State Conservationist's Corner

June 2006

Where do we go from here?

By Cecil B. Currin

No one builds a house without a blueprint or starts on a 500-mile journey without a map. Whatever we want to accomplish, we need to begin with a vision and proceed with a plan.

NRCS is no different. If we want to preserve America’s natural resources and get conservation on the land, we need a vision for what needs to be done and a practical plan to bring our vision into reality. And we have one.

Over the past year, a national team has been discussing where conservation on working agricultural lands needs to go in the years—and even decades—ahead. Input was sought from NRCS employees, partners, farmers, agricultural organizations and academics.

The result was the agency’s new strategic plan: Productive Lands, Healthy Environment.

As part of the strategic planning process, NRCS has adopted a new mission statement: helping people help the land. This phrase succinctly and clearly tells what we’re all about: working with landowners to preserve and enhance the natural resources we all depend upon.

The new strategic plan also outlines the agency’s vision for the future: productive lands—healthy environment. It’s a clear recognition of our focus on working agricultural lands and our interest in preserving productivity while safeguarding and promoting environmental benefits for all Americans.

In implementing our goals for the future, NRCS will be guided by three overarching strategies: cooperative conservation, the watershed approach and a market-based approach. Our guiding principles are service, partnership and technical excellence.

Five business lines – groups of similar products and services we provide to support and advance natural resource conservation – are identified in the strategic plan. These business lines include:

• Conservation planning and technical consultation
• Conservation implementation
• Natural resources inventory and assessment
• Natural resource technology transfer, and
• Financial assistance

To reach our vision of productive lands and a healthy environment, six goals have been established — three foundation goals and three venture goals.

The foundation goals cover traditional NRCS concerns:

• high quality, productive soils;
• clean and abundant water;
• and healthy plant and animal communities.

The venture goals focus on emerging resource concerns related to current economic and demographic trends:

• air quality,
• an adequate energy supply and
• preserving working farms and ranch lands.

The NRCS Strategic Plan is a solid blueprint that will drive us forward, under the 2002 farm bill and the farm bills of the future. At the same time, there is sufficient flexibility in the plan to enable us to adjust to the inevitable changes that will occur—including whatever the next farm bill brings—and to recognize local priorities.

Chief Bruce Knight has encouraged all NRCS staff to become familiar with the plan. I would also encourage our partners to review the plan, as well. Each Massachusetts field office has several copies available for review; we also have a small supply in the state office in Amherst.

Or, you can order hard copies from the LANDCARE office free of charge by calling 1-888-526-3227, e-mailing landcare@usda.gov or on-line at http://landcare.sc.egov.usda.gov/. 

NRCS now has a plan to bring to fruition our vision of productive lands and a healthy environment.

Download the Strategic Plan in PDF format:
Productive Lands, Healthy Environment―NRCS Strategic Plan 2005-2010 (6 MB)

This document requires Adobe Acrobat.

Additional related files are available at http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/about/strategicplan/index.html.

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