[Senate Hearing 118-629]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 118-629
CONSERVATION IN THE FARM BILL: MAKING
CONSERVATION PROGRAMS WORK
FOR FARMERS AND RANCHERS
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HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
CONSERVATION, CLIMATE, FORESTRY, AND NATURAL RESOURCES
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE,
NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED EIGHTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
April 20, 2023
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available on http://www.govinfo.gov/
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
53-654 PDF WASHINGTON : 2024
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COMMITTEE ON AGRICULTURE, NUTRITION, AND FORESTRY
DEBBIE STABENOW, Michigan, Chairwoman
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
KIRSTEN E. GILLIBRAND, New York JONI ERNST, Iowa
TINA SMITH, Minnesota CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
CORY BOOKER, New Jersey TOMMY TUBERVILLE, Alabama
BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico MIKE BRAUN, Indiana
RAPHAEL WARNOCK, Georgia CHARLES GRASSLEY, Iowa
PETER WELCH, Vermont JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
JOHN FETTERMAN, Pennsylvania DEB FISCHER, Nebraska
Erica Chabot, Majority Staff Director
Chu-Yuan Hwang, Majority Chief Counsel
Jessica L. Williams, Chief Clerk
Fitzhugh Elder IV, Minority Staff Director
Jackie Barber, Minority Chief Counsel
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Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry, and Natural Resources
MICHAEL F. BENNET, Colorado, Chairman
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
TINA SMITH, Minnesota MITCH McCONNELL, Kentucky
BEN RAY LUJAN, New Mexico JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
RAPHAEL WARNOCK, Georgia CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi
PETER WELCH, Vermont JOHN THUNE, South Dakota
C O N T E N T S
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Thursday, April 20, 2023
Page
Hearing:
Conservation in the Farm Bill: Making Conservation Programs Work
for Farmers and Ranchers....................................... 1
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STATEMENTS PRESENTED BY SENATORS
Bennet, Hon. Michael F., U.S. Senator from the State Colorado.... 1
Marshall, Hon. Roger, U.S. Senator from the State of Kansas...... 4
WITNESSES
Bruchez, Paul, Rancher and Owner, Reeder Creek Ranch, Kremmling,
CO............................................................. 10
Flickner, Ray, Farmer and Owner, Flickner Farms, Wichita, KS..... 12
Ortiz y Muniz, Joseluis M., Vice President, La Merced De San
Antonio Del Embudo Land Grant, Mayordomo, Acequia Del Llano del
Embudo, Dixon, NM.............................................. 14
Rutledge, Jeff, Partner, Rutledge Farms, Newport, AR............. 15
Porterfield, Dr. Sara, Western Water Policy Advisor, Government
Affairs, Trout Unlimited, Boulder, CO.......................... 17
----------
APPENDIX
Prepared Statements:
Bruchez, Paul................................................ 42
Flickner, Ray................................................ 48
Ortiz y Muniz, Joseluis M.................................... 57
Rutledge, Jeff............................................... 61
Porterfield, Dr. Sara........................................ 66
Questions and Answers:
Ortiz y Muniz, Joseluis M.:
Written response to questions from Hon. Michael F. Bennet.... 80
Written response to questions from Hon. Peter Welch.......... 80
Porterfield, Dr. Sara:
Written response to questions from Hon. Michael F. Bennet.... 82
CONSERVATION IN THE FARM BILL: MAKING CONSERVATION PROGRAMS WORK FOR
FARMERS AND RANCHERS
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 20, 2023
U.S. Senate,
Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry,
Subcommittee on Conservation, Climate, Forestry, and
Natural Resources
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in
room 328A, Russell Senate Office Building, Hon. Michael Bennet,
Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Bennet [presiding], Klobuchar, Lujan,
Welch, Marshal and Thune.
Also present: Senators Stabenow and Boozman
STATEMENT OF HON. MICHAEL F. BENNET, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF COLORADO
Senator Bennet. Well good morning. I am pleased to call
this Subcommittee meeting on Conservation, Climate, Forestry,
and Natural Resources to order. I would like to thank Chair
Stabenow for being here. She is actually the Chair of the big
Agriculture Committee, but we are very glad that she is here.
I want to thank Ranking Member Marshall for his tremendous
partnership and for especially his staff's partnership with
mine, to prepare for this important hearing, along with our
colleagues who are going to join us here today.
Our goal is to have an honest conversation about the state
of USDA's conservation programs, for better and for worse. To
help us we have several excellent witnesses to share their
firsthand experience with these programs and help us identify
specific ways to make them work better for America through the
upcoming farm bill.
First, I think it would be helpful to briefly review why
USDA's conservation programs exist in the first place. That
matters a lot to my part of the country. We have to go back
almost 100 years to the early 1930's. The economy was mired in
a Depression, and a combination of weak crop prices, high
temperatures, and relentless drought created what we now call
the Dust Bowl.
It was a terrible time for American agriculture. Out of
desperation, farmers and ranchers put subpar land into
production, and many abandoned responsible practices of land
management. All of it made America's working lands vulnerable
to dust storms that ravaged the heartland and stripped over a
million tons of precious topsoil away. The conditions forced
nearly 750,000 family farms and ranches to shutter.
In 1935, Congress recognized the danger and created the
Soil Conservation Service, which has since become the national
Resources Conservation Services, or NRCS. For almost 90 years,
NRCS has partnered with farmers, ranchers, and private
landowners to strengthen competitiveness, protect the
environment, and safeguard our natural resources.
Since then, Congress has expanded USDA's conservation
mission with new programs, including the Conservation Reserve
Program, or CRP, the Environmental Quality Incentives Program,
or EQIP, the Conservation Stewardship Program, or CSP, the
Agricultural Conservation Easement Program, or ACEP, and the
Regional Conservation Partnership Program, or RCPP.
Although the specifics of each program vary, they all
advance a larger mission, to empower America's farmers and
ranchers as stewards of our lands and environment. Today that
mission has never been more important as we confront a changing
climate and a hotter, drier future. Even as the importance of
the USDA conservation programs has grown, they continue to
operate below their potential. They have not kept pace with a
world that looks a lot different, in some ways, than the Dust
Bowl era of the 1930's.
I say that not as a critic of these programs but as someone
who believes in their promise, who fought to give them another
$20 billion in the Inflation Reduction Act. That historic
investment only raises the stakes for making sure these
programs work as well as they can for America's farmers and
America's ranchers.
In the 26 listening sessions I have had in Colorado over
the last year, and frankly for the last decade, I have heard
five consistent complaints. First, NRCS programs are too rigid,
bureaucratic, and burdened with red tape. To be clear, people
blame Congress for this as much as they blame any
administration. The applications take too long for people to
fill out and too long for USDA to process. In some cases,
people have to literally fill out their applications by hand
and send them in the mail in the year 2023.
In my State, the Colorado Cattleman's Land Trust received a
conservation easement from RCPP two years ago, but USDA still
has not sent them the paperwork to start the easement process.
They also face delays with another easement, and they just
found out it is because there is only one person at NRCS who
reviews easement modifications for the entire country.
Second, while this bureaucracy is a point of pain for
everybody, it is especially hard on young farmers, small-scale
producers, and first-generation farmers. They do not have the
time or experience, many of them, to navigate the red tape
well, and they often cannot afford to hire somebody to do it
for them. A young farmer from Boulder, Colorado, told me that
she spent over 80 hours applying for EQIP, only to receive
$1,700 for her 10-acre farm. If it takes 80 hours for the
possibility of receiving $1,700, I can see why someone would
think twice before applying. The future of rural America
depends on whether the next generation decides to continue
their family farms and ranches, and instead of making
assistance more accessible we have made it more difficult and
more painful.
Third, a lot of that pain comes from a crippling shortage
of staff and expertise. I hear over and over again people
saying, ``I am not blaming the people that are working at the
agency. I am not blaming the agency itself. They do not have
enough people, and they do not have enough expertise.''
Staff levels at NRCS have been going down for years, and
they took a massive hit during the last administration. While I
applaud Secretary Vilsack for his heroic effort to staff up
again, we still have a lot of work ahead to get the right
people in place. Until we achieve that, we are going to
continue to see delays in projects and people discouraged from
participating at the very moment that we need everybody to
scale up.
One way USDA could help fix this would be by offering
salaries that are actually competitive. NRCS posted an
engineering job in Durango, Colorado, for $35,000 a year
recently. Madam Chair, you cannot hire an engineer in Durango
for that, where the typical home there costs $600,000.
Fourth, USDA's conservation programs should do more to help
producers in the West grappling with the 1,200-year drought. We
have got to do better, for example, by offering real incentives
to conserve land in the heart of the Dust Bowl and equipping
farmers and ranchers with tools to use water more efficiently.
Finally, NRCS programs need to reflect actual costs in the
economy. In Colorado, people tell me they have given up on EQIP
projects because as they waited two years for USDA to process
their application, the project cost doubled, and the math no
longer penciled out.
When you put it all together, these five issues are a
massive headwind to USDA's conservation mission, and it has
real costs to America. It is the rancher who wants to do the
right thing by his land but lacks the expertise or funds to
make a transition. It is the rural economies that are deprived
of opportunity, the topsoil that is degraded, the water that is
polluted, and the family farmers and ranchers are forced to
sell their land instead of passing it on to the next
generation.
They are doing everything they can, these farmers and
ranchers, to pass on that legacy to their kids and to their
grandkids. They deserve conservation programs at USDA as
imaginative as they are, as ambitious as the problems they seek
to solve, and that reflect the indispensable role of America's
farmers and ranchers as stewards of our working lands and of
our environment.
Today our farmers and ranchers are not dealing with the
Dust Bowl, but they are facing, in my part of the country, a
1,200-year drought. They face the changing climate and a future
that is going to be a lot hotter and a lot drier. They do not
have time to waste. They need us to make USDA's conservation
programs work and live up to their potential. My hope is that
today's hearing can help us identify specific ways to make
progress, and I am prepared to work with every member of this
Committee in a bipartisan way to do so.
Let me stop there and turn it over to my friend, Ranking
Member Marshall.
STATEMENT OF HON. ROGER MARSHALL, U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF KANSAS
Senator Marshall. Well thank you, Chairman Bennet. I do
appreciate you holding this hearing today. Welcome, everybody.
Madam Chairwoman, thank you for coming, as well, for a very
important topic near and dear to all of our hearts. Chairman
Bennet, I especially want to say thank you for your friendship
and you mentoring me along on this conservation project that we
are co-chairing over on this side. I do appreciate your
leadership.
I appreciate you mentioning the drought. We have got a
drought map behind us, and unfortunately this drought does not
stop at the Kansas border. I would imagine the eastern third of
Colorado looks very similar----
Senator Bennet. It does not start at the Kansas border
either.
Senator Marshall. It does not start there, and it goes down
to New Mexico as well, and our friends from Oklahoma, probably
the most drought-stricken area in the country right now. I have
never had a tougher time talking to farmers and ranchers than I
am right now. The one thing I cannot do is make it rain.
I am a fifth-generation farm kid myself, and I know how
hard Kansas farmers and ranchers work daily to protect our
environment and conserve precious resources. Farmers and
ranchers are the original stewards of the land. They were the
original environmentalists. We all want to leave this world
cleaner, healthier, and safer than we found it.
I think it is incredibly important for farmers and ranchers
to talk about the regenerative agriculture practices,
conservation that they are already doing. In Kansas, we have
not just been talking about it, but we have been walking that
walk since the Dust Bowl. Our office has made it a point to
promote conservation efforts within the Kansas Ag community as
well as ongoing Federal conservation programs taking place in
Kansas, and I am going to brag on them today.
Kansans are working every day to protect our environment
and conserve precious resources our Ag economy needs to thrive.
Kansas farmers, ranchers, growers, and producers are finding
unique and practical ways to preserve our land and protect our
water and air. Their efforts are worthy of everyone's praise.
Some notable examples in Kansas start with one of our
witnesses, Ray Flickner and his family, who will be talking in
more detail about his operation, but I can say that Ray was
practicing regenerative agriculture for many decades before it
became mainstream in the Kansas Ag community.
Next, the Browning family has utilized USDA's Great Plains
Grassland Initiative to restore grassland currently dominated
by woody plants. Woody plant encroachment threatens livestock
production and increases the chance of wildfires. This has been
a war on our own land, on our own ranch, where I have spent
hours and hours with a tractor and a mower, trying to mow down
cedar trees and doing fire management as well.
The brown spots here is where they tried to get rid of some
of the salt cedars. The salt cedars line the Arkansas River all
the way to at least the border, and each one of those suck
water out of that water basin. The same thing happens with
Rattlesnake Creek, which flows through our land and into
Quivira Wildlife Refuge.
Next we have Randall Carr from Lyon County who has focused
his efforts on protecting his fifth-generation family farm. Mr.
Carr has adopted several conservation practices, including
cover crops to minimize soil erosion, no-till planting, and
weed management and rotational grazing with his meat goat herd
to control weeds and add nutrients back into the soil.
Now before we go to the next one I want to just point out
that on our farm we have been practicing no-till planting for
over 20 years. It is nothing new. Those farmers, I am afraid,
are not going to get rewarded for the good practices they have
been doing for decades, but we are only going to reward new
people for doing it. We have to make sure that is a level
playing field. The same thing with the cover crops as well. We
have been doing that for decades. We do not have goats, though.
That is one thing that we have not gotten into yet.
Next, one of my favorite places, Joe Carpenter, a Flint
Hills rancher, uses burning practices to preserve the landscape
and ecosystem of the Flint Hills, the last remaining tall grass
ecosystem in the United States. For thousands of years, tribes
set fire to the prairies to kill invasive species and encourage
the growth of new grass, which attracted bison to the area for
hunting. The need for the fires continues today. Plants,
animals, and the economy still depend upon it.
I was up in those Flint Hills just Saturday, and even
though I got rained on and hailed on I managed to catch some
bass, and I am going to be taking Ranking Member Boozman to
that same area to see some of those tall grasses, which the
Chairwoman has seen herself on her last visit to Manhattan,
Kansas.
Next, we do not have a picture but the Milford Watershed is
something I am very proud of, working with Kansas Farm Bureau
and other regional conservation partnerships through the USDA
and NRCS to help Ag producers act on water quality. The
voluntary program works to help farmers and landowners increase
the health of their land and make operations more efficient
through actions including nutrient management, planting grass
filters residue and tillage management and cover crop planting.
Their practices lead to a better quality in Milford Lake.
Chairman, I am not sure if you have had a problem with some
of the algae--is it blue algae, Tuck?--the blue algae that
releases the toxins, but Milford Reservoir services Fort Riley,
among other places, and we had a problem with blue algae, went
in with a project where we planted grass filter strips along
the streams that feed that, and hopefully it will have an
impact.
Next is the Both farm. From a Garden City company they took
the initiative to conserve water by starting water technology
farms. After concerns about declining water levels in the
Ogallala Aquifer in northwest Finney County, due to years of
drought, they established a voluntary water conservation area.
Again, I have got many farmers and ranchers trying to do
something with voluntary water conservation. How do we reward
them similar to when we set grasslands aside?
During that time they have used only 53 percent of their
allotment, and while in the 5-year timeframe of the allocation
we have had above average precipitation, they demonstrated that
they could maintain yields and profitability while conserving
water for future years. So this diagram, which pivots most
likely of corn. We could also grow soybeans here. That is
typically what we irrigate in Kansas, in southwest Kansas. This
would probably be corn.
There are all sorts of different pilot projects, whether
you have your nozzle up this high and water goes to the ground,
and you lose a lot to evaporation. You want to get that water
as close to the ground source. We are also even putting, I am
going to call it ``ribbons,'' underneath the ground for water
irrigation. It is very expensive but you can also put nutrients
through that, again growing more with less.
The next project, the Playa Lakes Joint Venture
collaborated with USDA and NRCS, for a groundwater recharge and
sustainability project, another huge success here, to address
declining aquifer levels in western Kansas, Wichita and Greeley
Counties, and support the Leoti and Tribune communities. Since
their project, 1,100 acres of Playas near Leoti and Tribune
have been restored, 375 million gallons of water was saved.
Again, a project we have been working on with Ducks Unlimited
long before I got to Congress. Little playas, little low-water
areas that are horrible at growing something, but the wildlife
loves it. We are trying to figure out, how do you set aside a
whole quarter of land or a whole 80 acres, how do you set aside
just little playas that might be 3 acres, 5, or 10 acres. That
is going great.
Yesterday I met a dairy producer, one of my favorite
stories of the day. Everybody has got to hear this one. I
visited the Miller Dairy, goodness, four or five years ago
outside of Hutchinson. He has maybe 130 head of Holstein cows.
What he is doing, believe it or not, landfills account for
about 20 percent of the world's methane production, and
landfills where our city dumps are. He is taking food waste
from there, including pie crust, and he is taking candy from
Russell Stover, taking them out of those waste piles and
feeding them to his cows, and they make great milk. The pie
crust on my right and candies from Russell Stover, the best
candy maker in all of America, in Abilene, Kansas. Yes, it is
the sweet milk. Home of Dwight Eisenhower.
Okay. Efforts of these Kansans through voluntary actions in
Federal programs illustrates the desire farmers and ranchers
have to produce resources and conserve land. With that in mind,
the conservation programs in the next farm bill must focus on
producers, most be results driven rather than solely practice
driven, and must be flexible enough to be useful.
Thanks again to all the witnesses. Thanks for having this
hearing. I am excited to hear from them today.
Senator Bennet. I am excited to have somebody on the
Agriculture Committee who has got as much firsthand experience
as you do. It will make a huge difference, so thank you very
much for being here, and thanks for your leadership.
You will not believe this but I have not thought about
Finney County, Kansas, for a long time. I wrote a high school
paper about sugar beet production in Finney County during the
Dust Bowl, and I have not thought about it since then, so I
have got to go find it.
Senator Marshall. It is a great place to visit. A great
rodeo.
Senator Bennet. Got to go back.
All right. We have been joined by my neighbor, my great
neighbor, Senator Lujan from New Mexico, who has got a witness
here to introduce, and I know he has a busy schedule. Why don't
you introduce your witness from New Mexico and then I will
introduce the rest, except for the ones that Senator Marshall
is going to introduce.
Senator Lujan. Chairman Bennet, thank you very much, and
Ranking Member Marshall, for convening this hearing. It always
great to be with our Chair and our Ranking Member of the full
Committee as well.
It really is an honor and a privilege to introduce a well-
respected friend, neighbor, leader, mentor in New Mexico, and
that is none other than Joseluis M. Ortiz y Muniz, to testify
about the important role conservation programs play in all of
our lives of our farmers and all of our brothers and sisters
that are ranchers as well.
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz is an Indigenous land-based native New
Mexican and father from the Genizaro land grant of La Merced de
Santo Tomas el Apostol de Rio de Las Trampas. I know it is a
mouthful, but when you go visit it you will learn it. It will
take your breath away. Also La Merced de San Antonio Del Rio
Embudo, where he serves as vice president. He is also from the
Spanish land grants of La Merced of La Merced de Santa Cruz de
La Canada, where he serves as secretary, and La Merced de Santa
Barbara.
He lives in the village of San Antonio Del Rio Embudo in
the high desert of northern New Mexico. It is there where he
tends to crops and cares for livestock, and also stewards
ancestral lands.
Now he is a water leader in his community as well. Mr.
Chairman, you all understand the power and importance of
acequias out in Colorado as well, where these are centuries-
old, earthen structures that were created by hand, and annually
we clean them with a shovel, for the most part. We get in there
and we keep them wide, about a half-shovel, I think, that we
take out at the bottom with the silt that comes in, three feet
wide, three feet deep in some places. It is incredible as to
what our ancestors thought of with their ingenuity. We call
them acequias. It is fun now that Federal officials know what
acequias are, so we are doing our best there, Joseluis, and we
will continue to do better.
Professionally now, he is the program director and research
scientist at the Sostenga Center for Sustainable Food,
Agriculture, and Environment at Northern New Mexico College,
and is the community liaison for the GreenRoots Institute. At
the Institute he works to help coordinate the development of
grassroots community-driven process to determine and implement
environmentally, economically, and culturally sustainable
plants rooted in water, food, and economic security for the
future of New Mexico's culture.
I want to say welcome, Joseluis. It is good to have you.
Mr. Chairman, while I know I was here to introduce, I also
want to commend the conversation that both of you opened up
this hearing on, and the importance of these programs, like
NRCS, USDA, and the frustration that is felt by all. I hear
about it when I am at the grocery store or when I was cleaning
ditches this last couple of weeks. Folks will pull over because
they will see me in the field, and they come by to chat. And
they share with you their frustrations of what is going on.
Then also, Madam Chair, you know, and the Ranking Member
knows, I have always advocated for smaller land producers as
well. Back home I am only on about 4 1/2 acres. A lot of the
folks that Joseluis is helping are on a few acres. Much of is
for self-sustenance. Some of it, it is the family's budget. And
so I just want to say thank you for what you are doing and
letting me work with you on those issues, and thanks for
letting me introduce Joseluis.
Senator Bennet. Thank you. Thank you Senator Lujan, and
thanks for bringing your perspective as well. It is really
valuable, and we are glad you made the trip to do this
introduction.
We have been joined by the Ranking Member, Senator Boozman,
from Arkansas. Thank you for coming to this important hearing.
Thank you for your leadership. There is a witness from
Arkansas. If you would like to introduce Mr. Rutledge, I would
be happy to have you do that.
Senator Boozman. Thank you all. It is great to be with the
Chairwoman, and again, thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member
Marshall for convening this very, very important hearing. I
think everyone on the Committee understands how important the
conservation programs are.
One of the people that we are very proud of in Arkansas, he
and his family, is Mr. Jeff Rutledge. He is a fifth-generation
farmer from near Newport, Arkansas. He and his wife Amy produce
rice, soybeans, and corn along the White River and Cache River.
Jeff returned to his family farm after earning his
bachelor's degree in plant science from Arkansas State
University, and a master's in agronomy from the University of
Arkansas. He covered both bases. That is always a good thing.
Jeff currently serves as one of the inaugural members of the
USA Rice and Ducks Unlimited Rice Stewardship Partnership
Committee, and various other committees and boards. And again,
we are very, very proud of Jeff and his family, and thank you
for taking the time and the effort to be here, and thanks to
all the panelists.
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Senator Boozman. And with that I
am going to introduce a couple of witnesses from Colorado, and
then Senator Marshall will introduce his witness, and we will
get started.
I first have the great pleasure and privilege to introduce
Paul Bruchez to the Committee. Paul is the fifth generation of
the Bruchez family to farm and ranch in Colorado. He operates
the family ranch near Kremmling with his brothers and father.
Paul is currently spearheading a restoration project
through the Regional Conservation Partnership Program on the
Colorado River with 12 landowners, to sustain agriculture and
the health of the river. Paul was recently appointed to
represent the main stem of the Colorado River at the State
level for the Colorado Water Conservation Board. He sits on the
board of directors for the Colorado Water Trust and serves on
the Grand County Open Lands River and Trails Advisory
Committee.
I visited with Paul to see his and his neighbors' important
work through this program and it was also a pleasure to have
Paul as my guest at the State of the Union this year. Paul,
thank you for being here, and I look forward to your testimony.
Dr. Sara Porterfield is also here from Colorado. She is the
Western Water Policy Advisor for Trout Unlimited. Her work
connects Federal policies and programs with Trout Unlimited's
on-the-ground projects throughout the American West to improve
aquatic habitat and ensure that both communities and the
environment thrive. She holds a Ph.D. in history from the
University of Colorado Boulder, where her work focused on the
Colorado River Basin.
I am grateful to have her here with us at this hearing.
Sara, I look forward to your testimony.
With that let me turn it over to Senator Marshall for his
introduction.
Senator Marshall. All right, Chairman. I am excited to
introduce another fifth-generation farmer, from Moundridge,
Kansas, Ray Flickner. His son, Ryan, is here and I want to
recognize Ryan. Ryan, think about this. That means your great-
great-great-grandfather was homesteading land in Kansas about
the same time mine was, and over and over that story is
repeated.
Ray is a graduate of the fighting, ever-fighting Kansas
State Wildcats, the Nation's first land grant college. If you
do not believe me there is a little painting over in the
Capitol, on the far, far south side of the building that
commemorates that Kansas State University being the first land
grant college. You cannot take that away from us, ever.
Then Ray went on and got a master's degree in education. He
has taught various ag-related courses at different Kansas
colleges, including Bethel, Hesston, Salina Vo Tech. During the
1980's, Ray began work in Ag finance and banking, first with
the Federal Land Bank during the peak of the farm crisis. We
all remember that. Then he worked for the U.S. Ag Bank before
transitioning to commercial Ag finance in the 1990's and
2000's. That diverse background not only allowed Ray to observe
multigenerational family farms from a family legacy perspective
but also taught him that production agriculture must be
sustainable, both in terms of financial strength and natural
resource conservation.
Ray owns and operates Flickner Farm and created the
Flickner Innovation Farm Project, a partnership between his
farm, university research, and industry leaders, to identify
and test a multitude of conservation practices in a non-farm
setting.
Ray served on the Groundwater Management District board of
directors. He is also a member of the Kansas Water Authority,
and currently Ray is an active member of the Little Arc
Watershed Restoration and Protection Strategies stakeholder
leadership team. His work has been recognized statewide. The
Flickner Farm has received a Success Story Award at the 2022
Kansas Governors Water Conference and the 2021 State Natural
Resources Award from the Kansas Farm Bureau, and was a finalist
in 2021 and 2022 for the coveted Leopold Conservation Award,
and received the Kansas Banker Association Award for both soil
and water conservation.
Ray, welcome. You bring a vast wealth of experience, and we
cannot wait to hear your testimony.
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Senator Marshall, Chairwoman
Stabenow had a word.
The Chairwoman. Thank you.
Senator Bennet. A Kansas word.
The Chairwoman. Yes, I had a Kansas word because, Senator
Marshall, when you said Kansas State I am thinking Pat Roberts,
and I just have to tell you, today is Senator Pat Roberts'
birthday. If you are watching, Senator Roberts, happy birthday.
I was at the Sweet 16 where Kansas State beat us in overtime,
at Michigan State. We were texting back and forth, and I will
not tell you when Pat said when we won.
[Laughter.]
The Chairwoman. Let us just say he loves Kansas State.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Bennet. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I
will say what Pat Roberts once said to me. We were having a
fight over taxes of some kind, and I was probably wrong and he
was probably right. He said to me, ``Be careful, young man.
Some people in my State might want to be able to afford to
drive to Colorado to buy your free marijuana.''
[Laughter.]
Senator Bennet. He was not the one wanting to drive there
to do that. I said, ``Mr. Chairman, it is not free. It is
legal.'' That was Pat Roberts.
Paul, why don't you get us started. We would love to hear
your testimony, on that note.
STATEMENT OF PAUL BRUCHEZ, RANCHER AND OWNER, REEDER CREEK
RANCH, KREMMLING, CO
Mr. Bruchez. Chairman Bennet, Ranking Member Marshall,
Madam Chairwoman, members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
the opportunity to be here today.
My name is Paul Bruchez, and I am proudly the fifth
generation of the Bruchez family to farm and ranch in Colorado.
Our family ranch, Reeder Creek Ranch, is about five miles east
of Kremmling, on the headwaters of the Colorado River. We run a
traditional cow/calf operation. We also run a fly fishing
business.
In 2022, I was appointed by Governor Polis to be the
director of the main-stem Colorado River representing the
Colorado Water Conservation Board, a role I am very active with
today.
Starting in 2002, the headwaters of the Colorado River
suffered from low snowpack and runoff. Drought conditions took
over the landscape. Faced with the same situation in 2003, we
recognized the severity of the problems. Our ability to
irrigate and to operate a successful agriculture business was
in jeopardy. At that time, we decided to get involved and make
improvements to our ranch to adapt to the changing environment.
The Regional Conservation Partnership Program has been
instrumental in surviving the last 23 years of ongoing drought.
The Headwaters RCPP, known as the Colorado River Headwaters
Project, has three main projects, directly impacting 30 miles
of the Colorado River: the Colorado River Connectivity Channel
Project, re-connecting the Colorado River around a small
reservoir funded by the Watershed Act, PL 566 under the RCPP;
the Habitat Restoration Project addresses critical habitat for
the 15 miles below the connectivity channel; and the Irrigators
of the Lands in the Vicinity of Kremmling, or ILVK project,
addresses 12 more miles of the Colorado River and 1.5 miles of
the Blue River, for 12 different landowners. This project
focuses on irrigation infrastructure and river health so that
sustainable Ag production continues in the face of Colorado
River water scarcity.
The Colorado River Headwaters Project is a shining example
of partnership and adaptation for the State of Colorado. With
Trout Unlimited as the lead partner, it includes agriculture,
municipal interests, conservation organizations, local, State,
and Federal Government agencies all working together to address
river health and Ag productivity.
The key partners from this project have also worked
together on a water conservation project, helping the State to
understand high elevation use of agricultural water and other
key data to help inform policy decisions. It is now working on
an alternative forages project to help producers in water-
scarce areas and to potentially rethink how water conservation
projects or programs can and will impact food and fiber
production. Existing conservation programs in the farm bill can
do more to assist producers if they promote innovative
practices that are driving a more sustainable future.
In January 2019, my family signed a contract the NRCS under
EQIP-RCPP. This project had multiple goals. It is the second-
largest Ag diversion ditch in Grand County with a right to
divert up to 65 cubic feet per second from the Colorado River
to five separate producers. The diversion structure and head
gate are on my family's ranch, and we have the largest water
right. The project was developed to replace the existing
diversion structure and head gate, including a fish screen on
the head gate to prevent fish from going into the ditch.
The RCPP agreed that projects that were built in the river
were outsourced to our river engineer, or ``outsourced
technical assistance.'' On-farm projects were from the head
gate down ditch, were to be designed by the NRCS, or ``NRCS
technical assistance.''
For the diversion structure, outsourced technical
assistance, we had a design by July 2019, just seven months
after contracting. We were finished with construction by
October 8, 2019, less than a calendar year from contracting.
As far as the NRCS technical assistance, the first draft of
design that I saw was produced on October 25, 2021. This is two
years and nine months after contracting. This delay is a good
example of NRCS capacity struggles. I would suggest that we
evaluate a better approach. Does it make more sense for NRCS to
increase capacity with additional staff or is the NRCS better
situated to outsource design work?
The NRCS has some great folks doing great work. Our State
Conservationist, Clint Evans, and our former State Conservation
Engineer, John Andrews, are champions and they deserve a lot of
recognition for getting projects on the ground in Colorado.
They need additional capacity and they need additional
flexibility.
The opportunities created by the farm bill and the
conservation title helped to save my community at the
headwaters of the Colorado River, and I am very grateful for
the opportunities that exist.
Processes and fundamentals that can be improved to
streamline process to get projects on the ground quickly.
Administrative burdens, NRCS staffing issues, technical
assistance capacity, and a lack of flexibility in programs and
contracts have created challenges for getting work done on the
ground.
This necessary help has yielded enormous benefits, and the
partnership involved is a model for how the farm bill can
advance resiliency for Ag and the environment.
My brothers and I all have young children. We want them to
be the sixth generation of agriculture in Colorado. My hope is
that there are continued conservation programs that focus on
innovation and can adapt to a changing world. Right now is our
opportunity to create solutions for future generations.
With that I conclude my testimony. Thank you, Chairman
Bennet.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Bruchez can be found on page
42 in the appendix.]
Senator Bennet. Thank you very much for your testimony.
Now, Mr. Flickner, you are recognized for five minutes.
STATEMENT OF RAY FLICKNER, FARMER AND OWNER, FLICKNER FARMS,
WICHITA, KS
Mr. Flickner. Chairman Bennet, Ranking Member Marshall,
Chairwoman Stabenow, and Ranking Member Boozman, it is a
privilege and an honor to provide testimony on conservation in
agriculture today.
As we celebrate the Earth Day this week, I believe it is
important to recognize the multitude of natural resources we
have been blessed with and the efforts farmers and ranchers
make to care for their land. My name is Ray Flickner, and I am
the fifth generation to farm land west of Moundridge, Kansas.
Ever since my wife Susan and I purchased our first tract of
land in 1980, we have held a steadfast belief that we will
leave our land in better shape, better condition, than when we
found it.
Today we own and operate land in four different counties in
Kansas, most of which have vastly different rainfall patterns,
topography, and underlying soil health conditions. In McPherson
County, where the headquarters are, we are blessed to have a
portion of the High Plains Aquifer a mere 60 feet below the
soil surface. Using this resource, my father developed the
second-oldest water right in the township back in 1955, to
irrigate row crops and to raise catfish. I am proud to say that
we are still pumping irrigation water out of the same well
casing that he installed in 1955.
On our home farm, I have seen firsthand how conservation
programs and practices can contribute to a more sustainable and
resilient farming operation. Water use is a big part of that.
In the past 20 years, I have converted more than 600 acres of
flood-irrigated farmland to an efficient, subsurface drip
irrigation system, and retrofitted a center pivot with
precision mobile drip irrigation, as Ranking Member Marshall
addressed previously.
According to the Kansas Department of Agriculture Division
of Water Resources, implementing these conversions has allowed
me to use 40 percent less water than the county average.
I have used the expertise of NRCS, FSA, WRAPS, Kansas
Department of Wildlife and Parks, and others, not only for
cost-share but for important technical assistance to improve
the natural resource management of the operation. With
technical assistance, we have rehabilitated a 70-year-old
windbreak and constructed new shelter belts. We created better
working habitat along creek banks and acreages that were not
able to be used for row crop production.
EQIP has allowed me to construct terraces, to improve my
irrigation systems, and to purchase soil and moisture probes
that help improve my water use management. CSP helped me create
a pollinator habitat on fields that were too difficult to farm.
CRP has proved beneficial for protecting highly erodible land.
While I appreciate these opportunities to protect my land's
natural resources, improvements can and should be made on how
USDA supports conservation-minded farmers. I cannot tell you
the number of times I have visited my local USDA Service
Center, applied for a program, filled out the paperwork, only
to be told that I do not qualify. In fact, for three years now
I have applied for an EQIP cost share to plant cover crops and
still have not been accepted.
The exorbitant time requirements and costs associated with
designing and building and complying with these programs has
made implementing the practices also too costly. For example,
one of my tracts is a CRP contract that requires a prescribed
burn. The amount of money spent to have that single burn
completed several years ago was almost as much as what the
total 10-year payments on the CRP contract amounted to.
Needless to say, I do not plan on re-enrolling that CRP.
I believe most producers can tell similar stories. They
want conservation on their land, and they are implementing best
management practices that greatly benefit the public good. We
know building terraces, grass waterways, and where practical,
implementing cover crops greatly reduces soil erosion. We know
converting irrigation delivery systems to more efficient
technologies helps prolong the lifetime of our groundwater
aquifers. Thankfully, there are local, State, and Federal cost-
share programs to implement these activities.
I do argue, however, much more can and should be done.
Evolving technologies such as aerial imagery and plant-based
sensors help deliver real-time data on natural resource health,
but are not considered to be eligible practices by NRCS.
Similarly, if Congress chooses to move the CRP in the direction
of a working lands program rather than a land retirement
program, by allowing additional haying and grazing
opportunities, or even allowing CRP to be fenced and grazed,
these changes will go a long way in sustaining our Nation's
grasslands, soil, wildlife, water, and ultimately the American
producer's bottom line.
I thank you for allowing me the opportunity to share some
thoughts from a fifth-generation agriculturalist from Kansas,
about a topic that is very near and dear to my heart, and I
stand ready to answer any questions that the Committee might
have. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Flickner can be found on
page 48 in the appendix.]
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Flickner, for your very
useful testimony.
Now we will turn to Mr. Ortiz y Muniz for your five
minutes. Thank you for being here.
STATEMENT OF JOSELUIS ORTIZ Y MUNIZ, VICE PRESIDENT, LA MERCED
DE SAN ANTONIO DEL EMBUDO LAND GRANT, MAYORDOMO, ACEQUIA DEL
LLANO DEL EMBUDO, DIXON, NM
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. Thank you, Honorable Michael Bennet and
Roger Marshall, for holding this important hearing and for
inviting to share my story and bring the young farmer
perspective to this conversation.
My name is Joseluis and I am an Indigenous land-based
native New Mexican from four federally patented land grants in
northern New Mexico. I am a father, a mayordomo, a professor, a
National Young Farmer Coalition Water Fellow, and a community
liaison. I live in northern New Mexico with my family, where I
grow vegetables and raise livestock.
Just as my grandfather stood in front of Congress many
years ago, I stand in front of you from generations of farmers
to share a vision for a future of agriculture in my community
and for future generations.
For me, the pathway out of opioid addiction was a return to
my agricultural roots and to reconnect to my ancestral lands.
Had it not been for a farmer training program championed by
organic farmer, Don Bustos, and hosted at Los Jardines
Institute in Albuquerque, I likely would have found myself in
jail, homeless, or even dead.
The way to authentically prepare for an uncertain future is
to equitably resource the next generation of farmers. My vision
for an equitable farm bill is conservation programs that focus
on ecosystem health, community infrastructure and expertise,
land access, and cultural competency.
When I returned home I lacked the tools, resources, and
land access that would support a viable return to farming.
These challenges inspired Don and I to revitalize the land-
based learning center at Northern New Mexico College, called
Sostenga, where I am a farm director and a research scientist.
We run a demonstration farm that teaches farmers and feeds
students.
Also I am a mayordomo for my acequia, serving 120 water
rights owners, managing the distribution of our sacred water
resource as well as the maintenance of our 4 miles of acequia
infrastructure. Acequias are ancient irrigation canals dug by
my ancestors hundreds, even thousands of years ago. Acequias
are also democratic community self-governance systems deeply
rooted in principles that guide our community's ability to
thrive in an environment that would otherwise be impossible.
So much has changed in recent years due to the
unpredictable effects of climate change. What once was a
thriving Embudo River has now transformed into a creek because
of persistent drought. On the other hand, extreme flooding and
wildfires, like the Calf Canyon Hermits Peak Fire have caused
catastrophic damage to our acequias, and a year later we are
still just picking up the pieces. We dread a future where
acequias could become a footnote in history.
Protecting our systems, our acequias, and our traditional
life ways, truly an American cultural capital is crucial. We
need more Federal investments in acequias and land grant
systems and recovery programs like the Emergency Watershed
Protection Program.
As a community leader I work closely with farmers,
providing training and technical assistance and helping with
NRCS and FSA applications and program implementation. If I do
not support farmers in my community, who will?
One of the biggest barriers my community faces is
understanding the application's complexity, which results in
sentiments that these programs are not meant for them. This is
not unique to just my community. According to a 2022 survey by
the National Young Farmers Coalition, nearly three-quarters of
young farmers do not know that there are USDA programs to
assist them. The unpaid work I do fills the gaps in the NRCS
program delivery.
The role of a farmer should be to grow food, not to fill
out paperwork. The NRCS should improve programs and uptake
through culturally competent technical assistance paired with
equitable outreach, harnessing peer-to-peer farmer networks and
community-based organizations. This could look like hiring and
compensating people from the surrounding and direct community
who understand local community needs, providing the support I
provide, serving as true agency resource for farmers.
A recent survey from the American Farmland Trust found that
more than half of respondents get their technical assistance
and education directly from farmers, compared to 20 percent
from the NRCS. They need to look to partners, technical service
providers, and peer-to-peer opportunities for assistance.
Through our coalition, producers have identified two key
barriers to accessing EQIP funding--farm size and difficult
applications. Research has shown that large farms are more
likely to receive payments than small farms because NRCS
usually prioritizes projects based on acreage.
NRCS should create a small-farm version of EQIP, one that
can help meet the needs of small farms and help young farmers
access funding more easily through a simplified process. By
investing in young, small, and farmers of color, USDA can make
long-term conservation and resilience a reality for the next
generation of farmers.
Thank you all for listening to my story, and thank you all
for your support.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ortiz y Muniz can be found
on page 57 in the appendix.]
Senator Bennet. Thank you very much for your testimony and
traveling from New Mexico to be here, Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. We
really appreciate it.
Mr. Rutledge, you are next, for five minutes. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF JEFF RUTLEDGE, PARTNER, RUTLEDGE FARMS, NEWPORT,
AR
Mr. Rutledge. Good morning, Chairman Bennet, Ranking Member
Marshall, Chairwoman Stabenow, and Ranking Member Boozman, and
other members of the Subcommittee. Thank you for holding this
hearing and the opportunity to testify.
My name is Jeff Rutledge, and I am a fifth-generation rice,
corn, and soybean family farmer with my wife Amy in Newport,
Arkansas. I am also actively involved in two organizations that
are leaders in the conservation arena, USA Rice and Ducks
Unlimited.
As a farmer I am proud to live, sustainably manage, and
earn my living from land at the nexus of production agriculture
and conservation. In addition to the rice and other crops that
I produce we are proud to provide critical habitat to hundreds
of species of wildlife, particularly migratory waterfowl,
namely ducks.
Rice fields throughout the U.S. rice-growing regions not
only provide $3.5 billion in migratory waterfowl habitat, but
also contribute to substantial biodiversity, ranging from
crawfish in the South to salmon in California.
Farm bill conservation programs are important to the rice
industry, and most important is that they are voluntary,
incentive-based, and follow a locally led model, which is
critical to widespread adoption by rice farmers.
Conservation programs should have the dual goal of not only
incentivizing environmentally beneficial practices but also
helping producers transition to conservation systems that
promote productivity and economic viability as compatible goals
while supporting the rural economy.
Working lands programs like EQIP and CSP serve as economic
drivers. It takes more than just one farmer to complete the
work needed to implement an EQIP or CSP contract, including
outside technicians, engineers, and local soil and water
conservation districts needed to help oversee the conservation
planning, as well as the scientists, land movers, and other
equipment necessary to implement those conservation practices.
Nationwide, and in Arkansas specifically, the demand for
EQIP and CSP has outpaced funding by about three to one,
resulting in significant unmet demand for both programs.
As you write the 2023 Farm Bill, Congress should prioritize
working lands programs, like EQIP and CSP.
EQIP is a vital tool for us because it is straightforward
with an extensive list of practices that work for all regions
and all production systems. EQIP's broad suite of structural
and management practices can help better manage water
resources, help with irrigation efficiency, reduce soil
erosion, improve soil health, and enhance water quality.
CSP helps to target specific resources using several
complementary practices and has been a great tool for rice
farmers to help pay for expensive long-term management
practices and increase conservation work across the entire
farm. Congress should ensure CSP continues to acknowledge early
adopters while also incentivizing incremental conservation
goals through programs. Many rice farmers are struggling to
find options within the program that reflect the advancements
in technology and workable systems to improve soil health. We
encourage Congress to work within the Farm Bill to ensure that
the program is offering appropriate options.
However, Congress should be careful not to prioritize one
natural resource concern over others. For example, the rice
industry, working with USDA, has made significant investments
in conserving the flyways. An essential piece of that strategy
is winter flooding, which should be recognized for the many
benefits it provides. Winter flooding is an EQIP and CSP
wildlife practice that provides moist-soil wetlands in rice
fields and attracts a significant number of ducks in the
Mississippi Alluvial Valley and the Central Valley and Coastal
California regions.
Furthermore, Congress should not prioritize one solution
over others. Because rice is a unique cropping system and a 100
percent irrigated crop, conservation programs should not
provide one-size-fits-all solutions. For instance, focusing
solely on practices like cover cropping that most rice farmers
cannot utilize would be inequitable for rice farmers. That is
why solutions should be locally led and support local
priorities.
I must also mention the importance of RCPP. As you know,
the rice industry's symbiotic relationship with waterfowl led
to a historic partnership with Ducks Unlimited, called the Rice
Stewardship Partnership, which is celebrating its 10th
anniversary this year. While we both have separate missions and
methods, we have managed to collaborate and develop goals for
our partnership, including work on RCPP.
The Rice Stewardship Partnership's RCPP projects have
pulled together nearly 100 diverse partners and had phenomenal
success in delivering on-the-ground conservation to rice
farmers. Since the creation of RCPP in the 2014 Farm Bill, the
RSP has impacted over 800,000 acres of rice and rice rotation
ground and provided over $108 million in additional
conservation funding.
For the 2023 Farm Bill, USA Rice and DU would note the
complexity plaguing RCPP since the 2018 Farm Bill, and that is
affecting the long-term viability of a crucial partnership
program to rice farmers. Congress should work to address
administrative barriers for partners through thoughtful and
minimal solutions.
Rice farmers are passionate conservationists. They invest
in their own financial resources to bring those farm bill
conservation programs to their farm. However, none of these
historic producer investments in conservation can happen if the
farm is not profitable. I urge Congress to ensure all producers
have the safety net to continue to be sustainable both
economically as well as environmentally.
Thank you for your time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rutledge can be found on
page 61 in the appendix.]
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Mr. Rutledge. It is very good to
have you with us today.
Dr. Porterfield, you have the last word until the
questions. Thank you.
STATEMENT OF DR. SARA PORTERFIELD, WESTERN WATER POLICY
ADVISOR, GOVERNMENT AFFAIRS, TROUT UNLIMITED, BOULDER, CO
Dr. Porterfield. Thank you, Chairman Bennet, Ranking Member
Marshall, and members of the Subcommittee for inviting me to
testify today on behalf of Trout Unlimited (TU). My name is Dr.
Sara Porterfield, and I am the Western Water Policy Advisor for
TU.
Today I speak from TU's experience as a partner with
farmers and ranchers throughout the country on projects
implemented under conservation title programs. With
agricultural producers on the frontlines of the climate crisis,
these programs, in conjunction with programs eligible for IRA
climate-smart funding, have never been more important.
In the West, climate change is manifesting as deep and
longstanding drought. Across the region, the 23-year drought
has wreaked ecological havoc and forced producers to make
difficult choices in the face of severe water scarcity.
However, current conservation title programs are not yet
fulfilling their true potential because they are too often
mired in bureaucratic inertia. To meet the immediate needs of
producers, the next farm bill must include legislative
clarifications or changes directed at improving program
delivery. The farm bill is, after all, for farmers, and without
a healthy environment we will not have the robust agricultural
economy and culture integral to this country.
It should be noted that current practices like cover crops,
crop switching, and prescribed grazing remain essential for
protecting agricultural economies and incentivizing producers
to experiment with actions that will help adapt to water-scarce
conditions of the future. They are not enough by themselves to
respond to the real-time challenges that producers are
grappling with at scale in the West.
To meaningfully move that dial, five specific actions
should be considered, as follows.
One overarching issue that affects agencies' program
delivery is insufficient field staff to meet producer demand.
This lack of capacity prevents good ideas from coming to
fruition and inhibits producers from implementing needed
changes to their operations to adapt to climate change.
The Regional Conservation Partnership Program, or RCPP's
purpose is to better coordinate NRCS activities with partners
like TU to expand and add value to on-farm and regional
conservation work. However, RCPP is widely viewed as fraught
with red tape that makes it difficult for partners and
producers to get funding to the ground effectively.
TU is currently experiencing these burdens with its
Gunnison River RCPP, awarded in September 2021, and not yet
under contract more than 18 months later. Such delays not only
keep producers waiting for the plan benefits to their
operations but also prevent realization of drought resilience
benefits. In contrast, contracting for a Conservation
Innovation Grant project awarded to TU in the same geography,
soon after the RCPP, took only three months to execute, and the
project is now well underway.
The next farm bill must reduce RCPP's administrative burden
by modernizing Federal contracting authority and streamlining
the application, contracting, and reporting process.
The Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations, or WFPO, or
PL-566 program, has been a valuable tool for States and local
organizations in addressing watershed issues. The Colorado
River Connectivity Channel, a WFPO project, is the linchpin to
connecting a fully functioning stream channel around Windy Gap
Reservoir while building drought resilience in the Colorado
River headwaters.
This project illustrates two common implementation
barriers: major delays in approving the required watershed plan
and the requirement to monetize environmental benefits. These
issues threaten to delay construction, significantly increase
costs, threaten vital match funds, and nearly derail the
project.
Improvements to the WFPO program in the next farm bill can
be accomplished by streamlining program administration and
prioritizing projects that provide multiple benefits to
watershed health, rural communities, and producers.
Historically, western irrigation infrastructure shared
among producers did not quality for EQIP funding, which meant
small to mid-sized water management organizations like acequias
or ditch companies were ineligible. The 2018 Farm Bill
authorized these kinds of organizations as eligible entities
for implementing practices that provide fish and wildlife or
drought-related benefits. While this provision was designed to
aid western producers, it does not change or distract from the
EQIP funding available to farmers in other parts of the
country.
Implementation of this provision has been slow and lacked
guidance. The next farm bill should require NRCS to publish a
suite of practices that can address increasingly scarce water
supplies while meeting environmental sideboards and ensuring
funding eligibility for the often-overlooked and disadvantaged
small to mid-sized organizations.
Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program, or CREP, projects
provide an annual rental rate and other incentives to producers
who participate voluntarily, retire environmentally sensitive
land, and plant appropriate vegetative cover. Recently, CREP
has demonstrated success in helping producers on the Great
Plains and in the West respond to climate change and drought by
decreasing groundwater use.
To optimize CREP's success the next farm bill must increase
the land rental rates to be on par with the rates paid for
irrigated lands. In addition, allowing agricultural land to
have some production value, even if not irrigated, may be
critical to creating the economic resilience needed to maintain
viable agricultural activities consistent with CREP
conservation purposes while incentivizing retirement of
sensitive, unproductive lands.
TU appreciate the attention given by this Committee to
conservation title programs and western water issues, and I
thank you again for the opportunity to testify today.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Porterfield can be found on
page 66 in the appendix.]
Senator Bennet. I want to thank the witnesses for their
testimonies. It is remarkable, I think, to have the kind of
breadth of perspectives that we have had this morning, the
breadth of geography that you represent in our country, and
also the commonalities that have been expressed all the way
along. Thank you. I look forward to our conversation.
Madam Chair, would you like to get us started?
The Chairwoman. Yes, thank you. First of all, thank you
very much. Wonderful witnesses. Thank you to all of you, and
for your leadership on the Committee, Mr. Chairman and Ranking
Member. Always wonderful to be with Senator Boozman, my partner
on the full Committee.
Earlier, Mr. Chairman, you were talking about the Dust
Bowl, and my mom grew up in Oklahoma during the Dust Bowl. She
lived in western Oklahoma and picked cotton on a farm. Her
whole family grew what they ate and what they wore and so on.
Hearing her stories has just reaffirmed for me how critically
it is important that we have these conservation programs and
that we make sure they work. All of you, all of our farmers,
have an important job to do, growing food, fiber, fuel for our
planet while, at the same time, protecting our air and our
water and our land. Thank you for that.
I have to say, from the water standpoint, nothing is more
important in Michigan than protecting our water. Protecting the
Great Lakes is in our DNA. We have a little different situation
than the West when we are talking about things. It is not
droughts. We have to watch for flooding. We have to watch for
other issues. We certainly all have a great commitment to what
we need to do together and to allow our farmers to do it
together.
That is why the conservation tools are so very important.
For us, it is about keeping our water clean, and improving
resiliency of the land, providing habitat for wildlife. Mr.
Flickner, you mentioned that you were not able to participate
in EQIP. We have heard today it is oversubscribed three to one.
That has been true, absolutely. We now have additional
resources for voluntary conservation programs that farmers
want, so now we just have to make sure that they work well. I
am hearing that loud and clear, and I hear it in Michigan. I
understand the deep concern about that.
We have these critical new investments in EQIP and RCPP,
which I authored in the 2014 Farm Bill. I have been excited
about this but very frustrated with what is happening now. We
thought we made changes in 2018, to make these programs work
better with less bureaucracy, and obviously we did not. We have
a lot of work to do together to make them work better. We have
to make sure these resources are effectively used and that we
are supporting our farmers to be able to do that. Too much
paperwork, too long of a wait on projects is just not going to
do it. I am very committed, Mr. Chairman, to working with all
of you on this.
A couple of questions. Mr. Bruchez, let me ask you, in your
testimony you described challenges with NRCS' implementation of
RCPP, and the long days with award announcements and national
contracting, These delays have led to projects missing local
deadlines, which is of great concern when I hear you say that,
and cost estimates escalating and so on. Could you talk a
little bit more about your recommendations for what we should
be doing to streamline the program?
Mr. Bruchez. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman. I can
see this in two different ways. NRCS, with their technical
assistance program, we knew going into this in our RCPP that in
our region their engineering staff was down and they were
backlogged. This head gate and with a fish screen on a ditch of
that size, relatively innovative, it would have been the
largest one in Grand County, a complex project. I think that it
is either we have to get the right engineering staff in to move
things forward and build that capacity or make recommendations
from NRCS that this be outsourced.
I look at what we did, because we already had experience
working in-river with outsourced engineering, that was the
direction that we went, and all of that was smooth. It is kind
of that decision time for NRCS, is that is this better
outsourced to move on or is it possible to build that capacity
internally, knowing that especially with engineering staff they
just do not have capacity.
The Chairwoman. Thank you. Let me also stress, I am a
strong supporter of the NRCS, in general, and know that they
have been severely understaffed. We have talked at the full
Committee about the lack of technology. Senator Boozman and I
have talked about the folks using paperwork here instead of
computers and all of the challenges that we have to help fix
here, in terms of with resources and so on. There are wonderful
projects going on in Michigan right now, but there is more that
we can do to make this work even better.
Dr. Porterfield, conservation practices are often described
as a win-win for farmers. I mean, they are a win-win-win,
actually, for farmers, for environment, for people in our
country. You touched on the economic benefits that conservation
programs bring to rural and farming communities. Could you
highlight some of the economic benefits and speak on the
repercussions if we fail to invest in conservation?
Dr. Porterfield. Yes, of course. I am not an economist but
I will do my best on this.
I want to give you a project example, or a number of
project examples from the Henrys Fork Drainage in Wyoming. This
is a drainage that is a tributary to the Green River in the
southwestern corner of Wyoming, and drains to the north slope
of Utah's Uinta Mountains. We have a fantastic project manager
down there, and she started building relationships with
producers in that drainage.
She started by working with one rancher on upgrading one
irrigation diversion. He used to have to go out, as is quite
common, and put up a pushup dam, once, twice, three times a
year, depending on how the hydrology went. By helping him to
install and upgraded irrigation diversion she helped him save a
great amount of time and money from going out there and having
to fix that dam every year, potentially multiple times.
From there this producer has gotten folks in the valley on
board. We have seen that these irrigation diversion upgrades go
in throughout the drainage, saving those producers time and
money in their labor costs.
I think, too, when we think about economic repercussions,
if we do not have a healthy environment we do not have an
agricultural economy, and these things go hand in hand. Taking
care of the environment is essential to taking care of
agricultural economies.
The Chairwoman. Thank you very much. Mr. Ortiz y Muniz,
welcome. We so appreciate you being here. You have underscored
the important role community leaders play in building an
agricultural community, and the importance of connecting young
and beginning farmers with important resources. I very much
appreciate your story and your leadership as a volunteer to
help others and provide information. Thank you for doing that.
Can you talk a little bit more about how NRCS can better
connect with communities like yours to help our farmers? We
know that we have important work to do with small farmers as
well as large farmers. I am excited about the things happening
in urban areas and on small farms. I think it is such an
opportunity in so many ways to create jobs, access to healthy
food and to support the right conservation practices
continuing.
How can NRCS better connect with the farmers you work with
to implement conservation practices on the ground?
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. Thank you so much, Madam Senator. What a
great question.
You know, I will say that in the farming community, and I
am sure my colleagues here can agree, the farming community is
about as diverse as the variety of vegetables and livestock and
crops that we grow. Every farm is different. Every farm has its
own story, its own roots, its own language, its own practice.
I think one way that the NRCS can support farmers,
beginning farmers, just farmers in general, is by providing
culturally competent outreach, culturally competent technical
assistance. I think what that might look like, and I talked
about it a bit in my testimony, is sourcing their staff from
the local community so that as staffers are doing their
outreach are identify what are the specific needs of individual
farmers. They already have a jump on understanding the cultural
elements, the environmental elements that farmers are facing,
whether their community is one that grows rice and flood
irrigates or is an acequia community, is an Indigenous tribal
community, is one that grows on gray acreage, one that grows on
two acres.
The cultural competency piece, I think, is one of the most
important elements because as my colleague so greatly
explained, it is not a one-size-fits-all type of solution. We
really need solutions that are flexible and are knowledgeable
of the communities' even historical experience so that when a
farmer receives the technical assistance it is already tailored
to the challenges that they are already facing.
The Chairwoman. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Bennet. Thank you, and we will go to Ranking Member
Boozman next. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Senator Welch, would you like to go? We know you have got a
busy schedule.
Senator Welch. There is nothing more important than the
Agriculture Committee.
Senator Bennet. That is true. That is a fact. Is there
anything left to be said? I think you have said it all.
Senator Welch. I will ask a few questions. We have got some
smart people here.
You know, what you were just saying, Mr. Muniz, this is a
dilemma because the folks in Vermont have frustrations dealing
with the paperwork. There is also a challenge with the
personnel, having people on the ground. There are two things
here. One is it is immensely beneficial if there can be
flexibility. No. 2, there is hell to pay when the flexibility
leads to no accountability. Those of us who want flexibility
have to acknowledge the need for accountability. I would be
interested in some reactions to how we can achieve both of
those.
You know, in many ways the ideal, from my perspective,
would be that we have a performance-based goal, and then the
accountability is did you meet the goals, as opposed to
micromanaging. When there is micromanaging, it presumes
something that does not exist, and that is sufficient staffing
for there to be a quick turnaround.
How do we deal with that tension? I will start with you,
Mr. Muniz. Go ahead, and then we will go to you.
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. I think there are several ways. I think
that, as my colleague at the end of the table here said, is
outsourcing some of the work that can be done, working with
community-based organizations, contractors. That is a way, I
think, to alleviate the accountability from the NRCS's end. I
think at the end of the day----
Senator Welch. Let us stop there for a second. Be specific
as to how that would work. I mean, that is a general statement,
but in order to get to a place where there really is
flexibility, who, in your case, would that be?
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. Okay. First of all I think stepping out
of the office. The agricultural community has a lot of great
leaders. I know that is the case in every community. Meeting
with those leaders, understanding whom they are. In my
community, an example is my mentor, Don Bustos, talking to him,
building a relationship with him, picking his brain, and then
applying----
Senator Welch. Finding local competent leaders.
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. Local leaders, local community
organizations, local businesses and contractors, identifying
those individuals and championing them and working with them.
Senator Welch. All right. Mr. Bruchez, do you want to do
it, and then we will go to you, Dr. Porterfield.
Mr. Bruchez. Thank you, Senator Welch. So for me, it is the
local, but the way that the system is already set up we need to
empower our State conservationists. You know, Clint Evans is
very aware of what is happening in Colorado. He is very aware
of the geographical diversity, of the different Ag diversity,
and the amount of time since RCPP was awarded in 2016, that I
have heard the comment that it has to go back to Washington, or
it has to go back to the national RCPP team. You know, if we
empower our local champions, they understand what our needs are
and how to get work done, and think that allows for that
flexibility, also with the accountability.
Senator Welch. Okay. Thank you. Dr. Porterfield?
Dr. Porterfield. Yes, I think that we have a really good
example in conservation title programs already of one that
works very flexibly and is quite successful, and that is the
Conservation Innovation Grant Program. We have one on the
ground now, as I mentioned, in the Gunnison Basin in Colorado,
and that has proved that the flexibility available with a grant
agreement like that allows contracting to happen faster. As I
said, it took 3 months to get under contract instead of another
one in the same geography we are waiting more than 18 months
now to get under contract. It eliminates the layers of
contracting that have to take place so that TU, as a partner,
can contract directly with those producers to help work for
exactly what you are talking about, which is those outcomes
rather than getting lost in the specific practices exactly how
they have to play out.
Senator Welch. You have actually had good success with
that?
Dr. Porterfield. Yes, yes. We are seeing it right now, the
Conservation Innovation Grant right now in Gunnison is looking
at how to both expand what is called a LoRa network--it is a
radio network for all sorts of different kinds of soil moisture
sensors, et cetera, different input--combined with what our
field sec calls the auto-tarp, which is a remote-controlled
check structure on ditches, and it is going really well out
there.
Senator Welch. Mr. Rutledge? I mean, things are different
for rice farming than what Dr. Porterfield is talking about.
Mr. Rutledge. Yes, sir.
Senator Welch. Go ahead.
Mr. Rutledge. That is correct, and as I mentioned in my
testimony, we have had very good success in the RCPP project
implementing those conservation practices with our Rice
Stewardship Partnership with USA Rice and DU, bringing together
over 100 partners to do that. Having USA Rice and having staff
available to oversee that and implement those conservation
programs has, frankly, worked very well for us, as I mentioned
the success of it. I do think there needs to be some tweaks,
you know, maybe administratively in the burdensome application
process.
Senator Welch. Do you have some specifics? You know,
because we cannot micromanage. We write the legislation.
Obviously the hard work is the implementation, and it is
implementation at the bureaucratic level. A lot of the folks,
as you know, that are in these Ag programs with the government,
they really care about good outcomes, and obviously the farmers
do and the conservationists do. The more specific you are as to
what those tweaks should be, I think the more beneficial it
would be to the Chairman and for us to be able to get something
that is going to be useful. If you have that, get it back to
us. I would be interested.
Mr. Flickner, do you want to add anything here, the last
word?
Mr. Flickner. Well, that is not good when I have the last
word. The State of Kansas--and all I can speak on is what I
know about Kansas, but we have had a discussion about the
number of boots on the ground and limitations in staffing. We
have had some real challenges at the State level relative to
leadership and maintaining somebody in that position. My
experience at the local and county level, it has been very hard
to keep employees.
Case in point, I have an EQIP agreement on moisture sensors
that we are using to evaluate the irrigation usage. It started
off and I submitted, a stack of paper about this thick for
support of what we had done from a moisture sensor installment
standpoint, which NRCS wanted weekly crop reports from the crop
scout. There was a tremendous amount of detail, kind of the
micromanagement type of approach.
We submitted that, then went in and visited with the
midlevel--well actually, that individual took a job at another
county, left, and we were not totally complete with that
processing--I went to the mid-management level and found out
that probably about three-fourths of what we submitted really
did not need to be submitted. I think that is more of an
educational standpoint from the local individual, to know what
the requirements are.
Senator Welch. You know, that is actually helpful, because
I think, while we are talking about the frustration, we here
can legislate the program, hopefully come up with some money.
The implementation is really going to require a partnership,
and the local leadership really matters, both with the State
folks, and they have got to be all behind this. You know, that
person that you mentioned is no longer in the job and is moving
around, that is not something we are going to be able to handle
here, so there has got to be that local leadership that
providers that key for implementation. Thank you.
I am out of time, so I will yield back.
Senator Bennet. Thank you, Senator Welch. Thank you very
much for those questions. Senator Boozman, our Ranking Member,
please go ahead. Just for the attention of our members, a vote
has been called, so Senator Marshall and I will split up the
duties.
Senator Boozman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and again, thank
you for holding the hearing and thanks to the panel. I think
this has really been a very, very good session.
You know, it is interesting the IRA dollars is $38 billion
there that is kind of set to the side. It is not in the farm
bill. It is restricted to climate change and carbon. As I was
listening to the testimony, and the testimony is so good about
the problems that you are going through right now--river
health, water, fish, water conservation, ecosystem health,
climate mitigation, growing food and not paperwork, you know,
all of those kinds of issues, small farm EQIP--and I do agree
that we have a problem there, you know, small farmers. It is a
lot easier to get a lot of money than it is a little bit, so we
need to work on those things, improve soil health, the list
goes on and on, insufficiency of field staff. Again, that is
what we are hearing today, and those things are so, so very
important.
So what we have got to do is figure out how we can capture
those dollars. I do not hear you asking for a lot of equipment
that is measuring the amount of carbon that you produce, so you
can turn that into the government. Especially as you complain
about the lack of staff in the field and then also just the
paperwork that you already have to do, period.
So one of my concerns is we do have potential access to
significant amount of money. We have got to figure out how to
do that in a logical way.
Then the other thing is I am very concerned about tying our
programs, whether it is risk management or it is the
conservation programs, to you being climate friendly enough to
get it. I think that is a real risk. You know, it is not a one-
size-fits-all. You, in your particular areas know best that
needs to be monitored, it needs to be looked at as dollars are
pushed out. That is something I would really like for you to
think about. Again, that is a real concern that I have, and it
truly is a threat.
Mr. Rutledge and Mr. Flickner, you all mentioned the
importance of risk management. You know, we have talked about a
lot of the things that are kind of the basis of farmers being
able to go forward. Tell us how that is valuable, you know,
crop insurance, ARC/PLC, the risk management tools. Mr.
Flickner?
Mr. Flickner. Well, by all means I do not want to belittle
or talk down--crop insurance is a very major element of risk
management in a multimillion-dollar operation where we are
running the kind of dollars we are. Part of that, I guess,
comes from my lending background, when I spent 35 years in the
business. This business is very capital intensive, and then
when you deal with the weather, climate issues, and so forth,
one bad year, from a farmer standpoint, may be the final year
because you do not have the wherewithal.
So definitely we need to maintain some type of a safety net
for that, for the industry, for us to continue to produce the
food, fiber, and fuel that we do.
Senator Boozman. You have got to have the risk management
in order to go forward----
Mr. Flickner. Exactly.
Senator Boozman [continuing]. and do the conservation
thing, which is also very important.
Mr. Flickner. Exactly.
Senator Boozman. Mr. Rutledge, do you agree with that?
Mr. Rutledge. Yes, sir. You know, as Mr. Flickner
mentioned, this is a very capital-intensive endeavor, and we
put everything on the line every year to go out and produce the
food, fiber, and fuel that feeds the world, not just this
country. We have everything that we own at risk every year to
do this, and we are trying to do it as sustainably and as
conservation-minded as we can, because those natural resources
are where we earn our living from, so we are going to take
better care of them than anybody will. We cannot do that if we
are not in business.
Senator Boozman. Right. Mr. Rutledge--and I think I will
kind of throw this open to the panel, but you can start. As I
mentioned earlier and talked about the concern about the IRA
restricting conservation dollars to only climate and carbon
practices, rather than letting local resource concerns be met,
and there is room for both, can you talk more about why
Congress should avoid prioritizing one natural resource concern
over others, or one solution over others?
Mr. Rutledge. Yes, sir, because as has been mentioned here,
there are a myriad of natural resource concerns, as many as
there are farms, and the practices do not fit everywhere. There
is no one-size-fits-all solution to what works best and what
best protects our natural resources on any individual farm.
Even within one individual farm, mine in particular, I have
areas of my farm that I do plant cover crops on and they work
very well. I have other areas where I do a lot of rice
production, a heavier ground that is not feasible to plant a
cover crop. We do winter flooding, and that protects our soil
over the winter, just like a cover crop does.
Senator Boozman. Anybody else? Paul?
Mr. Bruchez. Thank you, Senator Boozman. I would just add
that a lot of times in agriculture it feels like people are
telling us how we should operate our business, but we have to
remember that so much of what we do in food production is
driven by the consumer market. When we are thinking through
these things and what sorts of changes or how policy comes to
shape it really is driven by the consumer. Thank you.
Senator Boozman. Right.
Mr. Flickner. Senator, relative to the carbon sequestration
situation, we at least in our area when we deal with
agricultural carbon think about cover crops and those type of
things. In Kansas, the eastern part of the State could get
plenty of rain, the western part of the State is almost a
desert.
Case in point, I have a property in western Kansas,
probably about 60 miles from Garden City. Last year it was so
dry the corn never set an ear, and the grain sorghum, which is
kind of the old standard out in that territory, never set a
head. Needless to say, a cover crop uses the moisture. I am
experiencing that right now with my McPherson County property,
the acreage where I do have cover crops has depleted the
topsoil moisture to the point where planting soybeans, which is
my cash crop, is going to be a real challenge unless we get a
rainfall event.
I think we have got to understand, when we talk about
covers and the carbon credit from a big-picture standpoint--I
have not signed up for any of the carbon credit programs,
largely because there is not a standardization as to what that
looks like, in terms of the information are we capturing. I do
have some studies with Kansas State University going on to try
to evaluate that. You end up with the Wild West, is what I call
it, in that arena right now.
Senator Boozman. Mr. Muniz, can you jump in real quick, or
the Chairman is going to yell at me. I am over my time. As a
small farmer I really am interested.
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. Thank you, Senator. I think one way is
to look at the Agriculture Resilience Act that the National
Young Farmers Coalition endorses this, and it talks about six
key pillars that I think will address the myriad of natural
resource issues. It is increasing research, improving soil
health, protecting existing farmland and supporting farm
viability, supporting pasture-based livestock systems, boosting
investments in on-farm energy initiatives, and reducing food
waste.
Senator Boozman. Very good. That sounds like six great
pillars. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Bennet. Yes. That sounds like a pretty good list.
We have been joined by Senator Klobuchar from Minnesota.
Thank you for coming, and thank you, Senator Boozman, for being
here this morning.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you. Thank you, Senator Boozman. I
was thinking that you have a lot of ducks in Arkansas, with
Ducks Unlimited. We have Pheasant Forever in Minnesota, and I
have always been a big fan of some of the conservation
provisions in the farm bill and how we have been able to work
all of this out with your leadership, Senator, and with Senator
Stabenow, and of course the great Senator Bennet, so thank you
for that.
Mr. Flickner, information on the economic environmental
benefits of soil health is still not quite there. Senator Thune
and I introduced legislation to improve the use of conservation
data analysis, as I listen to you talk about how important it
is. Can you talk about the importance of having that
information that compares yield rates to rates of cover crop
and no-till adoption or other conservation practices, how that
could be helpful.
Mr. Flickner. Senator, we have been experimenting with
Kansas State University of several studies relative to cover
crop usage and the economic returns. Again, my experience has
been, because of the dry climate we have, typically what I have
seen is there is an economic drag with the use of cover crops,
largely because we are using moisture, subsurface moisture,
that we may need for our eventual cash crop.
I also want to admit that there are more things. As I
addressed in my testimony, my intent is to leave the farm a
better place than what it was when I found it. I do not want to
belittle my forefathers, when they came over in the 1870's and
used the moldboard plow to plow the prairie, because if they
had not done that they would not have survived, but today we do
know that extensive tillage can have some dramatic effects.
So, there are two ways you look at that. One is the true
economic return, and that has been a real struggle for the
territory we are in. I do believe we should leave the soil in a
better condition than what we found it. If we can increase
organic matter, if we can absorb more rainfall--when the rain
does occur, and it will rain in Kansas one of these days--that
there are some real benefits to that.
So I think that is the challenge we have, from a producer
standpoint. You have got to be viable, profitable from an
economic standpoint----
Senator Klobuchar. Understand.
Mr. Flickner [continuing]. but on the other hand, there are
things we need to do leave the ground in a legacy form.
Senator Klobuchar. I think that is part of Senator Thune
and I also, given that our States are somewhat similar when it
comes to Ag. I introduced the CRP Improvement Act to have cost-
share improvement, as you know, opportunities for grazing
infrastructure, an increase in the CRP annual amount, the
limitations, and State acres for wildlife enhancement. We have
also looked at disincentives for native sod to cropland, and we
have provisions that have already been signed into law.
So I agree with you. It is a balance, but we want to create
those incentives.
One area that I think would be helpful, and you have kind
of referenced this, is using technology, as best we can, and
that is this precision Ag, which a lot of us are into. Senator
Fisher and I actually have a bill on low-interest rates to
farmers for investments in precision Ag. Could you talk about
how that would be helpful, to get more precision Ag and make it
more affordable?
Mr. Flickner. Well, we do know that the industry, life in
general, is moving very rapidly. There is a lot of new
technology. Case in point in my experience, 22 years ago we
installed our first subsurface drip irrigation system. The
technology was developed in Israel. One of the first ones, I
believe, I was one of the first two in the county to do that.
There were some issues with that. I ended up with a bunch of
problems with it because of an install that was done
incorrectly. It is upside down, and some things like that.
It was interesting. After I did that, a year later is when
cost-share became available. The challenge you have being an
early adopter and using some of this technology, when you get
too far ahead of the curve, you do not end up having the
ability to have as much assistance in that area.
Senator Klobuchar. Right. Technical assistance would be
helpful.
Mr. Flickner. Technical assistance. Financial assistance.
Senator Klobuchar. You just a pioneer, Mr. Flickner.
Mr. Flickner. Well----
Senator Klobuchar. What you are saying is that you are
never going to get wide scale option without the technical
assistance.
Mr. Flickner. Correct. Correct.
Senator Klobuchar. Okay. I just want to change to another
topic, and that is to you, Mr. Rutledge. The U of M, University
of Minnesota--you know, we are in Michigan territory--well,
there is only really one Golden Gopher university--is on the
cutting edge of developing new crops and hybrids that are hardy
for harsh winters, resilient to changing climate, and resulting
in efficient and productive yields. We all know Norman Borlaug
studied at the University of Minnesota, even though he is from
Iowa.
Many of the crops, like Kernza, will have an immediate
impact on farmers' ability to support conservation efforts like
reducing soil erosion, improving water quality. Could you speak
to the role that research is playing in the development of
innovative production and conservation practices?
Mr. Rutledge. Thank you, Senator. Yes, I think that is the
goal of land grant universities is to continue to do research
to make us more efficient, more productive, and better stewards
of the resources that we are given to oversee. Yes, funding
those land grant universities and agricultural research is of
utmost importance for the industry as a whole and for our
country, and for food security.
Senator Klobuchar. Thank you. Mr. Ortiz y Muniz, the
voluntary conservation programs, like EQIP, are especially
popular with young farmers, yet I have heard in my State
voicing concern that they have a lack of information about
whether it is cost share or other things, and makes it even
harder when they are brand new at the job.
What steps does Congress need to make to make these
programs more accessible to young farmers and ranchers?
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. Thank you so much, Senator Klobuchar. I
appreciate the question.
You know, I think there is a myriad of steps that Congress
can make to provide access to farmers, new farmers to programs
such as EQIP and whatnot. I think one of the ways, and we have
talked a little bit about that, is looking at supporting the
organizations, the contractors who are already doing this work,
so that they can help to fill the gap that NRCS and EQIP are
unable to complete with, whether it is staff shortages or just
not having the cultural competency piece in their own office.
I had mentioned to Senator Welch, the technical assistance
and conservation planning is a really critical tool and a first
step in evaluating a producer's resource needs. I think that
Congress should direct USDA to reserve a portion of
conservation technical assistance funds for the pilot program
to increase the capital of NRCS and other local service
providers to better assist small-acreage producers in
developing conservation plans and applying for EQIP financial
assistance.
Senator Klobuchar. Very good. Well, I want to thank all of
you. My State is actually in the top five when it comes to
enrollment in these conservation programs. We have always seen
the benefit of them and how important it is. Not only do we
have a lot of hunting and fishing in our State--I used to have
some great statistics on how much money we spend on worms, but
I am not going to go there today. We also have really, really
thriving Ag communities. I thank you all for seeing that
important part of the farm bill, and thank the Chair for having
this hearing today. Thank you.
Senator Marshall. [Presiding.] Thank you, Senator
Klobuchar. We appreciate your comments, and indeed I have
enjoyed some of the agriculture up in your State as well, and
indeed soybeans and corn, a lot of the same crops.
Senator Klobuchar. Yes, I think we met the first time when
you were in the House, right? You were there up with Collin
Peterson.
Senator Marshall. Yes, trying to figure out what sugar
beets were all about. Exactly. Well, thank you again, and I
have got a couple of questions for our witnesses. I will start
with Mr. Flickner.
Mr. Flickner, like you, our family farm was more in the
eastern third of the State, with more of a climate like where
you live. The farm I live on now is more like 150 miles west of
there. Could not be different, the rainfall, the soil. When we
talk about cover crops, where do cover crops not work well, and
what would you recommend for a better conservation practice, or
what have you found useful? You are in four counties as well,
so I think that is why I think it is a great question for you.
Mr. Flickner. Senator, if I had the answer to that one I
would not be here. How is that?
Senator Marshall. Okay.
Mr. Flickner. No, you know, again, as I addressed earlier,
my experience with cover crops, they are very reliant on the
moisture that you get. Now realize three of the four farms we
have are not irrigated. They are truly in western Kansas. The
McPherson County property is irrigated, but I do not use
irrigation water for cover crops because the State of Kansas
gives a certain allocation of water for your use and producers
have to make a management decision if you are going to use the
water for the cash crop and not for a cover crop.
Now, one of the things that I have done and have been
reasonably pleased with has been that I have been introducing
winter wheat into the rotation. I guess in the true sense of
the term that that is not really a cover crop, because what I
do is I plant corn, harvest the corn in the fall, then plant
wheat in the corn stubble, take the wheat to harvest, and then
plant soybeans after the wheat, so we have a growing crop in
the soil the entire time. That has worked reasonably well if we
get sufficient moisture. I have been very pleased with that
one.
As I said earlier, for this year's cover crops, we are
holding off on soybean planting, largely because the cover has
depleted what little bit of moisture we did have. I do not have
a seed bed to get the soybeans growing, though as we have
looked at the weather forecast it looks like maybe we are going
to get some rain next week, and so maybe we will get that
problem solved.
You know, the eastern third of the State of Kansas, I think
typically gets enough spring rainfall that allows for that. You
go to the western two-thirds of Kansas, not so much so.
Senator Marshall. Thank you. My next question is for Mr.
Rutledge. I want to talk a little bit about your experience
with DU. Certainly I have said once or twice here that farmers
and ranchers were the original environmentalists, but right
behind them have been the hunters and the fishermen and women
as well. Certainly it is a group that puts their money where
their mouth is, and the Pittman-Robertson is a great example of
some of those funding. Of all the wildlife conservation groups,
DU has certainly been a shining beacon across the Nation, from
Kansas to Arkansas to Minnesota and places in between. I am
very proud of the work I personally have done with DU as well.
I mentioned earlier their impact on the playas. I just think
that the DU emphasis on habitat development has had a huge
impact on conservation and preservation.
Can you just dive a little bit deeper into some of your
favorite DU projects? I know you have mentioned them broadly,
but just tell me exactly what they do. Paint that picture for
me.
Mr. Rutledge. Thank you, Senator. Yes, I guess their best
project, that I am most proud of, I think, not because I am
involved, is the RCPP partnership that we have with them. DU
came to the industry, recognized the symbiotic relationship
there between rice and ducks, and the habitat that we provide
in the winter flight ways. They have been very instrumental in
that partnership, bringing millions of dollars in conservation
funding to the rice production area that provides that winter
waterfowl habitat that we do, just as a natural means of
producing our crop.
Senator Marshall. Make sure I get this right. This is why
DU is one of my wife's and my favorite charities of choice is
that they leverage government money, with DU moneys, with local
moneys, and then oftentimes they will bring even local workers
and hands-on and may bring in a bulldozer or a tractor and use
everybody's efforts to do a project.
Mr. Rutledge. That has been the great thing about this
partnership is that it has truly been a partnership, and as you
mentioned, leveraging those Federal dollars. That is the great
thing about these conservation programs. They are cost share.
We are putting our own money where our mouth is, as DU is, as
rice is, as the farmer is, and using those Federal dollars to
improve our conservation efforts.
Senator Marshall. Great. I will go back to Mr. Flickner
again. Sometimes you cannot find money for good conservation
practices but yet you have a history of doing those practices
anyway. Tell me more from the heart, why do you invest money in
these conservation practices even though it does not pencil
out, as an agribusiness person?
Mr. Flickner. Senator, it is because of my desire to leave
the farm or the ground that we own in a better condition than
what I found it in, trying to be a good steward of what the
Lord has provided us, and pass it on to future generations. A
lot of times what I have done is I have not pursued cost share
to do conservation work but I did the work myself, which
normally is a little bit cheaper, in the long run, or it can
be. Again, it comes back to the desire to leave my farm in much
better shape than how we found it.
Senator Marshall. Great. I think that is true for every
farmer and rancher I have gotten to know, is that you do not
get rich farming but certainly what you leave your children is
that inheritance is the land itself, the opportunity to grow
your own groceries, just great times.
I will start back with you, Ray, and I may ask some other
folks as well. Let us talk about the lack of efficiencies that
go on with USDA and FSA and NRCS. Just be as specific as
possible. You know, if you were king, what do you wish USDA was
doing more efficiently?
This is my chance to speak to staff. Here is a simple
example. We had a huge fire in the western part of Kansas. Not
only did we lose thousands of cattle but we lost thousands of
miles of fence. And the NRCS officer simply could not get out
there to do that inspection before or after, and that was a big
holdup. You know, why cannot we have a drone go out and do a
video? Why cannot the farmer or rancher do a video and send
that in to the person? It is not like we are going to drive
across town and walk 10 miles of fence line to document that we
put these fence posts in at exactly 39 inches of depth, and
there are five strands. Why cannot we just document that and
send it in?
Ray, do you have any common-sense advice that we could do
that would be more practical?
Mr. Flickner. Well, I think the key, Senator, on that one
is, this is a people business. We are all dealing with people.
As I addressed a little earlier, the staff turnover has been a
struggle that I have seen from the State level down to the
local level, training new people, trying to get them up to
speed. I think we have got to figure out how to get people
there that have the background, that understand.
I have been fortunate that I have some mid-management
people that understand my operation and will call me and let me
know about different things that are available. Without them I
probably could not keep up with all the activities that are
there.
So again, I think we have got to figure out how to get the
people with the right resources there.
Senator Marshall. I think that is a good point. I think
sometimes the people at NRCS and FSA feel like we are beating
them up, and that has not been my experience at all. I got an
email yesterday from my FSA officer about something on our
farm. I do appreciate the work they do, but somehow we have got
to empower them more and more. As the populations decrease in
these rural counties, and you have one NRCS officer for
suddenly three counties, and these counties are not 10 miles
across. These counties are 60 and 90 miles across, as well, so
what technology we can use.
Maybe, Paul, what about you, Mr. Bruchez? Please go ahead.
Mr. Bruchez. Thank you so much. My experience with this has
gone in two different directions. We had a field fit that was
authorized via telephone and FaceTime from the field with an
engineering blunder. Those relationships matter so much. The
engineer knew myself, knew our contractor. We had worked on it
and we were able to field fit it based on some technology that
worked out fantastically. That was based on relationship and
having trust between one another. That local authority and
having different field offices be able to represent and
champion those sorts of decisions, because those are the folks
that know the people on the ground.
Senator Marshall. The FaceTime is a great, simple way to do
some of the inspections, it would seem to me, and eventually
you have got to sign that you have done the work anyway, and if
we come back three years later and say we are here for a
different inspection and we see X, Y, or Z, you are still
accountable. Senator Welch had a great point about
accountability as well as efficiency.
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz, any other comments about efficiencies,
what we can do, how we can do our job better? You mentioned
some earlier, I understand.
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. Yes. Thank you so much, Senator. I
appreciate you.
You know, if you had posed the question, if you could
choose or if you were at the helm, I would say looking at
supporting more peer-to-peer programming. Farmers Teaching
Farmers is a great tool. We often see that in New Mexico. For
us, small farm EQIP, and I know that we are sort of different
in northern New Mexico than the rest of the Nation, back to the
diversity of farmers.
New Mexico has an NRCS small acreage initiative. I think
modeling that is a great opportunity to look at the smaller
producer out there, again, back to the Agriculture Resilience
Act.
Then, you know, programs that could really support farming
families passing on the tradition to the next generation so
that it is actually sustainable, keeping farmland, farmland is
so important. I am seeing, in just my short life, in the last
10 years, the amount of farmland that is not being used and
then it is being developed for small ranch houses that are not
being farmed, I think poses a huge risk not only for our
environment but for our great tradition that is agriculture in
this wonderful nation.
Senator Marshall. I appreciate that and I appreciate the
peer-to-peer opportunities. I very seldom do a roundtable when
I do not learn something. We had some senior citizens and we
were talking about Medicare Advantage, and the best education
was not from the government. It was the seniors who had been
through the process before, saying, ``We met this roadblock and
we did this.'' I appreciate that.
Maybe I will close with Dr. Porterfield. Any other
efficiencies in your line?
Dr. Porterfield. Yes. Thank you, Senator. Two specific
recommendations, I think, to help NRCS capacity issues, which
is wrapped up in efficiencies, of course. One is that there is
a certification process for individuals, private businesses,
NGO's, et cetera, to become TSPs, or technical service
providers. There is a disincentive to that because there is a
cap on the rate that those TSPs are allowed to charge, and from
what I understand it is far below market rate. There is not an
incentive for individuals, for a private engineering firm to
get certified as a TSP because they cannot charge enough money
to make it worthwhile. Changing those caps can help other folks
add to the capacity of NRCS.
The second, again to go back to the contracting piece. I
pointed out in my testimony that changing the RCPP contracting
agreement from a partnership agreement to a grant agreement
will really help partners like DU, which you spoke to, and TU,
and many other NGO's acting as partners, get that technical
assistance to producers and help improve that capacity and get
those benefits to the ground more quickly.
Senator Marshall. I appreciate those comments, and I might
ask my staff or the Committee staff. TSP, is that the same type
of technical help we need with some of the carbon bill we did
earlier in the year that we are trying to get people certified
on giving the carbon credits for agriculture? I would just like
some followup on that, because it is the same problem and might
be two different programs.
So I want to say thank you again. I do need to run to
another committee. We are running back and forth and voting.
That is the way it happens on Thursdays, so thank you to
everybody for being here.
Senator Bennet. [Presiding.] Thank you so much, Senator
Marshall, for your leadership here, for participating, and we
will see you later. I appreciate it.
Just on the TSP point at the end, Dr. Porterfield, this is
not what I was going to ask about but I walked in on it. Could
you say a little bit more about why the current situation
limits the capacity that might be out there, and how lifting
those caps or changing those requirements, would add to
capacity? I mean, a lot of these projects are in, by
definition, rural parts of America, where it can be hard to
keep up with the cost of living, in some respects. Can you talk
about that a little bit?
Dr. Porterfield. Sure. Thank you, Senator, and I am more
than happy to get you more information on this after the
hearing too. I think that what Mr. Bruchez spoke to in the
difference in time for engineering is a piece of this as well,
between private engineers and the NRCS engineers. Allowing,
from my understanding and speaking with our field staff who are
on the ground working with these programs and with producers
every day, is that if there are an increased number of TSPs
available, that helps with things like engineering bottlenecks.
You have more people available to work on the engineering work,
for example, that needs to get done. With a disincentive with
below market rates that they can charge, there is not an
incentive for there to be that additional capacity from other
businesses and non-NRCS.
Senator Bennet. Could you also talk--and I am going to come
to Mr. Bruchez and ask him about this--you also said, in your
response to this question, that you thought that it might make
some sense to adjust the RCPP program so that it were more of a
grant program. Can you talk about that, about why that might
help?
Dr. Porterfield. Yes. I think to contrast RCPP, our two
Gunnison projects are a perfect example. The Gunnison RCPP was
awarded in September 2021, and it is not yet under a contract.
We are waiting on a supplemental agreement for technical
assistance right now. If that does not get done in the next
couple of months we might have to push our construction season
another year, to fall of 2024 instead of 2023. We were
originally planning fall of 2022. This is, at this point, an
18-month contracting process and it is not finished yet.
By contrast, the Conservation Innovation Grant, that
contracting process was done in three months because there is
not this kind of layer cake of contracting that has to happen
under a grant agreement. It expedites getting that money out
onto the grounds rather than getting stuck in this loop of
getting contracts done and going through review at the national
office, et cetera.
Senator Bennet. Mr. Bruchez, do you have a view on that as
well?
Mr. Bruchez. Yes. Thank you, Senator Bennet. When I think
of this RCPP, Trout Unlimited is the lead partner, and when a
producer would go to contract with the NRCS, unless that
producer shares their contract specifics with the lead partner,
Trout Unlimited, sometimes even as a lead partner they are not
even aware of what is happening financially until it comes back
through reporting from the NRCS. There is this data gap that
ends up occurring when, as a lead partner, I would think that
they would want to know, real time, how that is happening and
why it is happening.
I want to stress in that, too, within a program of a grant,
without Trout Unlimited, without American Rivers acting as
conservation partners for our ag work it would not be possible,
and I would state that it is very likely that my family and
many of our neighbors would not be around producing anymore,
based on the significance of this project. The amount of time
and strain that has put on those organizations, if there was a
grant program that allowed also for some staff time for these
organizations to be able to participate with us as partners in
this. Because I think no matter how much we tighten what a
program can look like when it is a large-scale regional
conservation partnership program--it is a big project--you
know, that is a way to fill that capacity perhaps without it
relying exclusively on NRCS staff.
Senator Bennet. Thank you. I have one more question for
you, Dr. Porterfield, and then I will go to the other
witnesses. I know you are familiar with the droughts that we
are facing in Colorado and Kansas, and as you noted in your
testimony the last farm bill had multiple provisions to help
producers, and water managers, to cope with water scarcity.
USDA has never fully implemented many of these provisions.
For example, an authority under the Conservation Reserve
Enhancement Program, the CREP Program, Senator Marshall and I
introduced a bill just earlier today--we can do two things at
once. We can be here and introduce a bill together--to improve
this program. I would just ask which specific programs could
USDA implement today that would be helpful in the context of
this drought that we are facing? What more can the agency do to
help protect water resources that are critical to fish habitat
and to agriculture?
Dr. Porterfield. Yes, thank you, Senator. I think one of
which I spoke to in my testimony, which is the Water Management
Entity Provision, under EQIP, that allows for the small to mid-
sized organizations, multi-producer irrigation infrastructure
to be eligible for EQIP funding. This gets to the organizations
like canal companies, ditch companies, acequias, land grant
universities that are under this provision, eligible for EQIP
funding to work on, do upgrades to that multi-producer
irrigation infrastructure. Under the 2018 Farm Bill there were
provisions that those projects will have drought resilience
benefits and environmental fish and wildlife habitat benefits.
So I think implementing that. The rollout for that has been
very slow and very unclear, but that is one, certainly, that
could be implemented now.
Senator Bennet. Thank you. And to Mr. Flickner and Mr.
Rutledge, you both have testified about your firsthand
experience with conservation programs that have both benefited
the environment and your bottom line. I wonder if you could
talk a little bit, before you go now, about the greatest
successes you have seen and the greatest challenges you have
seen. What can we fix to actually make it more likely that you
are going to have success in the future, be able to hold onto
that farm or that ranch for the next generation of Americans?
I should have called on somebody first, but you fight it
out. See what happens.
Mr. Flickner. Well, Senator, I guess probably what would be
my greatest success and the one that has gotten me to this
point is the fact that, like I said, 22 years ago we started
with this Israeli-based subsurface irrigation system and the
resulting efficiencies. I am blessed in our area that we are
part of the High Plains-the Equus Beds and not the Ogallala
Aguifer. I do have a reasonably good recharge ability in the
aquifer, and they say that if we can cut our water consumption
in the aquifer by 10 to 15 percent that it would be
sustainable, and actually may go back to where we were 15, 20
years ago. We are down about 15 feet in the last 20 years, but
we do not have a real depth of saturation either, so we have
got to watch that.
They say McPherson County has more subsurface drip
irrigation than any other county in the State of Kansas. We
were early on and subsurface drip irrigation proved to be
something that was very beneficial, and I think moving the
water conservation in the right direction. I think that would
probably be my greatest success up to this point.
The challenges always have been--and I addressed a little
bit before--the challenge farmers have is if you are an early
adopter you are doing some things out there that probably
should be done, from a conservation standpoint. Then you go, to
NRCS, and want to sign up for a program. Little assistance is
for what you have done. It is what you are going to do. You
have to implement a new practice. There is a joke going on in
the community that some of my neighbors are saying, well, we
will go out and get our moldboard plow out and go plow our no-
till ground so that we can end up with the carbon payment type
of a situation.
Senator Bennet. Right. Right.
Mr. Flickner. I think that whole challenge of where we are
going and how we are going to get there in terms of a funding
and staffing standpoint has to be the No. 1 frustration.
Senator Bennet. Mr. Ortiz, I am going to you and ask you
the same question after Mr. Rutledge. Go ahead.
Mr. Rutledge. Yes. I think one of the biggest successes,
really, a lot of the conservation programs have worked very
well, RCPP in particular with our partnership with DU. I think
that has, as Dr. Porterfield said, I think a lot of those
issues that have been there in that program can be addressed
administratively, or just removing some of those bureaucratic
layers instead of the wholesale grant, changing into that. I
think it can be fixed with smaller changes than that.
The CSP program was very successful for us, very helpful as
producers, you know, incentivizing people to put in new
conservation practices but also rewarding producers for doing
conservation practices that may cost money to do, to implement.
For instance, after the 2014 Farm Bill, the CSP program, in my
county alone, had over 100,000 acres enrolled, and brought in
$15 million to the county. That is a big economic boost to the
rural economy. After the 2018 Farm Bill, since that time our
contracts are now around 9,000 acres and $1 million. That is
the gutting that CSP program took in our area.
Senator Bennet. Thank you. Mr. Ortiz y Muniz?
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. Thank you, Senator Bennet. I would say
that in northern New Mexico, over the last 50 years, we have
seen so much culture loss, fallow land, you know, issues with
water and wildfire. I would have to say that I am blessed that
in the last 10 years I have had the honor to participate in an
agricultural sort of revolution that is happening in New
Mexico.
I think that the work that Don Bustos has done to bring
farmer training to our community, identifying the great
opportunity that we have having farmland, having an
agricultural tradition, that legacy, having access to surface
water and the infrastructure to deliver that to the farm,
really just takes a little bit of learning to jump into a
career that can be very fruitful.
Ten years ago there was one-tenth of the amount of farms
that there is now, just in the south valley of Albuquerque
alone. In northern New Mexico I have seen, you know, when 10
years ago we were 90 percent fallow land. We have seen a rise
where now we are about 70 percent.
Being a part of that and being able to teach and educate
and bring this conversation to this stage is a great honor for
us. We believe that being able to take our traditional and
Indigenous agricultural practices that are regenerative at its
core, couple that with biodynamic and organic agriculture and
identify what works, is, I think, the future.
Being able to, as a young person, look back at the legacy
of my grandfather and 10 generations or more of farming in my
community, and seeing our community struggle to maintain that
but also to see the incredible value of what it is my
colleagues are doing and where our country, where our world is
headed, I think that is part of my greatest success in life, is
to have leaned toward our land-based ways of living and knowing
it is the pathway for me for the rest of my life.
Senator Bennet. And while I have you here, representing
young farmers in New Mexico and across the country, if you were
thinking about changes you would want to see. It does not
necessarily have to be in the farm bill programs, but a couple
of changes you would want to see, on behalf of small farmers to
make sure that they can become the next, in the case of people
that have not yet farmed, become the beginning of another six
generations or can become the seventh or the eighth generation.
What are a couple of things that you would say are barriers
that we would like to work on getting rid of?
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. Yes. You know, I think that having
programs, or even just the application process tailored to the
small farm producer, making it easy for us to apply,
streamlining those processes would be incredibly helpful. I
think any program that allows us access to land. Many small
farmers are leasing land, borrowing land. Having access to land
ownership or a pathway to land ownership I think could be very
powerful.
And again, the peer-to-peer piece on small farming is
incredibly huge. I mean, we tied one or two farmers in northern
New Mexico, they created this incredible change, and that is a
peer-to-peer example that should be really modeled to help take
us into the future.
Senator Bennet. I mean, I really do think that is a way. If
you look in the past, that is the way that we have made the
most progress in American agriculture is one farmer starts
experimenting, starts to look at maybe making some change, and
then others start to look over the fence and say, ``What are
you doing, and maybe this is something we should be doing.''
I agree strongly with the view that other people have
expressed today, that one-size-fits-all approaches, when it
comes to American agriculture, does not make a lot of sense. We
are living at a moment when climate change is bearing down on
us, when drought is bearing down on us, at least in our part of
the country, and I think it is going to be really, important to
make sure that we are together, putting American agriculture in
a position to innovate, and to be able to measure, and to
decide, as Mr. Flickner was talking about, whether or not we
are really improving soil health or was it just an idea that
somebody had somewhere?
Because if you can get to a place where people are
persuaded that we can measure it, I think that is a place where
we are going to see producers all over this country grab ahold
of what they can do in their region around issues of soil
health. I think answering that question is going to be so vital
for the next generation of Americans and the generations coming
after that.
So I am going to let you all go with one final question,
which is if you had one thing--and it does not have to be about
the conservation programs, although that would be great, since
that is this Subcommittee--but if there is one thing you wanted
the Agriculture Committee to know going into this farm bill, on
behalf of the farmers and ranchers that are in your
communities, what is the one thing you would want this
Committee to know?
Why don't we start, Mr. Rutledge, how about with you and
then we will go to Dr. Porterfield, and come back around.
Mr. Rutledge. Thank you, Senator. I think the one thing
that I have mentioned earlier, I think the safety net is very
important for farmers. It is a risky business, capital-
intensive business, and if we are not in business then we are
not producing food, we are not conserving resources, we are not
in any of those practices, and we are not passing it on to the
next generation in a better condition than we got it.
Senator Bennet. Thank you. Dr. Porterfield?
Dr. Porterfield. Thank you, yes. I think, I mean, we have
discussed this ad nauseum today, but I really think it is
streamlining the bureaucracy, making the portal easier to use,
making the application process easier, the contracting process
easier. Anything that can get this money on the ground, where
it needs to be used and put to work, that will help us.
Senator Bennet. Mr. Bruchez?
Mr. Bruchez. Thank you, Senator Bennet. The takeaway would
be that we love to grow food and we love to take care of the
soil. Our regional NRCS office currently has two staff members,
when not very long ago they had up to eight. If we are going to
get projects on the ground that are going to have the kind of
meaning to withstand adapting to a modern climate, it is time
to gear up. Thank you.
Senator Bennet. Thank you. Mr. Flickner?
Mr. Flickner. Senator, I am going to hedge on that one. I
am going to tell you there are two very important components.
Senator Bennet. That is fine. You can share three or four.
Mr. Flickner. One is the risk management. There is no
doubt, as we have talked about before, as Mr. Rutledge has
addressed, the capital requirements in the business are very
large, which have implications for young and beginning farmers
too. How do they enter into that deal with the associated
costs? The safety net is vital.
Also on the conservation side, how do we conserve our
natural resources so that they are here today, and tomorrow it
is also just as important.
Senator Bennet. Mr. Ortiz y Muniz, you get the last word.
Mr. Ortiz y Muniz. Okay, thank you, and I just want to
express again gratitude to this body for giving all of us the
opportunity to speak today and to bring our stories to this
stage.
For me, I think I would like to see an authentic and deep,
committed investment into young, beginning, small, traditional,
Indigenous, land-based farmers of color by the USDA by the
USDA, by our government, by our Nation as a whole, to stand
behind our work to save our planet.
Senator Bennet. Thank you. I would like to thank all of you
for your testimony. I would like to thank you for suffering the
inconvenience of traveling here to Washington to help inform
this Subcommittee and broader Committee as we approach another
farm bill. One of the great things about this Committee is that
it is not a very partisan Committee. You know, we do not have
big partisan disagreements among Democrats and Republicans. We
do have regional disagreements, which one would expect, because
we have different, you know, where we have no water, Arkansas
has a ton. I happen to know, although they do pronounce
Arkansas the way we pronounce it in Colorado, which is
different from how they pronounce it in Kansas, not
surprisingly, but with emphasis on the Kansas.
I do think hearing the disparate voices from people from
different regions in the country that are facing different
things, and being able to get your suggestions firsthand about
what we can do to make things better for people, that is our
intent, even though sometimes it does not seem like it. That is
what we are trying to do. And I think it is one thing to do
your own listening sessions in your own State. You hear a lot.
I certainly have learned a tremendous amount over the last
decade from our producers in Colorado, and tried to bring their
voices here. Being able to bring competing perspectives is also
very, very helpful.
I do think we were able, and you were able to tease out
some issues and some challenges that are entirely consistent
with what I have heard, in the listening sessions I have had,
one after another after another. And my hope is that we are
going to get to a point where by the time the next farm bill
rolls around we will be having a different discussion because
we will address some of the issues that you raised today.
So I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, for being
here. Thank you to my Ranking Member, Senator Marshall, for his
partnership, both on the CREP bill that we just introduced
today, and for his partnership in this hearing.
I would say to my fellow members of the Committee, we would
ask that any additional statements or questions you may have
for the record be submitted to the Committee clerk five
business days from today, or 5 p.m. next Thursday, April 27,
2023.
And this hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:16 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]
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A P P E N D I X
April 20, 2023
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