation for about a decade. It 

is working with NOAA through the National Marine Sanctuary 

through eight counties. All the farm bureaus have signed on. It is 

a remarkable program. 

And I don’t see—are you going to fund it? You say there are 

other ways in which you can fund these programs. It is not on your 

priority for your new watershed enhancement program. It should 

be. It should be your model, because it is already in place and all 

the political buy-in is there. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Well—— 

Mr. FARR. Mr. White is the one that—— 

Mr. SHERMAN. Okay. 

Mr. FARR. I mean, you talked, you showed these pictures. It is 

great. We have done all that and more so. 

Mr. WHITE. I know you have, sir. 

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Now, the watershed program proposed for elimination in the 

President’s budget—I think is different from the one in your area. 

Mr. FARR. Well, ours, frankly, was an earmark. 

Mr. WHITE. I understand. The 534—— 

Mr. FARR. It shouldn’t have been. It should have been in your 

program because it is working better. I mean, it is the model the 

Chesapeake Bay—all these places around the country now are finding out about it and wanting to know what we did. 

And you had all this private-sector buy-in. It took a long time to 

build all that trust. 

Mr. WHITE. I understand, sir. 

Mr. FARR. So what are you going to do about it? 

Mr. WHITE. The two programs that are slated for elimination, 

one passed in 1944, the other was 1954—— 

Mr. FARR. I don’t care about, you know, the bureaucracy of it. 

Just, are you going to be able to fund that watershed program? 

Mr. WHITE. We will still continue landscape initiatives, particularly in areas where water quality or threatened endangered species, air quality—— 

Mr. FARR. Well, can you answer my question? You know what 

the program is out in the whole Monterey Bay. I mean, I just can’t 

believe that you would eliminate funding for that. 

Mr. WHITE. Well, actually, the funding has already been eliminated in the CR that we are currently in. It is—— 

Mr. FARR. Well, you want some money to do this new program 

that you brag about. Can you fund it under that program? 

Mr. WHITE. We will continue, sir, to the extent of our capability—— 

Mr. FARR. Why did you choose the Sacramento Basin? What is 

the politic there? Why is that the one that you put in your B-WET 

program or your—not B-WET. What the heck is it called? One was 

the Mississippi Basin, and the other was the Upper Mississippi 

River plan and the California Bay Delta plan for your new chosen 

SWAT teams, Watershed Action Teams. 

Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir. Those were initiatives we had nationally. 

And that is where we had $20 million, and that is who we worked 

with. 

Mr. FARR. Why. 

Mr. WHITE. That is where the initiatives we were working on—— 

Mr. FARR. What do you mean by ‘‘the initiatives’’? 

Mr. WHITE. We are trying to take—— 

Mr. FARR. Is this a top-down initiative, or is this a bottom-up initiative? 

Mr. WHITE. Actually, Bay Delta was bottom-up. So was New 

England Forestry. There were three that I—— 

Mr. FARR. And so was the Monterey Bay. 

Mr. WHITE. Yes, sir. It was an earmark that has been funded. 

We think it is a good project. And, to the extent we can, we will 

continue to support it. 

Mr. FARR. It is a good project? Your folks in California think it 

is the best project. 

Mr. WHITE. And we give great deference to our State leaders on 

how they allocate their funds. 

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Mr. FARR. But you are not answering my question then. If you 

are giving deference to them, if you are giving deference, your 

State conservationist, Ed Burton, says that this program needs to 

continue. 

Mr. WHITE. Then we will talk to Mr. Burton on the future of 

that. Just because it is not listed as one of our national initiatives 

doesn’t mean it has no value. We are doing things all around the 

Nation. 

VEHICLES

Mr. FARR. How many people in your program work in Washington? 

Mr. WHITE. Four hundred or 500, out of the 11,000. 

Mr. FARR. So about a quarter or what? 

Mr. WHITE. Oh, no. Four percent maybe. 

Mr. FARR. Do they use vehicles from the—do they use vehicles, 

trucks and cars, that are purchased by NRCS? 

Mr. WHITE. No, sir. We do not have any in national headquarters. 

Mr. FARR. Well, then, why do you have more trucks and cars 

than you have personnel? 

Mr. WHITE. We do have a lot of vehicles. And we are trying to 

reduce that number. That number—— 

Mr. FARR. You have more than one for every single person. 

Mr. WHITE. No, sir. 

Mr. FARR. Yes. You have 11,000 staff positions, and you have 

11,300 trucks and cars. 

Mr. WHITE. We have—— 

Mr. SHERMAN. Well, can I just—on the question of vehicles, we 

are looking into this. But I just want to say that—I just want to 

say that we share—— 

[The information follows:] 

(As a field-based agency, the majority of NRCS employees work directly with private landowners on their farms and ranches and with local entities to achieve conservation of our Nation’s natural resources. By their very nature, these are rural 

locations where public transportation is non-existent, uneconomical, or inadequate. 

NRCS maintains a fleet of vehicles that is distributed among its field locations in 

the 50 States and the Caribbean and Pacific Basin areas. In order to maximize their 

use, NRCS currently has agreements for sharing its vehicles with other USDA agencies and partners in nearly 70 percent of our field locations. NRCS is aggressively 

assessing its inventory in each state to justify its fleet, coordinate trips among staff 

members, maximize vehicle sharing, and dispose of older, high maintenance, highemission, and under-utilized vehicles. 

As reported in the FY 2012 President’s Budget and in the table below, NRCS expected to have 10,982 vehicles at the end of FY 2011 and 10,940 vehicles at the end 

of FY 2012. However, the agency is currently taking steps in FY 2011 to reduce the 

vehicle fleet by over 10% and maintain that level in FY 2012 unless a critical mission need arises. 

FY Number of 

Vehicles Staff years 

2008 ............................................................................................................................................... 8,791 11,337 

2009 ............................................................................................................................................... 10,130 11,186 

2010 ............................................................................................................................................... 11,308 11,446 

2011 ............................................................................................................................................... 10,982 13,023 

2012 ............................................................................................................................................... 10,940 12,219 

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Mr. FARR. Looking into this? You are cutting out incredible programs, and you are looking into the fact that you got more damn 

vehicles than you got people. I mean, I think your priorities are 

upsidedown. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Under Secretary, we will let you get back on 

that. 

Mr. Graves. 

REQUEST FOR REDUCED BUDGET PROPOSALS

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Under Secretary, we thank you for being here, and appreciate the willingness to show that you can operate with less in 

some areas. And I know that is something we don’t see a whole lot 

of that comes before this committee, are agencies presenting us 

with some cuts. 

But one thing I would like to add as we move forward—and I 

think we will be looking for additional savings, wherever possible. 

I have a letter to submit to the chair that would ask that you work 

with us in providing us with additional savings, up to 20 and 25 

percent, how you could accomplish your core mission. 

And I think you have already demonstrated a willingness to 

move in that direction, so I hope we can count on your support in 

that effort. 

Mr. SHERMAN. We will be very happy to work with you on exploring where additional possible cuts are. 

Mr. GRAVES. Great. Well, thank you. 

And I want to go back to—Mr. Farr was bringing up a point, and 

you mentioned that it is currently out, or been eliminated through 

the CR already. Was that in the CR adopted in December, or was 

it the one—— 

Mr. WHITE. The current one we are in. 

Mr. GRAVES. The current. 

Mr. WHITE. Yes. 

Mr. GRAVES. So it is the 3-week we are under right now. 

Mr. WHITE. Yes. 

Mr. GRAVES. Okay. Okay. So we currently have already eliminated that, and you are just recommending that that stays eliminated, as well, moving into the future. 

Mr. WHITE. Actually, that is not part of the President’s recommendation for 2012. The President’s recommendation for 2012 

would be that the money be transferred to other projects. 

Mr. GRAVES. Okay. 

Mr. WHITE. So maybe it is a semantic term. 

Mr. GRAVES. Sure. And if you had to think about other areas— 

and I know, oftentimes, we are talking about dollars in cuts, hard 

cuts—are there areas that you might be able to recommend to the 

subcommittee, whether just policies that the legislative branch has 

passed that you are still implementing or is causing you to carry 

out activities that are no longer necessary where you have moved 

into the 21st century in some way and the agency is doing something that maybe is just not necessary during this time? 

Mr. WHITE. Mr. Graves, we are looking at a variety of things 

where we think we can achieve savings. The streamlining I talked 

about briefly in the oral statement, we think, at the out end of 

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that, we will eliminate 80 percent of the clerical and admin-type 

work we have to do, and we will have our field people spending at 

least 75 percent of their time one-on-one with producers, which we 

want them to do. If that goes through the way we are projecting, 

that would be essentially the equivalent of getting 1,500 more people. 

What I would hope that the committee would work with us on 

is that, right now, the tax on government innovation is 100 percent. So if you save money, it is generally taken away. So I would 

hope that there would be some ability to work with the committee 

to ensure that some of those savings can be plowed back into better 

customer service. 

Mr. GRAVES. Sure. Sure. Great. Well, thank you. 

And, Mr. Chairman, as I close, I would just—any recommendations you can give us to help you accomplish more savings for the 

taxpayer, we are open to that. And if it is policy, as well, if you 

want to repeal anything or move something out of the way, know 

that we are open to joining with you in that effort. 

And, Mr. Chairman, I have this letter I would like to submit for 

the record. 

[The information follows:] 

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mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 66 here 66636A.039
53 

Mr. KINGSTON. Do you want to yield any time to the Under Secretary to answer the car question that Mr. Farr asked? 

Mr. GRAVES. That would be fine. 

VEHICLES

Mr. SHERMAN. One aspect of the car question is that, in these offices, these 2,000-plus offices that we have around the country, we 

are sharing these offices with FSA and with Rural Development 

and with the districts. And these vehicles are being used by all of 

the agencies. So one of the things we are looking into is the extent 

to which these other agencies are using the vehicles. 

But, obviously, we are focused on the numbers that you mentioned, Congressman Farr, and we are going to try to get that number down. 

Mr. FARR. It is in your budget. 

Mr. SHERMAN. It is in our budget, but these other agencies are 

using these vehicles. 

Mr. KINGSTON. The chair would yield to Ms. DeLauro a point of 

personal privilege. 

EXPRESSION OF APPRECIATION FOR BRIAN RONHOLM

Ms. DELAURO. Thank you very, very much, Mr. Chairman and 

my colleagues and our witnesses this morning. 

I just wanted to—it is kind of a bit bittersweet for me today, as 

well as at the end of the week, when a very, very trusted and loyal 

staff person named Brian Ronholm, who has been with me for 5 

years and has sat through thick and thin and through all the efforts that we try to make in the Ag Subcommittee—and he has 

taken this on. 

You know, I often say that the Members get a chance to speak 

from these microphones and we get a chance to stand up and to 

speak and we get recognized for what we do, but it is that same 

sense of passion for issues, the same caring, the same kind of, and 

in some respects more, diligence goes into the efforts that we, as 

Members, try to make. And our staff, they have the same kinds of 

values that Members have in making the fights and the issues that 

we take on. 

And they are oftentimes the unsung heroes. I want to say, personally and publicly, that for whatever our opportunities were to 

make some progress on the Agriculture Subcommittee, Mr. Chairman and fellow Members, that Brian Ronholm holds the lion’s 

share of that accomplishment. And I couldn’t ever have done the 

job without him. 

He is going to work for USDA, which is your gain, for FSIS, an 

area that has been near and dear to our hearts over the last several years. 

So, Brian, many, many thanks, and Godspeed. And we know you 

will do an outstanding job, and you will be briefing someone who 

is sitting at that table in the not-too-distant future. Thank you 

very, very much. 

Mr. KINGSTON. I think we should have him come up to testify 

quickly. And Mr. White has already outlined what a joy it is, so 

we need to get him up here. And I plan to ask you a lot of hard 

questions, too. 

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But, Brian, we appreciate, on the majority side and as we were 

on the minority side, we appreciated working with you over the 

years and all your professionalism and the fact that you have always been accessible, straightforward, and diligent and extremely 

knowledgeable. So it is a great pickup for the USDA, and I know 

it is a great loss for Rosa’s office. And we wish you well. 

[Applause.] 

Mr. KINGSTON. Ms. DeLauro. 

CHANGES IN MANDATORY PROGRAM SPENDING

Ms. DELAURO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I am concerned, as others have expressed their views, on the 

level of changes in mandatory program spending, the CHIMPS, if 

you will, that are in the President’s budget request. 

According to CBO, the 2012 request would reduce farm bill conservation spending by $4.7 billion over the course of the next 10 

years and $2.5 billion over the 5 years of the 2012 farm bill that 

we will be covering next year. That puts a very big hole in which 

to put conservation and environmental protection efforts. 

Now, I realize there are times when we have to make modest 

CHIMPS, but, as I read this, we are talking about a really very serious—in the billions of dollars here. So we make those modest 

CHIMPS in order to achieve the priorities that we are called on to 

address. But the size of the cuts that are proposed in the request, 

the long-term impact of the proposed cuts, in my view, may be too 

extreme. 

And I also think it is a little unfair to single out the conservation 

title alone among the titles of the farm bill. If we need to make 

changes to mandatory spending programs in the context of the appropriations bill, then we should be willing to take a look at all of 

the farm programs and not just single out conservation. 

And my two questions in this regard are: What is going to be the 

impact of these CHIMPS on the conservation programs? What kind 

of impact would it have on the natural resource conservation and 

environmental protection in general? 

We look at Wetlands Reserve, $365 million. I mean, it goes on. 

You know the numbers, you know, probably better than I do. But 

my questions: impact of the CHIMPS on conservation programs, 

impact on natural resource conservation and environmental protection. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Well, Congresswoman, we really do share your 

concern about the degree to which some of these programs will be 

affected. But it is a reflection of the difficult budgetary times we 

are in. 

Ms. DELAURO. I understand that. But my question is not about 

the difficult budgetary times, because that gets us to process versus 

substance. What I am interested in is the effect, short-term, longterm effect, which is I think what we need to focus on in order to 

be pennywise and pound-foolish, if I might say that. 

And I just would like to—you know, what is the impact of this 

scale of cut on conservation programs that, as has been pointed 

out, have been successful programs? And maybe some not, but you 

could, you know—there is a way to deal with—everybody wants to 

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take a look at what doesn’t work, what does work, and be effective 

about that. 

Long-term effect; and on conservation and environmental protection in general. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Well, the effect is, it will involve a delay in implementing a variety of programs that we are currently pursuing. So, 

with respect to the EQIP program, I think the change in mandatory program—CHIMP—is somewhere in the neighborhood of $350 

million. 

Ms. DELAURO. Three hundred and forty-two, yeah, million dollars, right. 

Mr. SHERMAN. With the WRP program, that is probably another $350 million, approximately. 

Ms. DELAURO. Yeah. 

Mr. SHERMAN. So for these programs—their implementation, in 

certain respects, will be delayed. And the benefits that come from 

these programs will, in fact, be delayed. 

Ms. DELAURO. And you find that you do derive benefits from 

these programs; is that correct? 

Mr. SHERMAN. Absolutely. 

Ms. DELAURO. Absolutely. So the delay in those benefits creates 

what for the longer term? 

I am of the view that, when you cut back on what is I consider 

infrastructure pieces, which allow you to build a framework in 

which you can go forward, you can almost never rebuild the infrastructure that you need to carry on once it really is significantly 

delayed or impaired in any way. And that is true in rail or in roads 

and bridges, in the defense industry, which I represent. 

So what about this infrastructure that these programs provide to 

all of these areas? What happens? 

Mr. SHERMAN. Well, I refer to this as the Nation’s green infrastructure. 

Ms. DELAURO. Right. 

Mr. SHERMAN. And it is as important as roads and bridges—— 

Ms. DELAURO. Amen. 

Mr. SHERMAN [continuing]. And schools and hospitals and so 

forth. But what this means is that the ecosystem services, the benefits, the environmental benefits, that come from these programs 

will be delayed, in terms of clean water, clean air, benefits to wildlife, benefits to drinking water. 

Ms. DELAURO. Okay. So it is a negative impact on those efforts. 

Mr. SHERMAN. It is a negative benefit. 

Ms. DELAURO. Thank you. 

Mr. SHERMAN. But our hope is, in better times, we will be able 

to expand these programs and move forward. 

Ms. DELAURO. Thank you. 

Mr. KINGSTON. The gentlewoman’s time has expired. 

Mr. Farr, do you want a point of personal privilege? 

EXPRESSION OF SYMPATHY TO TROY PHILLIPS

Mr. FARR. Thank you. 

I don’t want to step on a great message here or wonderful message, but you all know my aide that has been with me in this committee for years and years, Troy Phillips, and Troy has had a year 

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of disasters. His father died, and his grandfather died, and his 

aunt and uncle died. And last Friday, he found out that his brother 

was killed in a motorcycle accident. 

Ms. DELAURO. Oh, my word. 

Mr. FARR. So that is why he is not here today. But I hope when 

he comes back that you will all—yeah, because he has gone 

through a lot this year, and it is real tough. 

So thank you. I mean, I knew you all know him, so thank you. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Troy is another great staffer and somebody that 

we enjoy working with. And our thoughts and prayers are with him 

and his family. 

Mr. FARR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Ms. Lummis. 

SAGE-GROUSE INITIATIVE

Mrs. LUMMIS. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

As everybody on this committee knows, I am a tightfisted tough 

cookie when it comes to spending. But I rarely say I would like to 

sit next to Mrs. DeLauro, but on her comments that she just made, 

I would like to sit next to Ms. DeLauro and work on these programs. 

Because the NRCS, in my State—and I want to commend NRCS 

in Wyoming. What great staff people you have. They do a wonderful job. The technical assistance that they provide is significant and 

instrumental. And especially with some of the things we are grappling with like sage grouse, trying to keep them off the Endangered 

Species list. ESA in the West, the conservation technical assistance 

is widely acknowledged by Wyoming farmers and ranchers as significant. 

And so, a rare expression of kudos. And thank you, Ms. DeLauro, 

for your comments. 

I want to ask some questions about a few of these programs. 

First of all, the sage grouse initiative. Your voluntary conservation program provides regulatory certainty for ranchers. And so 

they can help prevent the sage grouse from being listed under the 

ESA. But if it is listed, they know, because of these programs, that 

they will be able to continue ranching on their land in the future. 

Now, can you describe to this committee how that guarantee of 

regulatory certainty for volunteer landowners affected the participation rate? 

Mr. WHITE. I would say it really helped. 

Earlier, I mentioned in my opening remarks that Fish and Wildlife Service really was outstanding in this. They, for the first time 

ever, did a conference report that offered that certainty. And they 

didn’t do it on a piecemeal basis; they did it globally. 

So I think when you take the fear of regulation out of these 

issues, you dramatically increase the participation and the willingness of producers to do this. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Well, I couldn’t agree more. It has really made a 

huge difference in my State. 

With regard to conservation technical assistance, could some of 

the program payment dollars be used to match additional technical 

assistance dollars coming from fees? 

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What I heard during—there was stimulus money that was put 

out, and the NRCS was trying to shove money out the door. And 

ranchers and farmers in Wyoming were saying, we want the technical assistance more than we want the money. Matching? 

Mr. WHITE. Yes, we are trying to do it. And it relates to a proposal Mr. Farr was talking about earlier, the Strategic Watershed 

Action Teams, where we are actually putting Federal funds out to 

see if there are local partners willing to match it. 

And in the sage-grouse area, they are doing more than a one-toone match in the sage grouse area. 

And what it means is there will be more boots on the ground to 

do these projects. They won’t have a Federal foot in that boot, but 

it would still be direct assistance to the producers. So we are trying 

that to leverage the Federal dollars. 

CONSERVATION PROGRAMS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Okay. 

A question about conservation programs and how they might be 

more effectively administered: Around Wyoming, ranchers and 

farmers are telling me they would like to see the CRP program 

scaled back and the FRPP program either preserved or have some 

combination of these programs. 

And when it comes to conservation programs, would providing 

States more flexibility allow us to get more bang for our buck with 

Federal dollars? 

Mr. WHITE. Well, when you look specifically at the Farm and 

Ranch Lands Protection Program—FRPP—, the final rule gives a 

whole bunch of flexibility to the States. We have really tried to accommodate State needs and interests in there. 

Regarding the CRP, I think all these programs, within the context of the 2012 Farm Bill, are—it is a perfect opportunity to look 

at consolidation, streamlining, efficiency gains. And if we can’t do 

that kind of stuff in the budget climate we are in, when can we do 

it? 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Exactly. Yeah. And I just want you to know that, 

in my State, I hear from ranchers and farmers all over the State 

that we ought to scale back CRP and keep FRPP. Anyway, that is 

just a—excuse me. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Yes, Representative Lummis, if I can also point 

out, the President’s 2012 budget with respect to FRPP does call for 

authorized levels of funding. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Okay. 

Mr. SHERMAN. That is $200 million going forward. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you. 

Mr. WHITE. And, Ms. Lummis, that picture up there? I would 

defer to a range conservationist, but I think that is cheatgrass, that 

brown grass? 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Indeed. I recognize that. 

Mr. WHITE. It is from Asia, I think. It is terrible. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. And after a fire, it just goes crazy. 

Mr. WHITE. If there is a fire that goes through there, it will be 

50 years for that sagebrush to come back. 

Mr. SHERMAN. We will be happy to provide you with another 

photograph, an after photograph. 

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Mr. KINGSTON. Submit some samples. 

Mr. Bishop. 

FARM BILL PROGRAMS

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Let me welcome the panelists. Good to see you again, especially 

Mr. White. You have been made an honorary Georgian. Thanks a 

lot for what you do. 

And based on the feedback from a number of our State’s producers, I would like to share with you how they believe that our 

State benefits from the leadership of NRCS in several areas of conservation, including the Agricultural Water Enhancement Program. 

$1.38 million has been invested for innovative conservation practices, particularly in the Flint River district; and the EQIP program, which provided nearly $17 million to promote agricultural 

production, forest management, and environmental quality. 

My question centers on the effectiveness of these programs, 

which are both mandatory and discretionary farm bill programs, in 

meeting their stated objectives. Just tell us—of course, I know, but 

just for the record—why should the U.S. taxpayer continue to support these programs? And what has been the positive return on investment to taxpayers for every dollar that is spent in the programs? 

Mr. WHITE. If you look at Flint River, that is an area where 

there is groundwater depletion. It is tied up with Atlanta’s water 

supply, which is kind of a crucial issue. And the producers there, 

I think, are doing some of the absolutely most cutting-edge irrigation water efficiency in the country. 

You have the groundwater moisture sensors, where when the 

pivot goes around it reads the moisture, it shuts it off, it turns it 

on, it lowers it down. It is extraordinary, the water savings that 

those farmers are doing. And what it means to the water supply 

of Atlanta is important. All of us need water. And it is just some 

incredible work that your producers are doing. 

NATIONAL RESOURCES INVENTORY

Mr. SHERMAN. Congressman Bishop, if I can just supplement 

that, I mean, beyond Georgia, nationally—we just released this 

year, this past year, the National Resources Inventory. This is an 

inventory based on 800,000 geographic reference points in the 

country, and it reflects progress over a period of 30 years. And 

without question, there is enormous progress being made with sediment reduction, nitrogen reduction, phosphorus reduction. 

CONSERVATION EFFECTS ASSESSMENT PROGRAMS

Similarly, the Conservation Effects Assessment Projects are 

showing dramatic benefits that are coming from the application of 

these suites of conservation practices. 

So I think we are beginning to see through these assessments 

that this work is important and it is paying off. 

LONGLEAF PINE INITIATIVE

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

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Can you tell us about the Longleaf Pines initiative, which I understand was funded at $5.7 million, to assist producers with both 

managing and re-establishing the Longleaf Pines? 

As you know, Georgia pines have a long and storied history, and 

timber production has always been vital to agriculture in Georgia. 

Mr. WHITE. Well, Mr. Bishop, the Longleaf Pine actually helped 

build this Nation in its early years. It produced the stores to keep 

the wooden ships afloat. It built Savannah and Williamsburg. It is 

a long-grained, rot-resistant, wonderful pine. And we had over 90 

million acres, and now we are down to about three million acres. 

And this is certainly an effort to restore that ecosystem of the 

Longleaf. 

We think it is commercially viable now. If you look at a Longleaf 

forest where it grew up under a fire regime, it was almost like a 

savannah. I don’t know how many hundreds of species live in a vibrant Longleaf Pine forest. And if it can make income for producers 

and produce all these environmental benefits, it is certainly something I believe we should continue to support. 

FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you. 

In the past, the inspector general has criticized the Department 

for deficiencies within the Department, in particular, the need for 

improvements of overall financial management. One of the specific 

areas cited was management of contracts. In Georgia, NRCS has 

over $36 million in obligated funds for 2,100 contracts for fiscal 

year 2010 funding. 

Do you expect any issues or any problems with these contracts? 

Do you expect any cancellations or any other issues due to funding 

reductions? 

Mr. WHITE. No, sir, I do not. 

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

I think my time has expired. Right on time. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Thank you, Mr. Bishop. 

Mr. Under Secretary, I wanted to ask you about the Inspector 

General’s report in December 2010. It was very critical. It says, for 

the third year, that the NRCS has received a report in which the 

inspector general issued a disclaimer on the financial statement 

and identified a number of significant deficiencies, including accounting and controls over undelivered orders; accounting and controls over the revenue and unfilled customer order process; accounting and controls over accrued expenses; controls over financial 

reporting; accounting and controls for property, plant, and equipment; general and application controls on the environment; and 

controls over purchase and fleet car transaction. 

And I think what is disturbing about this is that it is the third 

year. And so, two questions: How did we get in this situation? And 

what is being done about it? 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me make a few 

general comments about this, and then I would ask for Chief White 

to go into some of the specifics here. 

This agency has seen a three- to fourfold increase in its budget 

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plementation of many new programs that did not exist prior to 

2002. 

The agency clearly realizes the importance of accountability and 

transparency, and this audit report continues to show that we have 

work to do. We have important work to do to get to where we can 

be fully accountable for how we are spending the taxpayers’ money. 

But I want to point out that we are at least gratified that there 

has yet to be any showing of mismanagement, fraud or Federal 

monies being misspent. We need to do a better job, though, with 

respect to transparency and accountability, and we are working 

very hard to that end. 

I would appreciate if Chief White could just take you through 

these different areas of the audit, because I think the agency is 

doing its best to address each and every one of them. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Thank you. 

AUDIT FINDINGS

Mr. WHITE. First, Mr. Chairman, no excuses. The Under Secretary is right; we have to do a better job. We are on that pathway. 

In 1980 the Chief Financial Officer Act was passed. USDA had 

to undergo an audit at that time, and there were three agencies— 

RD, the Food and Nutrition Service, and the Forest Service—all 

had to have independent audits. 

If you fast-forward to 2007–2008, we were the first agency to 

have our own standalone audit since 1980. And it generally takes 

from 5 to 10 years for an agency to move from the first audit to 

a clean audit. We are in year 3 of that process. 

That said, there are seven material weaknesses that you talked 

about. I brought this here. I will call this the mother of all audit 

remediation plans. This is how we are going to address the issue 

this year. 

Each one of those seven deficiencies has one of the top NRCS 

senior executives owning it. Every State conservationist in the 

country is on one of those teams. There is one team for each of the 

seven deficiencies. And then there is an eighth team, headed up by 

our Management Deputy Chief, which is the crosscutting team providing the training, the policy coordination, where the CFO will 

make the decisions. 

We think that we can take care of three of them this year, and 

then we would be down to four. We think we can take care of the 

reimbursable contracts. We have centralized those in three locations. We pulled them out of all 50 States and put them in three, 

and April 1st we are standing up the consolidation unit. We think 

that with the purchase cards, we are probably there, but we want 

to make darn sure before we give our auditor that information. And 

then the other one I think we can fix is the security access. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Where does the buck stop? Who is in charge? 

Mr. WHITE. Me. 

Mr. KINGSTON. So if next year this is still—you get a fourth year 

that is this bad, what will happen to you? 

Mr. WHITE. I will offer my resignation to Secretary Vilsack. 

Mr. KINGSTON. I would think that would be fair, to the degree 

that it has to be changed. And knowing that you do have that earnestness and drive to change something, do you feel that there are 

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stumbling blocks underneath you that are going to prevent you 

from making that happen? Not your resignation, but correction. 

Mr. WHITE. I have thought about resignation. Stress level goes 

down, life expectancy goes up. It is not all that bad. 

But, yes, Mr. Graves touched on it. We have to change some of 

our business processes. We cannot survive with 1960s and 1970s 

business processes. We have 51 financial units. How do you corral 

that many? We are going to have to do some sort of consolidation. 

I don’t know if it is in 1 or in 20 or 5 units. But we are going to 

have some business process change if we are going to fix this thing 

for the long term. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Well, my time has expired. 

Mr. Farr. 

STRATEGIC WATERSHED ACTION TEAMS

Mr. FARR. Yeah, there are two questions I want to get into. I 

want to follow up on the SWAT team proposal and also on the cutting out of the funding for RC&D. 

First of all, on the SWAT team, what I understand from your 

budget authority is that you are going to—perhaps, it says, that 

the two possible programs in regions would be the Bay Delta and 

the Upper Mississippi. And then you go on to describe the SWAT 

team: 5- to 7–member teams, working for 3 to 5 years, putting all 

these experts on the ground, goal is to reach every landowner in 

the region, high-priority watersheds where you have nitrogen loading. And although you don’t put it in there, I think you ought to 

also put one that would relate it to food safety, because it is certainly a high priority with everyone else. 

And what I am upset about is that all of the reasons you are putting together this SWAT team is why we did it before you ever had 

a program like this. We put that together in the greater Monterey 

Bay area and now have six, seven counties, the largest in the 

United States, that have been involved in this program, and it has 

been going on for about 10 years. 

And it is everything that you want to do. And we did it—yes, we 

did it through earmarks because there was no program like this. 

So I am excited that you are doing—I think you are moving in 

the right direction. But I don’t want to see you pull the rug out 

from under the people that are doing the very thing that you have 

and have gotten that buy-in from all those landowners and have 

gotten that regional politic. In fact, it is the only press conference 

I go to annually where the watershed quality report is put out, 

where the marine scientists and the ag scientists, essentially the 

soil scientists, and the farmers are leading it, and they are praising 

these environmental scientists. You don’t find that anyplace else. 

I mean, it never happens. They are the enemy. So it is a wonderful 

buy-in where people realize, yes, I can do better farming and have 

less adverse effects from it. 

So, I mean, go back and look at the criteria when you are selecting your areas. And I would hate to see you pull the rug out from 

what is everything that you outline in this program. 

And I would like you to add one other thing, is that in those regions we have—the specialty crops we grow are called coastal 

crops. It is the cold-climate crops. It is all the things that go into 

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a salad. That is why my district is called the ‘‘salad bowl capital 

in the world.’’ Every salad you eat today anywhere in the United 

States comes from the Salinas Valley. And that lettuce and broccoli 

and all those things were picked 3 days ago, and they are here 

today. 

What has come up is that a lot of those, particularly lettuce, is 

not a kill-step process. You don’t cook it. So we have a whole new 

program. And we have had Dr. Hamburg out there, from FDA, just 

amazed at, sort of, the laboratory. You have to get suited up to go 

into a field now to pick anything. You have to wear, just like you 

do in surgery, gloves and masks and the hair nets and everything. 

And this is a high priority for the State of California and for the 

United States in food safety. So this watershed, because it has to 

deal with water quality and nitrate buildup and all kinds of other 

things, of wildlife getting into the fields, I mean, it is just the perfect laboratory. 

And I am just making a plea, when you go back—and I will tell 

you, what sells you—what Mrs. Lummis was talking about—what 

sells you on the ground is the professionalism of your people. You 

have one of the guys that I have just been so impressed with, Daniel Mountjoy. I think he is one of the most outstanding public servants I have ever met—a big, burly guy who looks like a big old 

bear. He has had some horrible tragedies; his wife just passed 

away and all kinds of things. But I will tell you, there isn’t a farmer in the area that doesn’t respect and call upon Daniel Mountjoy, 

because he is a very practical guy. And he is the kind of guy that 

has built this whole infrastructure base out there. 

So, again, I am pleading with you to go back and look at that. 

And if you pull the rug out from under that, you will have me as 

your enemy forever and ever. 

RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Now, to the second question. Secretary Vilsack was here and, I 

think, made a very interesting statement about how he is trying 

to create a new rural strategy for America because rural America 

has been in a depression for the last 10 years. 

Why, in building that rural strategy, would you cut out the 

RC&D? I mean, you look at the statistics of the number of people 

employed, the number of programs—it is the recovery plan for 

rural America. Now, did you cut this out because you were ordered 

to, or do you really believe we ought to get rid of it? 

Mr. WHITE. First, I will commit to you to find out more about 

what is going on in your watershed area and work with Ed Burton. 

Because you are ground zero on food safety, and I know the comanagement that we have to do. 

Regarding the RC&D, this is a proposal that has been around for 

4 or 5 years. It was certainly developed and put in before my term. 

And I certainly support the President’s budget. 

[The information follows:] 

NRCS is committed to the best of our ability with available resources to help the 

landowners deal with increasing regulatory pressures and environmental challenges 

in critical watersheds such as the Monterey Bay area. 

We expect the majority of the existing RC&D Councils will decide to adjust positively to this change in support from NRCS and continue to operate successfully as 

nonprofit corporations. However, in the absence of USDA support, more of their efmstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPRO

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forts will be directed toward obtaining funding for office overhead and staffing. This 

may temporarily have the effect of limiting other accomplishments, including rural 

job creation, but we expect most of the councils will overcome this short term effect 

and continue to implement projects that foster the creation and retention of jobs in 

rural areas. 

Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Mr. Latham. 

CONSERVATION PRACTICES: 590 STANDARD

Mr. LATHAM. I think the answer is, how do you spell ‘‘OMB’’? 

But, anyway. 

First of all, welcome, everyone. 

According to the 590 standard, which was issued in January, it 

says, ‘‘Nutrients shall not be surface-applied except under emergency provisions in accordance with State law to frozen and/or 

snow-covered soils during seasons of high run-off potential or during periods of winter dormancy,’’ end quote. 

This obviously is a major concern for a lot of cattle producers in 

the upper Midwest and, I would guess, throughout the West also, 

because it prevents land application of manure for all but just a 

very few days of the year. 

Under this definition, isn’t the entire winter and spring periods 

when you couldn’t apply manure? 

Mr. WHITE. Well, first, I am all over this issue, Mr. Latham. 

Mr. LATHAM. Good. 

Mr. WHITE. We have 149 standards in NRCS. And every single 

one of them gets updated with current science about every 5 years. 

The 590 standard, without question, is the most controversial one 

because it deals with nutrient management. 

For almost a year, we have been through several iterations of 

drafts that have been given to the agriculture groups, the conservation groups, and agencies. We have published it in the Federal Register and received hundreds of comments. And in a couple weeks, 

they are supposed to be bringing me the final recommendations. 

I am very aware of the issue of where the 590 says you are not 

supposed to put manure on frozen ground. I understand this could 

have a huge impact on the producers in the northern climes: New 

England, Minnesota, Montana, Wyoming, anywhere like that. 

There are other issues in there, too, that I have heard complaints 

about. For example the draft says once you reach 10 times the 

phosphorous in a soil, stop application. There are producers in the 

southern no-rainfall zone that say, ‘‘What do you care? We don’t get 

any rain. We are 60 miles from a creek.’’ 

So what I am thinking about doing, Mr. Latham—most of our 

standards are national in scope, but this one is so controversial. It 

is controversial not because we just use it for our voluntary programs, but regulatory agencies sometimes take our standards and 

use them in regulatory programs because the science is so darn 

good. So I am actually thinking we may need to regionalize this so 

we can address those cold-weather issues. Otherwise, these producers are going to have to build huge storage areas for the manure over winter. We are going to have to look at the southern 

issues, where it never freezes. 

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There are a lot of things that I am very aware of, Mr. Latham. 

And, God willing, we will have something out there that can work 

for agriculture and protect the environment no matter what region 

of the country you are in. 

Mr. LATHAM. And is there any estimate—did you do a cost-benefit analysis or any kind of estimate as far as cost to the producers—— 

Mr. WHITE. No. 

Mr. LATHAM [continuing]. If they cannot apply manure, to store, 

stockpile manure? 

Mr. WHITE. No. 

Mr. LATHAM. So what are they supposed to do with it during 

these months when they can’t apply it? 

Mr. WHITE. Well, if you are in the South, it doesn’t matter; you 

just put it on pretty much anytime. 

But the agriculture groups that have come forward in opposition 

to this say it would be hugely expensive to have to build structures 

to store it. So, a concrete tank, an earthen container, someplace 

where you would have to store it. 

But I am cognizant of that, and I think we should work with the 

State authorities on this issue, the conservation districts, and try 

to come up with a way that would tailor this standard for different 

regions of the country to take into account, what do you do if the 

ground is frozen for—I mean, Montana, it is frozen, like, 8, 9 

months of the year. 

Mr. LATHAM. Well, and in a place like Iowa, where, if you can’t 

apply it in the winter—I mean, I understand if you drive around 

some areas, you will smell, obviously—— 

Mr. WHITE. Oh, yeah. 

Mr. LATHAM [continuing]. The manure out there. But if you can’t 

apply it in the winter or the spring, and in Iowa the rest of the 

year or, at least, you know, through the summer months, you are 

in production on that land, so you can’t apply it then, so you have 

to spend a tremendous amount of money to have facilities to stockpile this until fall or something? 

Mr. WHITE. Understood. Now, the other side of the coin, I have 

also gotten letters from environmental groups who say we are complete sellouts and this would destroy the environment. So there has 

to be some answer in there, and I think a regional approach may 

be the way to go. 

Mr. LATHAM. May be—excuse me? 

Mr. WHITE. Maybe the way to address this is to have the States 

work it out with their partners in that locale. 

Mr. LATHAM. I thank the gentleman. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Ms. DeLauro. 

FOOD SAFETY AND CONSERVATION

Ms. DELAURO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. White, in your testimony, you mentioned that one area that 

NRCS is pursuing is the intersection between food safety requirements and the important conservation work accomplished by farmers and ranchers. You also mentioned that you are collaborating 

with AMS and FDA on co-management of environmental stewardship on farm product safety guidelines and regulations. 

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You outlined the current areas of collaboration, such as the 

produce safety alliance, produce safety rule development and implementation, and education outreach. Can you explain in detail what 

some of this collaboration involves? What are the conservation 

goals that NRCS is trying to achieve with these collaborations? 

And can you also outline situations where food safety goals and 

conservation goals conflict and how they get resolved? 

Mr. WHITE. Yes. This goes back to Mr. Farr’s area. Remember 

the 2006 spinach E. coli outbreak? 

Ms. DELAURO. Remember it well. 

Mr. WHITE. That led to the leafy-green marketing order. And 

what we were seeing then was, where farmers had put in buffers 

or riparian area protection, ponds for wildlife or air-quality benefits 

or water quality, something like that, and they were faced with: 

You choose between food safety and conservation. And a lot of them 

were just ripping out conservation practices. 

The Food and Drug Administration has authority for this. In 

USDA, the lead is the Agricultural Marketing Service—AMS. They 

have asked us in. They have opened the door for our participation. 

Cornell University has a term of art, like ‘‘best management 

practices’’ in this area. So we are on the steering committee. In 

fact, Thursday of this week, the Secretary’s office is convening a 

meeting with the Food and Drug Administration—FDA—and 

NRCS and AMS and the Agricultural Research Service—ARS, the 

researchers, to talk about this issue. 

So what we are hoping is that we can achieve both, where you 

have the good things we want for the environment and also the 

food safety that we must have. 

Ms. DELAURO. Uh-huh. Are you looking to set out some national 

criteria? Because, otherwise, as Mr. Farr knows from that prior 

time, the folks are on their own to put something together in order 

to safeguard their efforts and come up with, you know, marketing 

orders, et cetera. 

But at the Federal level, is there an intent to try to lay out some 

criteria guidelines or standards? 

Mr. WHITE. Yes. FDA is supposed to come out with a rule sometime in 2011. 

Ms. DELAURO. Okay. 

Mr. WHITE. I don’t know what that is going to contain, at this 

point, but I know that they have opened the door for us, and we 

are very grateful. And we will be advocating for conservation 

throughout that process, ma’am. 

Ms. DELAURO. Thank you. Well, we will follow it. 

Mr. WHITE. And we will be calling Daniel Mountjoy for advice on 

how to do it. 

Ms. DELAURO. I would just submit to you, because I can’t let the 

opportunity go, that, with all of the agencies that are involved, 

wouldn’t it be simpler, the whole process would be simpler if we 

had a single food safety agency? 

Mr. KINGSTON. Now, that is an idea we haven’t heard. 

Ms. DELAURO. An idea whose time has come. Anyway—in so 

many regards, including deficit reduction, I might add. 

Mr. WHITE. Well, don’t you think we should have a little bit of 

conservation input, though? 

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RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Ms. DELAURO. I am happy for the input, but at one agency. So 

we can build in a capacity in an agency to do that. 

Let me just talk about the RC&D program. It was eliminated. 

And you are right, it has come up before, and every year we bring 

it back. 

You say the same goals can be achieved through other USDA 

programs, partner investments, local project sponsors. Can you outline how this will be done with resource conservation and development? 

RC&D focuses on energy resource management projects, waste 

management utilization projects, community improvement projects, 

economic development water projects. Can all of these areas really 

be covered by other programs or partner investments? 

Mr. SHERMAN. Well, let me start and then see if Dave wants to 

add anything to that. I do believe that most of the goals and mission areas of RC&D are addressed in a variety of the programs 

that we have. 

Ms. DELAURO. I won’t have enough time for you to list them, but 

I would like to know where those—if you can get for us, where you 

pick up the slack if RC&D is gone. 

Mr. SHERMAN. We would be happy to provide that to you. 

Do you want this now? 

Ms. DELAURO. No, no. I was just—is there anything else you 

want to, you know, add about—the light went off. I am going to assume it is a red light here. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Your time has expired. 

Ms. DELAURO. Okay. So if you just would get us that information, it would be very helpful. 

Mr. SHERMAN. We will get you that information. 

[The information follows:] 

Resource Conservation and Development (RC&D) Councils implement natural resource and community improvement projects with funding from various sources including private and corporate foundations, state and local agencies; and various federal agencies including USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, Food and Nutrition 

Service, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Forest Service, and Rural 

Development. These programs complement the technical assistance provided by 

NRCS. 

Federal funding sources outside of USDA that contribute to RC&D Council 

projects include: the Environmental Protection Agency, Department of the Interior, 

Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service, Department of Energy, Department of Transportation, Department of the Army, Department of the Navy, Department of Health and Human Services, the National Historic Preservation Program, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Department of Housing 

and Urban Development. Since RC&D Councils compete for these Federal funds 

along with other non-profit organizations, we do not have information on the funding levels of the numerous grant programs of these departments and agencies that 

may be awarded to RC&D Councils in FY 2012. 

Ms. DELAURO. Thank you. 

Mr. KINGSTON. And, also, if I could add on the councils that disappear and the councils that don’t disappear, that assumes some 

councils are more equal than others or some are doing a more effective job. And if you could address why certain councils will remain 

and certain ones won’t, that will be helpful. 

Ms. DELAURO. Is that right? Certain councils will remain? I 

thought it was all eliminated. 

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Mr. SHERMAN. We don’t know which councils will continue. If 

this funding is eliminated, I assume there will be certain councils 

which will, through voluntary efforts or through other fundraising 

efforts, what have you, partnership efforts, will find coordinators to 

continue to run their activities. 

But in the event that you eliminate this from the budget, we will 

report back to you as to which councils continue and which councils—— 

[The information follows:] 

NRCS does not have information on the financial strength of each of the nonprofit 

RC&D councils. We expect the majority of the existing Councils will decide to adjust 

positively to this change in support from NRCS and continue to operate successfully 

as nonprofit corporations. For several years USDA has partnered with the National 

Association of Councils across the country. Many councils have increased their partnerships and financial portfolios so that they are less reliant on NRCS direct technical and financial assistance. 

Ms. DELAURO. But they won’t be continued with Federal dollars. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Well, the payment for coordination, the hiring of 

the coordinators, would not continue. 

Ms. DELAURO. Okay. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Graves. 

CONSERVATION RESERVE PROGRAM

Mr. GRAVES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And forgive me for my lack of institutional knowledge. I still 

have a little bit to gain. But I was curious, if you could explain, 

there is a line item called ‘‘other planning and application’’ that 

nearly doubles from 2010 to 2012. What drives that? And I guess 

that is the mandatory side? 

Mr. WHITE. What chart are you on, do you know? 

Mr. GRAVES. Page 25–16 of the explanatory notes. 

Mr. WHITE. Okay. Getting there. 

We think that is the technical assistance for the Conservation 

Reserve Program. The program is administered by the Farm Service Agency, but we do most of the technical work. So, as they have 

this new signup, that would be an increase that is not going to 

happen every year. That is only when they would have large, 

multi-million-acre signups. 

Mr. GRAVES. So what is driving that large increase? 

Mr. WHITE. They announced they are going to sign up 4 million 

acres into the program. And this would be a person going out, 

working with the farmer, developing the seeding recommendations, 

the plans that need to be developed, that kind of stuff. 

Mr. GRAVES. And I guess, where is that coming from? Who is requesting the additional acreage? 

Mr. WHITE. We work with the Farm Service Agency to develop 

those costs, so it would be coming from us both. The funding source 

would be the Commodity Credit Corporation. 

Mr. GRAVES. And so, is it formula-driven? I mean, what makes 

it mandatory? 

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Mr. WHITE. It is basically acre-driven and number of plans projected. And I cannot remember the amount per plan off the top of 

my head. 

[The information follows:] 

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Mr. GRAVES. So is it mandatory or not mandatory? 

Mr. WHITE. This is mandatory spending. The source of the money 

is from the Commodity Credit Corporation—CCC. 

Mr. GRAVES. So I guess there is another authorizing committee 

that has put something in place that drives it to this new level—— 

Mr. WHITE. No. 

Mr. GRAVES [continued]. To get the formula? Or is it—— 

Mr. WHITE. It is Farm Bill funding. So it would be the same 

funding source as EQIP or Wildlife Habitat Incentives Program, 

things of that nature. 

Mr. GRAVES. Okay. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Bishop. 

RESOURCE CONSERVATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Mr. BISHOP. Thank you very much. 

It is my understanding, still on the RC&D, that as a result of the 

proposed elimination of RC&D that Georgia will lose approximately 

10 NRCS staff persons. And while these employees may be transferred to other positions in the agency, what will the practical impact of these staff losses be in terms of program support? 

Mr. SHERMAN. Okay, these 10 individuals, we will make an effort 

to reassign them to other work for which they are qualified. Some 

of—— 

Mr. BISHOP. Same State? 

Mr. WHITE. That would be my goal. 

Mr. SHERMAN. That would be our goal. 

And some of these people may be eligible for retirement. Some 

of them may be eligible for early retirement. Prior to your getting 

here, we talked about a buy-out program, an early buy-out program 

that the government has. 

So we will make every effort to try to find a place for the employees who wish to remain within the NRCS system. 

Mr. BISHOP. I was really—my question was going to the impact 

that it would have on the programs, on the services that they provided to their respective areas, their expertise. 

Mr. SHERMAN. These individuals currently serve as coordinators 

of RC&D councils. So if the funding is not there for these councils, 

then I think the question is whether these councils will reach out 

to others on a voluntary basis or find others that they are willing 

to pay for who can step in and coordinate the efforts of the council. 

If they can’t—— 

Mr. BISHOP. They won’t have any federally funded coordinators? 

Mr. SHERMAN. They will not have federally funded coordinators. 

Eighty percent—— 

Mr. BISHOP. Pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, so to 

speak? 

Mr. SHERMAN. That is correct. 

Mr. BISHOP. Get their own funding. 

Mr. SHERMAN. That is correct. 

Mr. WHITE. But we might have more help for Flint River. 

NRCS STRATEGIC PLAN

Mr. BISHOP. Okay. 

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Let me shift gears for a moment and ask if you would just talk 

about your strategic plan. Over the past few years, you have had 

discussions about strategic planning at NRCS. Can you tell us if 

your strategic planning process has taken into account the tight 

budgetary environment that we are currently facing and the likelihood that this will spill over into the current farm bill negotiations? 

How do you see the proposed changes would impact that plan, 

particularly in terms of the Department’s internal and external assessments of natural resources, human capital, civil rights, and the 

other issues? 

Mr. WHITE. Well, we have revised the strategic plan, and it is 

going to come out shortly. And it is pretty simple. What I wanted 

was something you can put on one page, maybe front and back at 

most. We want to get our house in order, and that is directly related to fixing the financial arena and those processes that are bogging us down. 

So, first get our house in order; two, get more conservation on 

the ground, streamline how we work with producers, make it more 

producer-friendly and better there; and, three, work with our partners where we can to create a climate where voluntary, incentivebased conservation can succeed, or continue to succeed. 

And regardless of the budget—up, down, in between—I think 

that those strategic goals are relevant regardless of what happens 

to the budget, sir. 

PROGRAM ELIMINATIONS

Mr. BISHOP. Okay. I appreciate that very much. 

Let me shift again. Overall, with your recommendations, with 

the administration’s position, I guess driven by OMB or whomever, 

that some of these programs and functions will have to be eliminated, and you are recommending not funding them. 

Does this really reflect the ability or an approach to do more 

with less, to eliminate redundancies and overlapping programs so, 

at the end of the day, you will still be able to accomplish the mission that you have to accomplish but just doing it more efficiently? 

Or is this simply an exercise in just cutting the budget to comply 

with the necessity of the difficult financial crisis that we are in? 

Mr. SHERMAN. Congressman, I think it is both. I think there are 

areas where we probably won’t be able to accomplish everything 

that we sought to do. I think there will be other areas where we 

try to identify efficiencies, better ways of doing things, where we 

can stretch our dollars more effectively and further. 

But it is really both. In the areas where we have proposed cuts, 

hopefully our local partners will find ways to continue doing a 

number of the things that previously were done. But we will have 

to wait and see whether that happens. 

Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman’s time has expired. 

Ms. Lummis. 

CONSERVATION PRACTICE STANDARDS

Mrs. LUMMIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to add on to and support Mr. Latham’s line of questioning 

with regard to the land manure standards and—— 

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Mr. WHITE. Yes, ma’am. 

Mrs. LUMMIS [continued]. Specifically would be interested in 

knowing at some point what the scientific basis is for limiting phosphorous and potassium to 10 times the crop removal rate. 

But since you recognize that this 590 rule is a problem and you 

are all over it, as you say, just know that I share Mr. Latham’s 

concern. 

Mr. WHITE. Yes, ma’am. 

WETLANDS RESERVE PROGRAM

Mrs. LUMMIS. Okay. Great. 

A question about the Wetland Reserve Program. Has the NRCS 

looked into provision exemptions that would allow haying and grazing in the same year, where that is appropriate for wetland reserves? 

Mr. WHITE. Yes. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Oh, good. 

Mr. WHITE. In 2002, I was loaned to Senator Harkin and worked 

on that Farm Bill. No, 2002 was Senator Lugar; 2008 was Senator 

Harkin. But in the 2008 Farm Bill, we put a special provision in 

the Wetlands Reserve Program that made it through the adoption 

phase to allow haying and grazing as part of the WRP. Because, 

instead of making it a land retirement program, I think it would 

be better served as a working lands program. 

The reason is, particularly as you go west, you know, west of the 

100th meridian, those wetlands grew up under the ungulates. 

Every 18 months or 2 years, buffalo come down there and they 

would make it look like a nuclear bomb hit it, and then they would 

move on, and the wetlands came back. They grew up under that 

ecosystem. 

So we do have the authorities for reserved rights for grazing. For 

regular WRP, we can also work with the landowner to do a plan 

to allow the grazing. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. So is that on a case-by-case basis? Or do you have 

standards that you are going to publish? 

Mr. WHITE. It is on a case-by-case basis for the existing WRPs. 

If you come under the reserved rights, it is actually in the agreement—the rancher says, okay, that is mine, if I do it according to 

a plan. So there are two different scenarios right now. 

Mrs. LUMMIS. Okay. 

Well, that was the only additional question I have, Mr. Chairman, and so I will yield back the balance of my time. Thank you. 

CONSERVATION STEWARDSHIP PROGRAM

Mr. KINGSTON. I thank the gentlewoman. 

And we will begin our third round. 

I want to ask you, Mr. Under Secretary, about the Conservation 

Security Program, which, as you know, was basically discontinued 

or at least had a major name change and overhaul in 2008. However, under the Conservation Security Program contracts, we are 

still paying farmers to participate in the failed program. It doesn’t 

take new enrollees, but if you are already on the paper, you get 

paid. 

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That is really repugnant to taxpayers. What can we do to get out 

of that? 

Mr. SHERMAN. I am not the expert on this program, but my understanding is, it is being phased out. Obviously, the Conservation 

Stewardship Program is now in place, and we are enrolling. We enrolled 25 million acres during 2010, and we are adding about 12 

million acres a year to this program going forward. 

So we are phasing out of this other program. There were certain 

problems that were in that program that we are attempting to correct under the Conservation Stewardship Program. 

But I would turn to Chief White to be more specific in response 

to your question. 

Mr. BISHOP. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. KINGSTON. Yes. 

Mr. BISHOP. Is it a legal problem, that you can’t just terminate 

those contracts because they have already been signed and it would 

result in some kind of legal liability, and that is why we are continuing to pay them even though we are discontinuing the program 

and going on with a different approach? But you have those existing programs, and they are still obligated because of the contracts, 

and there will be legal liability if those contracts are breached. 

Mr. SHERMAN. That is my understanding. 

Mr. WHITE. Okay. Can I address that as part of the response— 

Mr. KINGSTON. And throw in there how much money is paid out. 

For 2012, what will it be? And what will it be aggregate during the 

life of those contracts? And how much would you estimate it would 

cost you to take the legal hit and close them out? 

Mr. WHITE. Okay. All right. You are referring to the OIG audit 

of the Conservation Security Program. They went in five States. 

This happened a couple years ago. They found a huge error rate, 

a 50 percent error rate. It was stunning. 

When I became chief in 2009 and became aware of this, there 

were 23 recommendations in that OIG report. And I have to tell 

you, OIG was very fair. I think they did an honest job on this. 

And I can also tell you where I think the major error in the Conservation Security Program occurred, and that was, to save money, 

they made a decision to allow farmers to self-certify. So if you told 

us you had 100 acres and terraces, we said, well, you have 100 

acres and terraces, and that is what it was based on. But when the 

OIG actually went into the field, maybe you had 98 acres, maybe 

you had 105, maybe you didn’t have terraces. These were a lot of 

the errors that they particularly cited. 

So when I became chief, I did not have us go back and look at 

the contracts in those five States; I ordered a top-to-bottom review 

from Maine to Hawaii, every single contract, 21,000 of them. Go to 

the field, verify it. If there is a problem with anything—eligibility, 

paperwork—fix it. And if you can’t fix it, we have to cancel it and 

get out of it. 

We have canceled gobs of them. We have fixed gobs of them. We 

are down to a handful that are really kind of ugly right now. They 

will probably end up in some lawsuits. I am trying to remember, 

there are 28 or 30 contracts still out where we are asking for major 

amounts of money back. We recovered a couple of million, and 

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there are still some more out there. But we are progressing and 

working with the inspector general to clean this up. 

Mr. BISHOP. Would the gentleman yield? 

Mr. KINGSTON. Yes. 

CANCELLED CONTRACTS

Mr. BISHOP. The ones that you were able to cancel, you were able 

to do that because you found that they were in breach of their obligations under the contract. And, therefore, if they were in breach, 

you were justified in canceling it. But those who were proceeding 

according to what was expected of them or where there was a legitimate dispute, those are the ones that—— 

Mr. WHITE. That remain. The ones that are remaining are okay. 

They are eligible. They are doing what they are supposed to do. 

They are carrying out their contracts. And it would take $197 million in 2012 to pay all the existing contracts. So I think that we 

should continue to pay the existing contracts—— 

Mr. KINGSTON. $198 million? 

Mr. SHERMAN. $197 million. 

Mr. WHITE. $197 million. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Okay. 

Mr. WHITE. Well, $197 million is close enough. 

Mr. KINGSTON. And the ones who were in violation, were they 

dropped immediately, as Mr. Bishop said? And are they banned 

from participating in future—not just that program under the new 

name, Conservation Stewardship Program, but under other programs? 

Mr. WHITE. Now, that I don’t know. I will have to find out, Mr. 

Kingston. 

Mr. KINGSTON. When somebody is in violation of a farm program, 

can they go on to other programs? If you violate WRP, could you 

still be eligible for EQIP? 

Mr. WHITE. Well, there is a list, a debarment list that you can 

put people on, and it would preclude them from participating in 

just about any Federal program. But I have to check and see what 

it would mean for these farmers. 

[The information follows:] 

Egregious conservation program contract violations may serve as the basis for 

suspension and debarment actions by NRCS. Provisions at 2 CFR Part 417 establish 

the USDA policies and procedures for debarment and suspension. Generally, the period of debarment is based on the seriousness of the cause(s) upon which the debarment is based and usually does not exceed three years. However, if circumstances 

warrant, debarring officials may impose a longer period. Any individual, organization, corporation, or other entity convicted of a felony for knowingly defrauding the 

United States in connection with any program administered by USDA can be permanently debarred from participation in USDA programs. 

All NRCS Conservation Program Contracts (financial assistance agreements) contain language in the terms and conditions regarding participant self-certification 

that to the best of their knowledge and belief, they are not presently debarred, suspended, proposed for debarment, declared ineligible, or voluntarily excluded from 

covered transactions by any Federal department or agency. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Okay. My time has expired. 

One last question: Will you give us a copy of your remediation 

plan, switching back on the OIG report? 

Mr. WHITE. Oh, for this? 

Mr. KINGSTON. Yes. 

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Mr. WHITE. You betcha. 

[The information follows:] 

Information has been provided to the Committee. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Can’t wait to read it. 

Mr. BISHOP. We may need a budget increase this year to offset 

that. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Farr. 

FARM BILL PROGRAMS

Mr. FARR. Mr. Chairman, I would like to compliment you on having this kind of a hearing. I think so much of this right now, the 

CRs that we passed and even the President’s budget, what we 

failed to do on the legislative side, Congress, is to understand the 

implications of these cuts as they trickle down into communities. 

And I was just—it was interesting, I wish Mrs. Lummis and Mr. 

Graves were still here, because there are 12 programs that Natural 

Resources Conservation Service manages. I mean, we mentioned 

the WRP, the CRP, the EQIP. There is the WHIP, and there is the 

FRP, and there is a bunch of others, including AMA, which I don’t 

know what they are. I am looking them up. 

But if you look at that list of how these States benefit from these 

programs, it is very disproportional. I mean, it isn’t, you know, one 

size fits all. This formula isn’t across the country. And some States 

very heavily use—I mean, Wyoming is the number one in the country by tens of millions of dollars under the EQIP program. There 

is no other State—excuse me, not EQIP. I was thinking of the 

FRPP program. 

And it just seems to me that, indeed, if Mr. Graves wants to cut 

everything across the board, what I would ask the Secretary and 

the chief here is, break down what kind of impact that is going to 

have by State and by congressional district. 

Mr. WHITE. Okay. 

Mr. FARR. You know, in essence, this process has to be a political 

one, and it has to involve the community. And I fault this administration because they are willing to bring in cuts in their budget, 

but when you ask them, how is this going to affect people on the 

ground, they won’t tell you, because we support the cuts. 

And I don’t think that is the way to communicate to people, to 

say, okay, because the President wants it and because the Republican leadership has agreed to it, that we don’t have to tell you 

what it is going to be. We have to tell people what it is going to 

be whether we like the news or not. Because the political side is 

then to make sure that people get involved, and how are they going 

to trust government if we don’t engage them in what we are trying 

to do? We become so Beltway-interested. And I would hope that we 

can have more and more hearings about—we are going to be in this 

mood for a couple years, I think, of cut, squeeze, and trim. And, 

I mean, that is the political reality. 

But we ought to be smart about, okay, let’s really engage the 

public in understanding what that cut, squeeze, and trim is going 

to do. And, as I said, even in your agency, with all these 12 different programs, it is going to have all different kind of disproportionate effects on different congressional districts. 

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Mr. BISHOP. Will the gentleman yield on that? 

Mr. FARR. Yes. 

Mr. BISHOP. You mentioned earlier that, in looking at the regulations in the application, you had to look at it on a regional basis. 

It would seem to me that, as we evaluate these programs, that they 

have to be looked at on a regional basis, because there are some 

areas that benefit from certain programs and not from others. And 

somehow there has to be an equitable balance so that programs 

that will benefit certain regions, because of geography or because 

of crops or because of whatever, that they will be able to continue 

to utilize the benefits of those programs, whereas, you know, in 

other parts of the country—maybe it is Wyoming—other programs 

are more compatible with their needs. 

Mr. WHITE. Exactly. That is a good point. And we would be 

happy to do runs on the various budget scenarios. That is—— 

Mr. BISHOP. As we go into the farm bill, we need to have this 

kind of information, we need to have that kind of analysis. Because, depending upon who is making the decisions, who is at the 

table and what region they are from, they tend to think of it in 

terms of what is good for their region, as opposed to what will benefit—— 

Mr. WHITE. America. 

Mr. BISHOP [continuing]. Everybody in those respective areas. 

Mr. WHITE. Exactly. 

Mr. KINGSTON. And if the gentleman will yield—and I actually 

think it is Mr. Farr’s time—one of the things that would be of interest to this committee, because we often get into who is getting 

the most, which State is, it would be interesting—now, you know, 

obviously, there is acreage consideration and environmental sensitivity and growth factors. But I think it would be interesting to 

know which States are getting the money the most, just for our 

own—because any way you look at the statistics, you could use it 

on a superficial basis to come to a conclusion that is wrong—you 

know, money per head, money per acre, any way you can do it. But 

it is something that comes up all the time on this committee, so 

we would be interested. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Would you like this for all of the mandatory programs and the discretionary programs? 

Mr. KINGSTON. I think it would be very interesting. 

Mr. SHERMAN. All right. We will be happy to get that. 

Mr. KINGSTON. And I am not sure in what way to format it so 

that people could use it. 

Mr. Farr, Mr. Bishop and I enjoyed your time. Do you have—— 

Mr. FARR. I just want to make sure that you report back, as Mr. 

Graves has asked for a 25 percent reduction—I don’t know if it is 

across the board or he wants you to figure out how to do that 25 

percent. All I am just saying, whatever way you respond to him, 

I want you to add to that what the impact will be on congressional 

districts. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Okay. 

Mr. WHITE. I think we can do it by congressional district, but I 

know we can do it by State. 

[The information follows:] 

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mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 127 here 66636A.042
79 

Mr. FARR. Well, that will be helpful. Some States are pretty big. 

I mean, I was just showing Mr. Latham, I mean, here we are, the CRP program. Iowa gets $6 million out of the CRP program. 

California, the number-one ag State in the country, gets $47,000. 

Excuse me, $47 million—no, I guess—it doesn’t say millions. No, it 

just says $47,000. And then Wyoming gets $169,000. I mean, it is 

very, very small. California and Wyoming are very small, but other 

States—you know, Wyoming gets $21,000 out of the FRP program, 

and Georgia gets $24,000. 

So it is just a whole different aspect of how these programs affect 

States. And what is good for one is horrible for the other. 

Mr. WHITE. Like the guys in your district would not accept a $50- or $100-an-acre rental rate for land that is producing—you know, 

you are a high-value specialty crop, so the CRP is of limited interest to—— 

Mr. KINGSTON. CRP is, like, $10 an acre or something. 

Mr. WHITE. Well, it is $40 maybe. Forty-five dollars is the national average; you go below that. And then you also have highervalue crops in Iowa. 

Mr. FARR. Our ag land is $40,000 an acre. You can’t grow any- thing on it that would give you $40,000 return—— 

Mr. WHITE. That is why California doesn’t have much in the—— 

CONSERVATION PRACTICES AND FOOD SAFETY

Mr. FARR. Well, we don’t sell ag land. You either inherit it or 

marry it, if you want it. 

Well, let me just ask the last part of—since you used my time. 

But I would just like to comment that the point of what was happening with the E. coli issue is that all the corporate buyers—you 

know, McDonalds buys all their lettuce from growers in the Salinas 

Valley. So their lawyer comes in and says, ‘‘Oh, my God. I am the 

risk management for the corporation. Do you know that birds fly 

over your fields? Couldn’t that be dangerous?’’ You know, or animals come in. Yes. We farm in the open space. 

But that is where you have this—and what was lost is that—the 

credibility has always been with the government. I mean, FDA has 

a lot of credibility and trust by the consumer. But in this area of 

food safety, the evolving of that is that nobody trusts anybody in 

it. So then the corporations come out and use these sort of models 

for risk analysis that have nothing to do with practicing farm practices in a rural area and start telling farmers that they have to sort 

of grow everything in sheds and use sterilized water. I mean, it is 

nuts. And we have to recapture the science of that. And the science 

is in your agency, along with FDA. 

So I think this whole new movement of reprofessionalizing and 

gaining the confidence of everyone that the rules and procedures 

that we develop between the private-sector and public-sector managers are the standard bearer, and we don’t go out and start 

privatizing rulemaking. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Okay. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Latham. 

CONSERVATION SECURITY PROGRAM

Mr. LATHAM. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

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And I am glad to hear Mr. Farr saying those things, because it 

does become ridiculous sometimes, some of the rules and regulations. And I think the 590 stuff is going to prove to be unworkable, 

most of that. 

Going back to CSP, how many of the contracts were—you say it 

was self-certified. How many were not in compliance of the—you 

said 21,000 contracts? 

Mr. WHITE. That is how many total were in the old CSP. 

Mr. LATHAM. But how many of those were—— 

Mr. WHITE. I don’t have that number. I guess—— 

Mr. LATHAM. Is it half? 

Mr. WHITE. In the five States they looked at, they found a 50 

percent error rate. I don’t know if that was nationwide. We will 

have to get you the numbers on that. 

What I was told is that most of the contracts that had errors 

were nonsubstantive—they were technical in nature. You may not 

have had every single lease agreement of the farms you had, in 

there in the file. There were things that were technical corrections 

that we had to make. 

The category where there was actual out and out, ‘‘You got to 

go,’’ I don’t know exactly how large that was. 

[The information follows:] 

Nationally, NRCS reviewed 20,653 active Conservation Security Program contracts. Of those reviewed, 7,666 had some error. Thus, the rate of error nationally 

is approximately 37 percent. However, many of these errors were minor or technical 

in nature and were readily corrected. 

In particular, the number of contracts that had errors that were technical in nature was 5,495. A total of 2,099 contracts had errors relating to incorrect payment 

levels. All corrective actions were taken by December 31, 2009. Most of the actions 

taken were contract modifications to correct the errors, or collection of missing documentation. A total of 333 contracts were cancelled or terminated. In cases where applicable, money was recovered from the participants. To date, $4.618 million has 

been collected. 

There are several outstanding contracts that have required extra investigation. 

These contracts have recently been issued demand/termination letters to collect an 

additional $2.295 million. 

Mr. LATHAM. The idea of that, supposedly, was to improve water 

quality, air quality, and soil quality. On an individual piece of 

property, have you ever been able to quantify benefits? 

Mr. WHITE. We are getting there. Because that is how—— 

Mr. LATHAM. But your answer is, no, you haven’t, right? 

Mr. WHITE. I would say, we can do that now in certain areas. We 

have some—— 

Mr. LATHAM. Where? 

Mr. WHITE. Well, actually, in the Chesapeake Bay. We can 

now—— 

Mr. LATHAM. On individual properties? 

Mr. WHITE. Yes. 

Mr. LATHAM. Not the watershed? 

Mr. WHITE. Yes. We have surrogates now that could tell you the 

sediment, the nitrogen and the phosphorous reductions. 

Mr. LATHAM. How about air quality? 

Mr. WHITE. No, not there. No. 

Mr. LATHAM. Okay. So we are spending—I mean, this program 

has been a disaster from the start. We have never been able to 

quantify benefits. We are spending $198 million this year on a promstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPRO

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gram that you are going to discontinue because it is apparently full 

of fraud, according to the OIG. 

I mean, it is mind-boggling to me on this whole thing. It never 

has been workable. We have never been able to quantify anything, 

and yet we are spending all this money. 

Mr. WHITE. The old CSP was intended to—the rationale behind 

it was that farmers produce more than corn, cotton, wheat, soybeans; they also produce clean air, clean water. It was a stewardship program. It—— 

Mr. LATHAM. Which was unworkable. 

Mr. WHITE. It was implemented at the watershed level, where, 

if you were in the watershed, you were okay; if you were out, you 

had to wait 8 years. There were some issues. 

In 2008, Congress specifically set that one aside and revamped 

it. What we have now is completely different. We learned a lot of 

things not to do. 

Mr. LATHAM. Right. 

Mr. WHITE. But now we have gone back and reviewed all the old 

ones. Those people are in compliance with their contracts. The 

fraud is not there anymore. What we have left is pretty solid stuff 

that is doing some benefits for the Nation. 

Mr. LATHAM. But you cannot quantify on an individual piece of 

ground any benefit? 

Mr. WHITE. That has always been our issue in the past, regardless of program. I mean, we are excellent at counting acres, feet, 

miles—— 

Mr. LATHAM. Right. 

Mr. WHITE [continued]. But I can’t tell you the impact on benthic 

macroinvertebrates. 

Mr. LATHAM. Well, it is bad enough—— 

Mr. WHITE. But we are getting there. 

PROGRAM ELIMINATIONS

Mr. LATHAM [continued]. That you have done away with it, and 

hopefully fixed it, because it was insane, the way it was started. 

In your budget, you are eliminating the watershed programs. 

And I will just make kind of an aside here. A lot of us have been 

here long enough to know that administrations propose things kind 

of with a wink and a nod, saying, ‘‘We know Congress is going to 

protect it, and we are not really going to do this, but we have to 

say we are going to do it.’’ 

I will tell you, under the budget situation here we are in, we are 

probably going to take everything that you say to get rid of. And, 

I mean, I think you better be realistic as to what you are proposing 

here, because this stuff is probably going to happen, unlike in years 

past. I mean, this is a whole different dynamic we are in today. 

But I don’t know how you have any—you know, in Iowa, we have 

had a lot of floods—with doing away with this program, how you 

are going to have any role in the evaluation of flood protection, 

small and rural areas. If you can very briefly—obviously, we are 

out of time—but comment on that. 

Mr. WHITE. I know. There are a lot of projects there, and they 

do a lot of good. And I fully understand how the system used to 

work. In 1609, the Japanese invented kabuki theater, and it was 

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perfected to a fine art here several years ago. But the rules have 

changed, and now a lot of things we would maybe have liked to 

have kept are not going to be available to us. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Bishop. 

Mr. BISHOP. I yield. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Ms. Kaptur. 

Ms. KAPTUR. Thank you. 

I thank my colleague, Mr. Bishop, again for yielding to me. 

And, Mr. Chairman, thank you for your very positive demeanor 

during these meetings. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Thank you. 

WESTERN LAKE ERIE BASIN PARTNERSHIP

Ms. KAPTUR. And we want to welcome our visitors from USDA. 

My questions are regional, somewhat, in nature here. As you 

probably know, Mr. White, for a long time, we have had a Western 

Lake Erie Basin Partnership study ongoing involving not just 

NRCS but the Army Corps of Engineers, the EPA, the U.S. Geological Survey, and three States—Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana—because of this massive watershed that we are a part of in what I 

like to call ‘‘Amsterdam America’’—very flat land and a tremendous 

flat watershed, which drains into the largest river that flows into 

the Great Lakes, the Maumee River. Your people out there, Terry 

Cosby and Steve Davis, have been marvelous in trying to embrace 

this. 

But one of my questions is, as we transition to this new budget, 

how can we implement, after 10 years of effort, many of the recommendations that had been made? 

Because we have continuous flooding. We just had another problem, again, in Finley, Ohio, represented by Jim Jordan. Mike Pence 

has problems over in Indiana. We have problems. Bob Latta has 

problems. It spans congressional districts. 

And we have this issue of programs that NRCS has—your Wetlands Reserve Program. You have Ag Water Enhancement Programs, Strategic Watershed Teams. There are a lot of parts of your 

budget. What is a little unclear to us is, how do we piece this together to keep making progress in this region and have a real rollout so we fix what is wrong and help to better filter our water or 

hold our water, move with the Corps to dry dam, swales, whatever 

we have to do across this region? 

I guess it is a good problem, to have too much water. The problem is, it is doing a lot of damage. And unlike certain other Representatives, I don’t just represent agriculture. I have major cities 

in between all this, and they get flooded, too. 

So how do we work with you and maybe the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative to kind of prioritize what needs to be done a little more clearly so the local mayors, the local county commissioners, we all understand what we are doing in view of the budget 

you are submitting? That would be my first question. 

WILDLIFE AND COMMUNITY LIFE

And then my second question involves Lake Erie and the fact 

that the algal blooms on Lake Erie and the phosphorous loading 

has been significant. Some say we have actually gone backward 

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now in terms of the progress that we have made with cleaning up 

Lake Erie. 

And we have this added problem of wildlife habitat, which is an 

asset because we are on the Mississippi Flyway, but we have geese 

now living in the city of Toledo by the thousands, on our Boy Scout 

reservation and our city parks. It is not too healthy. These are not 

the kind of geese you can eat. So there are issues that are involved 

with Canadian honkers that just cover the area. 

So my other question really has to do with, how does one balance, in an area, human health and community wellbeing where 

these geese, though they are up at the national wildlife refuges, 

there are so many of them that they are coming into the urban 

areas and they are a real nuisance? What does one do? What is the 

balance in nature? 

So my first question is relative to the Western Lake Erie Basin 

Partnership. My second question relates to, how do we balance the 

wildlife with human life and community life? 

ENERGY PROGRAM

And my third question is, you have an energy program—oh, 

gosh, I saw it in your testimony. My question is, can it be applied 

to the greenhouse industry? I was reading in your testimony—oh, 

here—on page 13, you do farm energy audits, and also you have 

organic initiatives mentioned on page 14. For our greenhouse growers that are located in urban counties, which is what I represent 

also, we have massive greenhouse industries, would those programs apply there? Because 40 percent of their cost of doing business is energy. 

Mr. WHITE. Yes. Whew, I think I have it all down. 

Ms. KAPTUR. One, two, three. 

WESTERN LAKE ERIE BASIN PARTNERSHIP

Mr. WHITE. You bring up an issue of how we work together, and 

Mr. Farr brought that up earlier. If the earmarks truly are going 

away and they are not going to be here, there are many worthwhile 

things. So what do we do in California or Georgia or Ohio? What 

options are in the programs? 

Because we always want to work with local people, whether it is 

water quality, air quality, soil quality, wildlife, whatever the conservation issue is. You have outlined a pretty dramatic one, with 

the Maumee and the water quality going into Lake Erie. 

So what I think I have to do is figure out how we, in the absence 

of earmarks, can meet these local needs with the spectrum of programs that we have available to us, you know, as long as they are 

meeting the statutory purposes, of wildlife, water, air, soil. 

The Lake Erie algae blooms? Oh, my goodness. 

Ms. KAPTUR. Massive. That is scary, actually. 

Mr. WHITE. That is, like, something we ought to be on top of and 

trying to do everything we can to prevent. We have work in the 

Mississippi River, you know, and the Chesapeake Bay. We are 

doing a lot of things, so that is kind of sad that that is occurring 

again. And you say we may be taking a step backward. 

Ms. KAPTUR. Absolutely. And everybody doesn’t know, why all 

this phosphorous loading? What is the reason? It is like—— 

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Mr. WHITE. Yes. And I will have to get with Terry Cosby on how 

we work in the future and what path we go down—— 

[The information follows:] 

NRCS is committed to the best of our ability with available resources to help the 

landowners deal with increasing regulatory pressures and environmental challenges 

in critical watersheds such as the Great Lakes Basin. 

Ms. KAPTUR. If you could just get us one, two, three, four, five, 

what are we supposed to do as a region? What could we work toward here? 

Mr. KINGSTON. And let me say, the gentlewoman’s time has expired, but I am yielding 3 minutes from my time. 

Ms. KAPTUR. Thank you. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Can I just also add, this obviously is a very broad 

set of issues you are raising, and it involves sister departments 

that we have—the Environmental Protection Agency—EPA— Interior, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration— 

NOAA— Department of Defense, so forth. And I really do think 

that whatever solutions we are exploring here we have to do on a 

much broader, intergovernmental effort. It is really important. 

Ms. KAPTUR. I think the Great Lakes Initiative provides us 

with—— 

Mr. SHERMAN. A model. 

Ms. KAPTUR [continued]. Some ability, but I think you have the 

data set. They don’t necessarily have the data set, to help us address this massive watershed. I mean, what does Mike Pence do 

over in his district? What does Jim do? What does Bob Latta do? 

What do I do? It would be nice if we knew. 

You know, your wetlands programs, you have so many programs. 

But what happens first, second, third, fourth, fifth? And then, of 

course, with Lake Erie, it isn’t just Ohio; we have the whole Michigan issue. Maybe the phosphorous is coming from up there. I don’t 

know. All I know is the problem that we have. 

Mr. WHITE. Well, both of you have given me some ideas to think 

on in the future. Because we really want to address local conservation needs, whatever they may be across the country. 

These are not NRCS programs. We don’t have ownership. We 

only have them because of your good graces. They are American 

conservation programs. Whether you are big or small, organic, conventional, we don’t care. There ought to be something in those programs that our farmers and ranchers want to do on their place. 

The geese thing? 

Ms. KAPTUR. Yes. 

WILDLIFE AND COMMUNITY LIFE

Mr. WHITE. I hate to say this, but there is a program in USDA, 

the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, called Wildlife 

Services. Now, God knows I would never want to be serviced the 

way they would service wildlife. But they actually, like—— 

Ms. KAPTUR. Help. 

Mr. WHITE [continued]. Kill them. 

Ms. KAPTUR. See, but how do you have a kill in the city? I mean, 

do they bag them? 

Mr. WHITE. Well, they did it in Staunton, Virginia, with some 

black vultures. They have cannons to shoo them away or other 

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85 

methods. They have a variety of things. Wildlife Services, if it is 

a city-type thing, is who I would contact. 

Ms. KAPTUR. All right. Thank you. 

ENERGY PROGRAM

Mr. WHITE. And the energy program, I have to check and see if 

greenhouse growers—I guess, as long as they are ag producers, it 

would be okay with me. You are talking about the audit issues? 

Ms. KAPTUR. The audit issues and the organic technical assistance that you give. This would be a perfect fit for our growers. We 

have hundreds of them. 

Mr. WHITE. Okay. 

[The information follows:] 

The Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) can and does provide technical assistance and program financial assistance to agricultural producers who may 

utilize greenhouse facilities in their operations. The agency does not record or keep 

track of the number of producers associated with greenhouse operations, but they 

are an important client that we assist in many States. 

Examples of technical assistance NRCS provides these producers include development of conservation plans which address resource issues such as water quality, 

erosion control, pests, nutrient management, water conservation and other issues of 

importance to these operations. NRCS may recommend conservation practices such 

as irrigation water management, integrated pest management, nutrient management, erosion practices, seasonal high tunnels, and other practices that are commonly associated with greenhouse growers. 

NRCS has also provided financial assistance to greenhouse growers through the 

Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to help these growers implement 

the conservation practices identified above. 

Many greenhouse growers are specialty crop or organic producers. NRCS recognizes the importance of these producers and they receive priority assistance. The 

agency has also launched efforts to help agricultural producers evaluate and conserve on-farm energy. NRCS offers assistance through EQIP for participants to develop farm energy audits, which can include on-farm facilities such as greenhouses. 

The audit helps the grower identify activities or improvements that can be made 

to conserve energy and address other resource concerns. 

Ms. KAPTUR. But USDA generally doesn’t see them because they 

are not only farming in dirt, they are farming in dirt inside of 

houses. So they don’t necessarily offer technical assistance to them. 

Mr. BISHOP. Will the gentlelady yield? 

Ms. KAPTUR. Yes, I would be pleased to yield. 

PROGRAM ELIGIBILITY

Mr. BISHOP. Are there some prohibitions in terms of population 

centers where your programs are eligible or there is no limit? I 

know there are some other USDA programs that are limited in 

terms of population as to whether or not you are authorized to provide the assistance. But with NRCS, it doesn’t matter whether it 

is urban or rural. 

Mr. WHITE. Location is an issue. We still have to comply with the 

adjusted gross income and any highly erodable land conservation 

issues compliance. But I would just have to check. If they were to 

go down to their local FSA office, I don’t—I will just have to check 

on that, Ms. Kaptur. 

[The information follows:] 

There are no special requirements that must be met by a greenhouse grower in 

order to receive NRCS technical assistance. NRCS technical assistance is provided 

to greenhouse growers upon request and is dependent upon availability of staff to 

provide these services. 

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86 

Under NRCS conservation programs, greenhouse grower applicants must meet 

program specific land eligibility requirements and most of our programs require that 

applicants be agricultural producers in order to receive financial assistance. Many 

NRCS conservation programs are authorized by Title XII of the Food Security Act 

of 1985, as amended. Thus, in addition to meeting NRCS program specific eligibility 

criteria, a program applicant must visit the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) county office to establish farm records and determine their payment eligibility under the 

Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) provisions and the Highly Erodible Land and Wetland 

Conservation Provisions (HEL/WC). 

The AGI provisions require that applicants requesting certain conservation program payments, either directly or indirectly are subject to average AGI provisions. 

Applicants who have adjusted gross nonfarm income exceeding $1 million are ineligible for conservation programs, unless at least 66.66% of total AGI was farm income. (Note: This limitation may be waived on a case-by-case basis for the protection of environmentally sensitive land of special significance.) 

The HEL/WC provisions tie program eligibility to their land management practices, including dis-incentives to farmers and ranchers who produce annually tilled 

agricultural commodity crops on highly erodible cropland without adequate erosion 

protection. In addition, these dis-incentives apply to farmers and ranchers who 

produce annually tilled agricultural commodities or make possible the production of 

agricultural commodities on land classified as wetlands. 

Ms. KAPTUR. Okay. Thank you. 

CONSERVATION STEWARDSHIP PROGRAM

Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. White, let me ask you, on the Conservation 

Steward Program, I am still confused as to what farmers do who 

are participating in that that they would not be doing anyhow, particularly if they are participating in a direct payment crop program 

or something like that. 

Mr. WHITE. You know, I have spent most of my thoughts on the 

Conservation Stewardship instead of the old Security. We are talking Stewardship, right, the new one? 

Mr. KINGSTON. Yes. 

Mr. WHITE. Okay. Congress revamped the program in the 2008 

Farm Bill and made two categories. One, you have to agree to 

maintain that which you are already doing, keep it up to snuff, 

keep delivering benefits year after year after year. And Congress 

also put in there, you have to do more. It is not money for nothing; 

you have to do more. 

The last report I saw, Mr. Kingston, was that there are 80,000 

new conservation practices going to be installed on the 25.2 million 

acres that are enrolled. 

Do I have the right to revise and extend if I want? 

[The information follows:] 

Section 1238E of the Food Security Act of 1985, as amended by the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008, identifies the purpose of the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) is to encourage producers to address resource concerns in 

a comprehensive manner by: 1) undertaking additional conservation activities; and 

2) by improving, maintaining, and managing existing conservation activities. Section 

1238G(e) requires NRCS to compensate CSP for maintaining existing conservation 

activities as well as for undertaking additional conservation activities. CSP participants are required to select one or more additional conservation activities to adopt 

over the course of the contract. Most of these activities are high-level conservation 

enhancements that go beyond NRCS conservation practice standards to deliver valuable conservation benefits. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Absolutely. Because I think that this program 

probably is a duplication of other things, and I have a lot of concerns about it. So, my time is about expired, but I would like to 

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87 

know exactly what they do that is different, and why should we be 

paying farmers to do what they were already doing? 

Well, I think that is my question. If you want to get back to us, 

we would be very—you know, CRP program, which Georgia is a 

major participant in, it pays farmers not to farm. And that is one 

of the things that people are always very critical of. So Conservation Steward Program, paying farmers to do what they were doing 

already, it is well-intended, but—Mr. Farr? 

Mr. FARR. I will yield you my time. I have no other further questions. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Okay. 

Mr. Bishop. 

Mr. BISHOP. I yield. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Ms. Kaptur. 

Ms. KAPTUR. I think I have covered the questions that I wanted 

to. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. KINGSTON. Well, thank you. 

Mr. BISHOP. If I might make a comment, Mr. Chairman? 

Mr. KINGSTON. Sure. 

Mr. BISHOP. I just wanted to thank the agency for what you do, 

and particularly in Georgia, which is where I come from, and let 

you know that, of all of the USDA agencies in Georgia, that NRCS 

gets really, really high marks from our producers. 

And I just want to thank you for the work that our State conservationist, James Tillman, does, as well as the work that all of 

your folks do, because, I mean, our producers really, really, really 

speak very highly and think very highly of NRCS. And I want to 

thank you for what you do. 

Mr. SHERMAN. We appreciate those comments. 

And we appreciate the chance to work with this committee. We 

look forward to it in the future. Thanks very much. 

Mr. WHITE. Do I get anything for being an honorary Georgian? 

Mr. KINGSTON. You will get a lot of questions for the record, and 

free peanuts. The committee stands adjourned. 

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mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 315 here 66636A.203
249 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 316 here 66636A.204
250 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 317 here 66636A.205
251 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 318 here 66636A.206
252 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 319 here 66636A.207
253 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 320 here 66636A.208
254 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 321 here 66636A.209
255 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 322 here 66636A.210
256 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 323 here 66636A.211
257 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 324 here 66636A.212
258 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 325 here 66636A.213
259 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 326 here 66636A.214
260 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 327 here 66636A.215
261 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 328 here 66636A.216
262 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 329 here 66636A.217
263 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 330 here 66636A.218
264 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 331 here 66636A.219
265 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 332 here 66636A.220
266 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 333 here 66636A.221
267 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 334 here 66636A.222
268 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 335 here 66636A.223
269 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 336 here 66636A.224
270 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 337 here 66636A.225
271 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 338 here 66636A.226
272 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 339 here 66636A.227
273 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 340 here 66636A.228
274 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 341 here 66636A.229
275 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 342 here 66636A.230
276 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 343 here 66636A.231
277 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 344 here 66636A.232
278 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 345 here 66636A.233
279 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 346 here 66636A.234
280 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 347 here 66636A.235
281 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 348 here 66636A.236
282 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 349 here 66636A.237
283 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 350 here 66636A.238
284 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 351 here 66636A.239
285 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 352 here 66636A.240
286 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 353 here 66636A.241
287 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 354 here 66636A.242
288 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 355 here 66636A.243
289 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 356 here 66636A.244
290 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 357 here 66636A.245
291 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 358 here 66636A.246
292 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 359 here 66636A.247
293 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 360 here 66636A.248
294 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 361 here 66636A.249
295 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 362 here 66636A.250
296 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 363 here 66636A.251
297 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 364 here 66636A.252
298 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 365 here 66636A.253
299 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 366 here 66636A.254
300 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 367 here 66636A.255
301 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 368 here 66636A.256
302 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 369 here 66636A.257
303 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 370 here 66636A.258
304 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 371 here 66636A.259
305 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 372 here 66636A.260
306 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 373 here 66636A.261
307 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 374 here 66636A.262
308 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 375 here 66636A.263
309 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 376 here 66636A.264
310 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 377 here 66636A.265
311 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 378 here 66636A.266
312 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 379 here 66636A.267
313 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 380 here 66636A.268
314 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 381 here 66636A.269
315 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 382 here 66636A.270
316 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 383 here 66636A.271
317 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 384 here 66636A.272
318 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 385 here 66636A.273
319 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 386 here 66636A.274
320 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 387 here 66636A.275
321 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 388 here 66636A.276
322 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 389 here 66636A.277
323 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 390 here 66636A.278
324 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 391 here 66636A.279
325 


mstockstill on DSK4VPTVN1PROD with APPROInsert offset folio 392/600 here 66636A.280