I Don't Understand: FSA Versus NRCS

I was solemnly assured by a number of people (all ASCS/FSA employees) that the SCS/NRCS conservationists spent all their time riding around in their pickup trucks and never could be found in the office.   And ASCS employees never lie.  So what's with this Federal Computer Week article on the NRCS "streamlining plan" which reports:

Currently, the USDA field conservationists report spending as little as 20 to 40 percent of their time in the field working with customers

The expected outcome of the initiative is for field staff to be able to spend up to 75 percent of their time in the field with customers, the plan said.

The initiative will free up the equivalent of an additional 1,200 to 1,500 field technical staff that will be redirected back into customer contact, the USDA said in its plan.

  Here's the plan which is only 5 months old (only the latest news on this blog). It's actually part of the USDA plan.  Funny, though, it sounds basically like the vision which Kevin Wickey and other NRCS people were trying to implement back in the Glickman days.  Which as I understood it, was putting everything on a laptop which a conservationist would need in the field.

Potholes Again in ND?

I remember Gary Cruff (the production adjustment specialist in the ND state office) calling in in the early 80's to be sure management knew what they were doing in changing cropland definitions around pothole areas.  We had revised the handbook and in the process had  changed the language and the regulations.

 The answer to Gary was that the change was intended, though in my memory the assistant deputy administrator who made the call was from Texas which has no potholes and probably did not understand the issues.  The potholes represent areas where blocks of ice from the retreating glacier sat, so the glacial debris settled around the ice, which when it melted then created a low area or pothole. Depending on seasonal precipitation, the pothole might fill with water, or might dry around the margins. There are also long-term wet and dry trends--over the course of several  dry years the farmer might be able to crop the margins, if not the entire pothole.   The question then became: were the marginal areas "cropland" or not; was the land regularly cropped with only occasional and intermittent flooding or was it not possible to crop it in "normal" years?  Under the program, land that was cropland could be designated as set-aside/ACR, land that wasn't cropland couldn't, so the farmers wanted as much of the pothole margin to be considered cropland as possible so they could call it set-aside.  The assistant deputy administrator took the approach that the program needed to reduce production when it compensated farmers for set-aside, and if the margins were not regularly cropped the farmers were getting a freebie. He was concerned about program integrity and, as a Republican, taxpayer money.

The issue is very sensitive to what management in the 1980's used to call "the duckies", the conservationists.  The pothole areas are important for wildlife, particularly for waterfowl and migratory birds.  The conservationists could care less back then about "program integrity"; they wanted the potholes protected--call them "cropland" and designate them as set-aside.  So, as I recall it, both the conservationists and the farmers were on the same side of that issue at the time.  That seems unlikely, so maybe my memory is totally wrong.

Anyway,  Sen. Hoeven is giving NRCS flak about its enforcement of conservation compliance.  The press release doesn't say so, but IMHO it's potholes again. (Hat tip: Farm Policy)  BTW, Sen. Hoeven could use some help on his website--there seems to be some disconnect there.  Maybe as much disconnect as my memory and potholes.

NRCS Buyouts

Apparently NRCS is going to offer buyouts, focused on their administrative types in favor of centralizing some support.

One of the complications with NRCS is the presence of state and local money, given design of the legislation encouraging states to set up the soil and water conservation districts. I had thought that federal money usually funded the district conservationist, while the state/local money often funded the administrative types.  Maybe there's variation among states, maybe I was just wrong, maybe they've figured out a way to handle the funding issues so they can centralize the administrative stuff.

Crop Insurance Going On-Line?

I posted yesterday about the head of NRCS boasting about plans to put conservation work online for his customers.

I wonder, are the private crop insurance companies putting their work online? At the moment I'm too lazy to try to find out, but surely one or more of the companies is doing that?

NRCS Pushing Online Service

Via Farm Policy, here's NRCS Chief White talking about how his customers will be able to do their conservation paperwork from home by fall.  (Yes, he qualifies his hopes a bit, but it's an ambitious vision.)  This is in the Senate Ag hearing on conservation, and the audio clip doesn't include the chair's reaction to his plan.

Congratulations to NRCS

NRCS has made their soil survey info available on mobile devices.  What's not clear to me is whether they're using the GPS info available in some such devices to automatically pull up the soil profile you're standing on.  I suspect they aren't, but it's the obvious next step.

On Silos and Data Models

FSA issued a notice BU-729.  It seems to me, though I may be wrong, it's just another example of data silos, and a reason why, in 1990's terms, FSA should have developed an integrated data model.  Essentially the question is the relationship of geographic areas (counties) with administrative jurisdictions (county committees and local administrative areas) and county offices (of various types, shared management, etc.).  To administer county elections you need part of that relationship, to administer funds you need an overlapping part, to administer real and personal property inventories you need a third picture, to coordinate with NRCS and RD offices and jurisdictions you need others.  Unfortunately in my days at FSA each of those was administered by a separate office (or no office at all) and there was no overall coordination.  Apparently from BU-729 there still is no coordination.  My technocratic (Kevin Drum has a meditation on technocracy) heart is sore.

Overlapping Missions? USGS and NRCS

Here's a study of nitrates in rivers in the Mississippi basin, showing no consistent decline over the last 28 years (1980-2008).  What struck me is, while reported via a USDA agency (extension.org), the study itself was done by USGS.  Turns out there's something called The Mississippi River Gulf of Mexico Watershed Nutrient Action Task Force.  I guess NRCS is a part of it--there's an Ann Mills on the task force, though because the URL behind her name is screwed up I wasn't able to check on her.  The Task Force has EPA, Corps of Engineers, Interior (USGS), Commerce (NOAA), USDA (NRCS and extension), and the National Tribal Water Council.  Quite a group of agencies.

NASCOE Lobbying Generates Comments

From USDA's summary of steps taken to improve regulations, this summary of comments received (over 2,000)

The vast majority of comments referenced USDA’s potential review of process improvements that could be achieved through the consolidation of information required to participate in farm programs administered by the Farm Service Agency and the Federal Crop Insurance Program, identified as the Acreage-Crop Reporting Streamlining Initiative (ACRSI). Many of these comments responded to suggestions from various commenters that the Farm Service Agency (FSA) take over delivery of the Federal crop insurance program or other administrative functions of the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Risk Management Agency (RMA). ACRSI is an initiative aimed at reducing the reporting burden on USDA customers. By consolidating acreage reporting dates, linking crop codes, and sharing producer information across agencies producers will be able to provide acreage data at their first point of contact with USDA whether that be with FSA, NRCS, or their private sector crop insurance agent. Each individual agency will still be required to collect information from producers that is specific to their program(s); however, common information will only need to be collected once. This initiative will minimize the paperwork burden on producers and minimize the number of trips they need to make to a USDA office.

NRCS and Streamlining Delivery Initiative

NRCS has its Streamlining Delivery Initiative, which sounds a bit like their version of MIDAS.  Give credit to them:

• they have a nice graphic outlining what I would call the "enterprise architecture", or at least the flow of apps.
• they put up a wiki page on the initiative .  (I haven't quite figured out "wikiagro", whether it's an official NRCS wiki or not.

Not sure how this works with FSA's MIDAS.

Erosion, NRCS, andConservation Compliance

NYTimes has an article on erosion, focused on Iowa erosion rates.  Hits the highlights: the rates of erosion, the impact of high crop prices, land coming out of the Conservation Reserve Program, strip cropping and contour farming as incompatible with big equipment,  renters possibly sacrificing the long range health of the land for short range profit, NRCS enforcement of conservation compliance rules, etc. It even includes the hit to NRCS administrative budget in the new Continuing Resolution. The only thing it didn't mention was the similiarity of the current situtation with that in 1973 (and Earl Butz, when the economic situation

What's not clear to me is how much of Iowa is considered to be highly erodible.  I remember visiting Sherman County, KS for Infoshare in 1991 and farmers were still bitching about the classification of most of their land as HE.

An IPAD Plant ID App?

Back in the days of Infoshare (i.e., 1991), one application NRCS (then Soil conservation Service) was eager to share was their Plants database. Frankly, I was dubious then, although out of respect, or cowardice, I tried not to show it.  We were in a situation where each agency was pushing its own ideas, so it was the classic logrolling situation: the end project included the top priorities of each agency, not necessarily what the farmers would find most valuable.

Anyway, over the years I've occasionally looked at it on the NRCS web site.  Even tried to use it once when I was trying to identify some weeds in the lawn.That experience convinced me the database wasn't particularly intended for such uses.  But I may be wrong.

Today in the NY Times there's an article on the new IPhone and IPad apps for birders.  My aunt and uncle were avid birders, and they had their manuals to look up birds with which they weren't familiar.  Me, I wasn't familiar with much more than robin, sparrow, crow, blue jay, blackbird, wren.  To become interested in birding I needed something easier than the Roger whats-his-face books [ed. Tory Peterson], something more like these apps.  Apparently they build upon the existing databases of Audubon and Cornell, adding all sorts of bells and whistles. They sound great, even if they aren't quite ready to identify a bird from the sound of its song.

I wonder why NRCS, or more likely some private person, couldn't create similar apps for plants? I would think much of the logic and the user interface for birds could carry over to plants: species, location, looks, etc. Of course, when you google: "plant identification" you get lots of results from different enterprises with different takes on the subject.

Extension Cuts--What Other Cuts?

From Farmgate

Illinois is the latest state to rework its Extension system. After radical changes in states like Iowa and Minnesota, Illinois will be eliminating 15 regional offices over time and regional educators will shift to county offices. However, 76 county offices will be cut to only 30, with each office serving multiple counties. Staff members will be reduced also, which results from a reduction in state financial support for Extension and 4-H.

I wonder what other areas of infrastructure for agriculture will suffer cuts?  FSA offices, NRCS offices, crop insurance agents?  Does anyone have a census of how many crop insurance agents there are?

NRCS Musings

Here's an audit report on NRCS.  Sustainable Ag has a post on the Senate Ag appropriations hearings, and Sec. Vilsack said:

In addition, Vilsack reminded Subcommittee members that the Natural Resources Conservation Service, which administers the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) and EQIP, had been “under the cloud of an audit because it didn’t oversee and manage its resources effectively. We tried to do too much too soon, and now we have to be accountable to the taxpayers,” Vilsack said. “We don’t want people who aren’t qualified to get money under the program.”

Now I'm going to indulge in some dangerous speculation, dangerous because I really don't understand the audit nor do I know for sure that NRCS is in a worse situation than other parts of USDA, like FSA.  So the following is worth what you pay for it:

Historically Soil Conservation Service and then NRCS was an educational agency, teaching farmers how to conserve their land and water, developing and installing good conservation practices on the land.  I worked with them in the late 80's, as they were suffering from the shock of assuming some regulatory burdens by enforcing "conservation compliance".  That's the requirement that farmers not drain wetlands or cultivate highly erodible land without a conservation plan in effect.  Violation of the requirement was intended to make the farmer ineligible for USDA program benefits.  To oversimplify, the requirement has been watered down and, at least in the 90's, auditors were very dubious of how well NRCS and FSA were doing in implementing the requirement.

Through my time at agriculture, FSA would write the checks (actually CCC sight drafts) for conservation programs.  In recent years NRCS has been given responsibility for some programs, including responsibility for issuing payments.  My guess (here's the speculation) is that because NRCS didn't have the experience with the process, and perhaps because they had to rush to implement it, they didn't do it right the first time.  (Which is another instance of my rule: "you never do it right the first time".)  Hence the problematic audit.

From the OIG's Management Challenges report: "In 2002, the Secretary gave NRCS additional responsibilities to implement newly mandated conservation programs that deliver significantly more financial assistance to producers. NRCS has yet to establish the necessary management controls and processes to effectively administer and manage these new programs."

House Ag and IT in USDA/FSA

House Ag committee held a hearing on the status of USDA and FSA IT, including GIS.  Only the opening statements of the witnesses are available online.  The USDA CIO and FSA Administrator testified.  Much of their statements sounded like 5, 10 or 15 years ago, addressing the same issues of outmoded equipment, stovepipe systems, decentralized chaos among the agencies.  The second session had the National Farmers Union, NASCOE, NAFEC, the National Association of Conservation Districts and the National States GIS council. 

I found the second session more interesting:  One question--why wasn't the Farm Loan organization (the old FmHA specialists) represented?  (To show how slowly things move in USDA, note I'm referring to an organization (FmHA) which disappeared 16 years ago.)  They certainly have IT concerns, although the Administrator seemed to say their systems were in the best shape of any.  A surprise--the NASCOE rep said GIS products were the single biggest workload item. An unlikely request--the National GIS rep asked for dedicated money for the NAIP (aerial photos/GIS) separate from FSA money, but was very complimentary of the Salt Lake City staff.  I wonder why that was--is it possible that because the Aerial Photography Field Office in Salt Lake is the only FSA office which produces real, tangible products (setting checks to producers aside), that it's easier for them to take a businesslike approach to its operations?

Wrong Again, on Carbon Sequestration

House Ag has the text of the agricultural amendments to the carbon bill. (There's also a summary.) I was wrong in my assumptions on how it might work--I was figuring a direct NRCS to farmer linkage. Not so, instead there's provision for "offset project developers" and "independent offset verifiers" which sound like private entities. So the NRCS would be working through these third parties. (This is based on a fast skim and I don't claim any expertise in the area.)

Seems to me this is partially political. (I know you're surprised.) By using third parties you increase the chance of getting influential supporters and contributors on board. Use a government agency, you only get the agency's employees. [Updated: Did I ever link to the National Farmer's Union testimony? They're currently acting, I think, as an offset project developer. They've got an interesting website application show in the testimony as well.]

Because I'm on the weak government kick recently, I'll go on to say this is an example of how and why we end up with weak government (otherwise known as protecting our liberties); the process of getting legislation enacted requires logrolling and obeisance to local power centers.

Workload for NRCS?

That's what I get from this item from the letter sent to Speaker Pelosi by a set of farm organizations about the carbon cap and trade proposals:

Eligibility and offset compensation should be based upon whether a project, technique or practice sequesters carbon or otherwise reduces GHG emissions. USDA should establish an activity baseline for each offset project type in effect on January 1, 2001 with standardized methodology. We support the establishment of a static baseline of activity to measure against when determining additionality. The fixed baseline should establish which practices were in effect on a specific piece of land on a specific date; any activity that results in GHG reductions measured against that baseline should be deemed eligible/additional.

I'm not sure why they used Jan 1, 2001 as the magic date. Nor do I know if they consulted with anyone from NRCS (or FSA) as to the feasibility of doing this. I know the acreage reports submitted to FSA provide some information on the activity on the land, but I don't know whether it's sufficient to be used for this purpose.

If and when it comes to writing legislation, there are lots of issues to be addressed. For example, there's a maintenance question--if farmer Jones was doing no-till on her acreage in 2000, does she have to have continued no-till in the years since? How about shifts in practices among the fields on the farm? And how do the bureaucrats encapsulate the requirement? (See my earlier mention of "conserving base".) Might it be another layer(s) added to the GIS?

But I'm sure this proposal is causing some bureaucratic hearts in NRCS to beat much faster.

NRCS Gets Dinged

A couple pieces of bad news for NRCS:

1. EWG says they could improve the job they're doing with EQIP in the states in the Mississippi watershed. "We found that, up to now, EQIP has not been deployed as effectively as it could be in these 10 states. The methods used to decide how to spend EQIP dollars within a state and which farmers will get those dollars are more likely to result in diffuse and fragmented efforts to reduce pollution from farms, rather than the focused and coordinated effort needed to clean up the Mississippi River and its tributaries."
2. Farmgate reports on a court case USDA lost in Iowa, having to do with the definition of "wetlands" under swampbuster rules:
   

   In his summary of the case, Iowa State’s McEowen says, “So, in essence, USDA harassed the plaintiff with bogus wetland violation claims for many years which placed the plaintiff within the potential peril of bankruptcy and continued to maintain its bogus claims in an attempt to avoid paying the plaintiff’s attorney fees.” He says that is not new, and quotes another case, in which the court said, “…there is no worse statute than one misunderstood by those who interpret it.”

   McEowen suggests that USDA should send its staff and attorneys to some wetland education classes, and if courts keep making USDA reimburse land owners for their attorney fees, then USDA may learn what the law is.

NRCS Leaps Ahead Again

The government is now on You-Tube. I went there to check out what they had for agriculture--some Vilsack clips and this NRCS video on the farm bill. I have to say I prefer Susan Boyle, but NRCS should get some credit for being the first USDA agency to take advantage of the new deal.

And via Government Executive, this Nextgov article outlines the government's use of social media and plans for the future.

Stimulus Dollars for USDA

Everyone gets a piece of the pie. Though a friend and reader beat me to it, here's the excerpt from Government Executive:

"Agriculture Department

• $650 million for construction and improvements at National Forest Service facilities
• $209 million for deferred maintenance at Agricultural Research Service facilities
• $245 million to critical information technology improvements at the Farm Service Agency
• $44 million to repair and improve security at USDA headquarters
• $300 million for fire hazard reduction
• $400 million for watershed improvement programs at the Natural Resources Conservation Service"

Don't know where the fire hazard is, South Building, maybe? (More seriously, likely in the National Forests.) I know Secretary-designate Vilsack mentioned the technology issue for FSA, but the GAO reports I've read haven't been exactly enthusiastic about the FSA computer project (MIDAS). I wonder how much of the money is for hardware and how much for software, and how much for the computer consultants. And how much of it can be wisely spent in FY2009 (which will have 7 months to go when the money becomes available).

I'm also struck by the security line. Edward Hodgman at Understanding Government blogged on the problems of getting into the Treasury Department. I know many would like to blow up the IRS (I'm joking), but few feel that strongly about USDA. When I started work at USDA there were 16 entrances to the South Building, all unguarded. Now?--don't ask.

And does NRCS have a watershed program on the back burner?