Thank you, Pat. My deep appreciation to Senator Harkin and to the Water Environment Federation for putting on this conference. Quincalee Brown and the Federation have done a tremendous job bringing together speakers who represent where the agricultural, environmental, and municipal communities stand on these tough issues. It's an honor to be here with the individual who's been sounding the alarm on environmentally responsible livestock production perhaps the loudest and longest.
Progress depends on it.
We're coming, first, from the headwaters of the major river systems in the West. Many people don't realize that our National Forests are the source of water for most of the Western United States. They're natural guardians of our water filtering out sediment as snowmelt trickles into lakes and streams. One of USDA's proudest mandates is managing public forestlands, a role that's critical to the quality and quantity of the waters flowing from those major systems. We're also coming from the 70 percent of America's lands that's in private hands and the 80 percent of that private land that's in agricultural use.