Help Improve Conservation Programs for Organic Farmers
Submit Comments on
NRCS Conservation Practice Standards
Do you participate in a NRCS Conservation Program or work with farmers who do? The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) is requesting comments on their conservation practice standards for NRCS Conservation Programs (such as EQIP or CSP) by August 11, 2009. (Practice standards are the NRCS technical guidances for their conservation activities [e.g. contour buffer strips or hedgerow plantings]. See this link for more info.) OFRF is working with the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition and other organizations to submit comments to the NRCS on their conservation practice standards in order to make them more accessible to organic farmers and ranchers.
If you have an NRCS contract or applied for one, we want to hear from you about which conservation practice standards worked (or didn’t). Specifically, what practice standards were used in your contract? Did they make sense for your organic operation? Were there practice standards you wanted to use but couldn’t? Why? Did the payment rates accurately reflect the costs of implementation?
More generally, do you find the practice standards to be flexible enough to work for organic systems? Do you think the practice standards appropriately reflect the conservation opportunities that organic agriculture creates?
Please email us with any general or specific comments you have on NRCS practice standards by August 6th, and we will incorporate them into our comments. Send them to Tracy Lerman, OFRF Policy Organizer, at tracy@ofrf.org. Or submit your own comments. Read the Federal Register notice requesting comments for more information and providing instructions on how to submit comments.
If you have any questions, please call Tracy at (831) 426-6606 x 108.
More Info
NRCS Conservation Programs info page
NRCS Conservation Practices general info page
NRCS Conservation Practice Standards technical info page
Federal Register notice requesting comments on NRCS Practice Standards
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