31974 Federal Register / Vol. 87, No. 102 / Thursday, May 26, 2022 / Notices 

conflict-of-interest guidelines and will 

not be involved in the review of the 

application(s) where a conflict exists. 

The panelist also affirms their intent to 

maintain the confidentiality of the panel 

process and not disclose to another 

individual any information related to 

the peer review or use any information 

for personal benefit. 

Estimate of Burden: NIFA estimates 

that anywhere from one hour to twenty 

hours may be required to review a 

proposal. It is estimated that 

approximately five hours are required to 

review an average proposal. Each 

proposal receives an average of four 

reviews, accounting for an annual 

burden of 20 hours. NIFA estimates it 

receives 4,600 competitive applications 

each year. The total annual burden on 

reviewers is 92,000 hours. NIFA 

estimates that the potential reviewer 

questionnaire takes an estimated 10 

minutes to complete. The database 

consists of approximately 50,000 

reviewers. The total annual burden of 

questionnaire is 8,330 hours. NIFA 

estimates that the potential Conflict-ofInterest and Confidentiality Certification 

Form takes an estimated 10 minutes to 

complete. The agency has 

approximately 1,000 panelists each 

year. The total annual burden of the 

certification form is 167 hours. The total 

annual burden of the component of the 

entire review process is 100,497 hours. 

Comments: Comments are invited on: 

(a) Whether the proposed collection of 

information is necessary for the proper 

performance of the functions of the 

Agency, including whether the 

information will have practical utility; 

(b) the accuracy of the Agency’s 

estimate of the burden of the proposed 

collection of information; (c) ways to 

enhance the quality, utility and clarity 

of the information to be collected; and 

(d) ways to minimize the burden of the 

collection of information on those who 

are to respond, including through the 

use of appropriate automated, 

electronic, mechanical, or other 

technological collection techniques or 

other forms of information technology. 

All responses to this notice will be 

summarized and included in the request 

to OMB for approval. All comments will 

become a matter of public record. 

Obtaining a Copy of the Information 

Collection: A copy of the information 

collection and related instructions may 

be obtained free of charge by contacting 

Robert Martin as directed above. 

Done at Washington, DC, this day of May 

13, 2022. 

Dionne Toombs, 

Acting Director, National Institute of Food 

and Agriculture, U.S. Department of 

Agriculture. 

[FR Doc. 2022–11281 Filed 5–25–22; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE P 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Natural Resources Conservation 

Service 

[Docket No. NRCS–2020–0009] 

Final Guidance for Identification of 

Nonindustrial Private Forest Land 

(NIPF) 

AGENCY: Natural Resources 

Conservation Service (NRCS), U.S. 

Department of Agriculture (USDA). 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: On December 17, 2020, NRCS 

published a notice of proposed guidance 

for NIPF identification and provided a 

30-day public comment period for 

input. NRCS received 139 comments 

from different members of the public, 

including Indian Tribes, State agencies, 

non-governmental organizations, and 

individuals. Several of these comments 

provided coordinated input from many 

organizations, including one letter that 

provided input from over 60 

organizations. This document responds 

to comments received during the public 

comment period, which closed on 

January 19, 2021, and, for the reasons 

stated in this document, identifies that 

NRCS will not adopt the guidance it 

proposed in its December 2020 notice. 

APPLICABLE DATE: May 26, 2022. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Martha Joseph, telephone: (814) 203– 

5562; email: martha.joseph@usda.gov. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: 

Background 

NRCS is one of the USDA agencies 

that identifies NIPF for program 

enrollment. In particular, NRCS 

identifies NIPF for enrollment in the 

Agricultural Conservation Easement 

Program (ACEP), the Conservation 

Stewardship Program (CSP), the 

Environmental Quality Incentives 

Program (EQIP), and the Regional 

Conservation Partnership Program 

(RCPP). 

Identification for NIPF enrollment 

under these NRCS programs is based on 

section 1201(a)(18) of the Food Security 

Act of 1985 (the 1985 Farm Bill) (16 

U.S.C. 3801), which defines NIPF as 

rural land, as determined by the 

Secretary, that: 

• Has existing tree cover or is suitable 

for growing trees; and 

• Is owned by any nonindustrial 

private individual, group, association, 

corporation, Indian Tribe, or other 

private legal entity that has definitive 

decision-making authority over the 

land. 

Since the NIPF definition was first 

established several decades ago, changes 

have occurred in the forestry industry. 

In particular, foresters would identify 

the ‘‘industrial’’ status of a parcel of 

land by whether or not a company was 

vertically integrated (for example, the 

landowner owned both forestland and 

primary wood processing facilities). 

However, the ability to distinguish 

whether a particular parcel of land is 

industrial or nonindustrial became 

complicated when companies started to 

divest either their land or mills at the 

turn of the 21st century and timber 

investment management organizations 

(TIMOs) and real estate investment 

trusts (REITs) reflected an increasing 

amount of industrial forest land 

ownership. 

To address these changes in the 

forestry industry, NRCS described in its 

December 2020 notice, proposed 

guidance that would be used to identify 

NIPF as defined by the 1985 Farm Bill 

and NRCS program regulations. NRCS 

was not re-defining NIPF but was 

providing guidelines for helping its staff 

identify the various components of the 

statutory definition. Referencing criteria 

used by other conservation agencies (the 

USDA Forest Service and Farm Service 

Agency), NRCS proposed to clarify how 

to identify a nonindustrial private 

landowner if they: 

(1)(i) Own fewer than 45,000 acres of 

forest land in the United States; and 

(ii) Do not own or operate an 

industrial mill for the primary 

processing of raw wood products as 

determined by NRCS in consultation 

with the State Technical Committee; or 

(2) Meet criteria established for a 

nonindustrial private landowner by 

NRCS in a State in consultation with the 

State Technical Committee. 

NRCS received a total of 91 letters or 

emails containing 139 comments. The 

comments were from forestry or 

agricultural stakeholders, conservation 

organizations, individuals, Tribal 

entities, other organizations, and 

governmental agencies. One of the 

letters was signed by over 60 

organizations. NRCS review of the 

comments revealed a clear stakeholder 

preference that NRCS continue to use 

the existing programmatic framework 

until Congress can address how the 

changes in the forestry industry should 


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1See 7 CFR 1400.500(f) for the waiver criteria. 

affect eligibility for certain NRCS 

programs. 

Comment Topics 

This document summarizes the 

comments and explains the NRCS 

decision not to adopt revised NIPF 

technical guidance at this time. The 

comments are organized alphabetically 

by topic. The topics include: Adjusted 

Gross Income (AGI) limitation, funding, 

general criticism or support, landscapelevel conservation benefits, large NIPF 

holdings, and mill ownership. 

AGI 

Comment: NRCS should use the AGI 

limits instead of the proposed NIPF 

criteria. One comment also requested 

that NIPF be removed from AGI 

regulations. 

Response: Prior to the Agriculture 

Improvement Act of 2018 (the 2018 

Farm Bill), the AGI payment eligibility 

provisions indirectly assisted 

identification of non-industrial forestry 

landowners by excluding more affluent 

corporate landowners from being 

eligible for conservation payments. 

Additionally, under the Agricultural Act 

of 2014 (the 2014 Farm Bill), 

participants in RCPP, through the 

Healthy Forests Reserve Program 

(HFRP), were not subject to the NIPF 

land eligibility restriction or the AGI 

limitation. 

However, the 2018 Farm Bill codified 

RCPP as a stand-alone program and 

limited forest land eligibility to NIPF, 

necessitating criteria to identify 

individual industrial landowners. The 

availability of the general AGI waiver 

and the more program-specific AGI 

waiver has the potential to allow more 

affluent corporate owners to participate. 

NRCS has decided that it would be 

more appropriate to rely, in part, upon 

the AGI limitation and waiver criteria 1

to make NIPF eligibility determinations 

so that forestry operations continue to 

be treated similarly to agricultural 

operations. 

Funding 

Comment: Protecting forests, 

especially in the drought-plagued West, 

is essential for survival of the 

ecosystem, and as such should receive 

greater funding. 

Response: NRCS appreciates the 

expressions of support for protecting 

forests. 

General Criticism 

Comment: Several comments 

expressed a general dissatisfaction with 

any proposed changes to the definition. 

Some comments suggested NRCS wait 

until the next Farm Bill to implement 

any change, which would allow 

Congress to provide greater guidance. 

Others suggested that any change must 

be vetted by the Joint Forestry Team 

(JFT), which is a multilateral 

partnership including public and 

private entities. Several comments 

expressed confusion over the proposed 

guidance, arguing that the guidance is 

unnecessary. One comment simply 

stated that large forests are important, 

implying that the acreage cap presents 

an undue impediment. 

Response: NRCS believes that 

technical guidance such as that 

proposed in its December 17, 2020, 

notice would be helpful to distinguish 

industrial from nonindustrial land 

holdings. As described in the original 

notice, forestry industry changes 

resulted in many industrial 

landholdings divesting themselves from 

their mill facilities, though the 

industrial production methods on such 

lands remained. NRCS believes that the 

development of technical guidance will 

have greater receptivity in the 

conservation community with more 

specific Congressional guidance about 

where resources should be focused in 

light of these forest industry changes. 

NRCS considers the JFT a valuable 

resource for receiving input with respect 

to forestry issues, and the public 

comment period provided JFT member 

organizations an opportunity to provide 

input to the guidance. Additionally, 

NRCS understands the sentiment to 

receive additional input from Congress, 

and therefore, NRCS is not going to 

adopt revised technical guidance at this 

time. 

General Support 

Comment: Some comments expressed 

general support for NRCS activities that 

promote forest conservation. Others 

specifically supported aspects of the 

NIPF definition. Some expressed 

support for the acreage limit or the mill 

criterion, while other lauded either the 

narrowness or breadth of who may 

qualify as an NIPF landowner. Several 

expressed appreciation for the 

involvement of State technical 

committees. 

Response: NRCS appreciates the 

general support it received from 

producers and partners with respect to 

the proposed NIPF guidelines. 

Landscape Level Conservation Benefits 

Comment: Some expressed that the 

guidance specifying a 45,000-acre 

threshold would exclude important 

conservation lands as well as pathways 

for wildlife migration. Some comments 

recommend allowing large landowners 

to participate in landscape-level 

conservation efforts to effectively 

address resource concerns and reduce 

implementation costs for individual 

landowners. One comment approved 

excluding corporate landowners and 

recommended using the American Tree 

Farm Program private forest landowner 

definition. 

Response: NRCS recognizes that large, 

contiguous tracts provide significant 

conservation benefits, including 

providing pathways for wildlife 

migration. Congress specified that Farm 

Bill funding should be targeted to 

nonindustrial forestry landowners, but 

whether large tracts of forest land 

provide conservation benefits is a 

separate consideration. NRCS believes 

that it can still obtain significant 

conservation benefits through 

enrollment of contiguous small tracts 

and by coordinating with partners who 

can contribute more of their resources to 

protecting large tracts that may not meet 

AGI eligibility or AGI waiver 

requirements. 

Large NIPF Holdings 

Comment: Comments related to the 

acreage criterion threshold of 45,000 

acres came from a range of commenters. 

One of the comments was signed by 

approximately 61 different forestry or 

conservation stakeholders. 

Additional comments were specific to 

the applicability of the threshold with 

respect to Tribal land, especially land 

owned by Alaska Native Corporations 

(ANCs). The comments received from 

Tribal entities such as ANCs expressed 

concern that the acreage limitation did 

not consider the sovereign nature of 

Tribal landholdings or that ANCs often 

have very large acreages that would be 

excluded from NRCS assistance. 

Many of the comments opposed the 

acreage criterion, stating that the acreage 

limitation was arbitrary, that such a 

limitation does not exist in statute, and 

that imposition of the acreage threshold 

would eliminate valuable conservation 

opportunities. Several of these 

comments identified that it was an error 

to equate large commercial land 

holdings with the term ‘‘industrial’’ 

since much of this land must be subject 

to stewardship requirements. These 

commenters also expressed the view 

that it was a mistake to equate 

commercial thinning and logging 

activities with the term ‘‘industrial.’’ 

However, NRCS also received many 

comments expressing support for the 

45,000-acre threshold, but criticism that 

this threshold was too large for someone 

to identify themselves as non-industrial, 

and recommendations instead for a 


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10,000 or lower acreage threshold. 

Several of these comments expressed 

concern that landowners with large 

acreages would outcompete and divert 

limited conservation dollars from 

smaller forestry operations that needed 

the financial assistance. Other 

comments expressed strong support for 

the acreage criterion because they 

believe TIMOs or REITs with large 

acreage should be ineligible for 

conservation assistance. Several 

comments identified that State-level 

assistance to family forestry operations 

have a far lower acreage threshold of 

less than a few hundred acres. 

Response: NRCS considered several 

options in response to these comments. 

In particular, NRCS considered: 

(1) Making all forest land eligible; 

(2) Issuing the proposed guidance as 

final with no changes; 

(3) Relying completely on whether 

there is a mill on site to determine 

whether land is industrial; 

(4) Revising the guidance to identify 

exceptions to the mill and acreage 

criteria; or 

(5) Continuing to rely, in part, upon 

AGI and other payment eligibility 

requirements to act as a surrogate for 

identification of industrial land 

holdings. 

NRCS rejected the first option as 

Congress specified that only NIPF lands 

were eligible for certain NRCS 

programs. NRCS also rejected reliance 

on the mill criterion alone as it failed to 

accommodate the last couple decades of 

development in the forestry industry. 

Given the concerns regarding the 

establishment of the acreage criterion, 

NRCS believes that it should maintain 

its reliance upon the mill criterion in 

conjunction with the AGI limitation, 

AGI waiver criteria, and related 

payment attribution eligibility to help 

make NIPF eligibility determinations. 

Mill Criterion 

Comment: NRCS received comments 

with respect to the mill criterion, 

including: 

• Expressing concern about small 

portable mills and impact to family 

operations, 

• Recommending that NRCS use 

output thresholds, 

• Recommending removal of the mill 

criterion entirely, 

• Supporting that the State 

Conservationist defines what constitutes 

a mill, 

• Expressing concern about potential 

inconsistency across States; and 

• Recommending AGI for the mill 

criterion. 

Response: As identified in the large 

NIPF holdings discussion above, NRCS 

believes it should keep the mill criterion 

as it has long been used to assist with 

the identification of NIPF acreage. 

However, since there are small 

operations that have mills, and portable 

mills are used to assist with 

conservation activities (for example, 

wildfire management), NRCS wants to 

take this opportunity to clarify that the 

presence of these mills will not affect 

the parcel’s eligibility as NIPF. 

Current Technical Guidance 

In response to the comments 

summarized above, NRCS will not be 

issuing new technical guidance to 

identify NIPF for program eligibility 

purposes. In particular, NRCS will 

continue to identify forest land 

eligibility using the traditional NIPF 

identification criteria, such as the 

presence of an industrial mill, in 

conjunction with payment eligibility 

criteria that address, in part, the changes 

in forest land ownership by large 

corporate entities. 

Louis Aspey, 

Associate Chief, Natural Resources 

Conservation Service. 

[FR Doc. 2022–11286 Filed 5–25–22; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 3410–16–P 

DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

Rural Housing Service 

[Docket No. RHS–22–SFH–0008] 

Notice of Solicitation of Applications 

for the Section 533 Housing 

Preservation Grants for Fiscal Year 

2022 

AGENCY: Rural Housing Service, 

Agriculture (USDA). 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: The Rural Housing Service 

(Agency), a Rural Development (RD) 

agency of the United States Department 

of Agriculture (USDA), announces that 

it is soliciting competitive 

preapplications under the Housing 

Preservation Grant (HPG) program for 

fiscal year (FY) 2022, to make available 

grant funds to sponsoring organizations 

for the repair or rehabilitation of 

housing owned or occupied by low- and 

very-low-income rural citizens under 

the HPG Program. The purpose of this 

notice is to announce the opening and 

closing dates for receipt of 

preapplications for HPG funds from 

eligible applicants, as well as 

submission requirements. Expenses 

incurred in developing preapplications 

will be at the applicant’s cost. 

DATES: Completed applications for 

grants must be submitted according to 

the deadlines outlined below. RHS will 

not consider any preapplications that 

are received after the closing deadline 

regardless of the submission method 

used. 

D Paper submissions: Completed 

paper preapplications must be received 

in the USDA RD State Office no later 

than 4:30 p.m. on July 11, 2022. 

Æ Applicants intending to submit 

paper preapplications using the U.S. 

Postal Service (USPS) must provide 

sufficient time to permit delivery on or 

before the closing deadline date. 

Æ Acceptance by the USPS or private 

mailer does not constitute delivery. 

Æ Postage due preapplications will 

not be accepted 

D Electronic submissions: Completed 

electronic preapplications may be 

submitted using one of the following 

two methods and must be received by 

the USDA RD State Office no later than 

4:30 p.m. on July 11, 2022: 

D Email: To submit preapplications 

by email, contact the Single-Family 

Housing Program Director in the RD 

State Office http://www.rd.usda.gov/ 

contact-us/state-offices. Emailed 

submissions must be encrypted and/or 

password protected to ensure personally 

identifiable information is secure. 

D Grants.gov: Instructions for 

submitting preapplications to 

Grants.gov may be found at the 

following website: https://

www.grants.gov 

ADDRESSES: Entities that want to apply 

for assistance may download the 

application documents and 

requirements outlined in this notice 

from: https://www.rd.usda.gov/ 

programs-services/single-familyhousing-programs/housingpreservation-grants. Applicants will 

also find the requirements in the HPG 

program regulation found in 7 CFR 1944 

(Subpart N). 

Application information for electronic 

submissions to Grants.gov may be found 

at the following website: http://

www.Grants.gov. 

Applicants may also request paper 

application packages from the RD State 

offices. Contact information can be 

found at: https://www.rd.usda.gov/ 

about-rd/state-offices. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Mandy Couture, Finance and Loan 

Analyst, Single Family Housing Direct 

Division, Special Programs and New 

Initiatives Branch at (515) 418–2188 

(voice) (this is not a toll-free number) or 

email: Mandy.Couture@usda.gov. You 

may also contact the RD office for the 

state in which the applicant is located. 

A list of RD State Office contacts is 

provided at: https://www.rd.usda.gov/ 

about-rd/state-offices. 


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