The Not-So-Secret Conservation Service

Remarks by Bruce I. Knight, Chief, Natural Resources Conservation Service, at the NRCS National Earth Team/Public Affairs Training Conference, New Orleans, LA
August 6, 2003

Thank you, Terry (Bish). Good afternoon, everyone. I am pleased to be here today and to have a chance to talk to two groups who are very important to the success of conservation on America’s private lands – our Public Affairs Specialists and our Earth Team Coordinators.

I talked at length to the Earth Team Coordinators yesterday, so I hope they will forgive me if I focus a bit more on the Public Affairs Specialists today. But, what I am going to say involves both groups, because both groups have a role in laying to rest one of my most un-favorite images – the entity referred to in jest over the years as the Secret Conservation Service.

I’m sure most of you have heard about the Secret Conservation Service. That was a name given many years ago to the Soil Conservation Service in recognition of the fact that few people other than our customers had ever heard of us. We have all agreed for years that conservation is too important to be kept secret. Well, conservation is more important than ever. And, thanks to the farm bill, more conservation is being done on private lands than ever before. If ever there was a time to tell the world about our secret, now is the time. And you are the people who can do it.

Most of you know that I spent much of my career on Capitol Hill and as a lobbyist. When it comes to lobbying, the key factors are being credible, informative, and persuasive. Now, as executive branch employees, we can’t engage in lobbying, but we use these same communications tools to keep people informed and help them understand what we do.

Now that I’m chief, who do I have to keep informed? About 11,500 employees, for starters; many partner organizations; officials at the Department Of Agriculture, the White House, and other Federal agencies; members of Congress; local, State, and Tribal governments; a couple of million farmers and ranchers; and the American people.

I believe that, as Chief, if we make the conservation message clear enough, people will understand how important conservation is and act accordingly. That is a belief that embodies the dream of Hugh Hammond Bennett and now drives you as Public Affairs Specialists and Earth Team Coordinators.

Here in NRCS, we have well over a hundred people doing public affairs work and at least one Earth Team Coordinator in every state recruiting and managing volunteers. The Earth Team has been able to enlist the help of more than 38,000 volunteers, who performed a record-breaking one million hours of volunteer work last year. That translates into $17 million in volunteer work on behalf of conservation.

The NRCS Public Affairs Team – that’s you all – went to work informing producers of the conservation provisions of the 2002 farm bill. The result was that enough farmers and ranchers applied for farm bill funds last year and this year to fully commit $2-1/2 billion in farm bill funds. And so many applied that we have significant backlogs in all programs.

That’s quite an accomplishment!

These successes help make NRCS less of a secret, but this is no time to take a break. America’s investment in private lands conservation will continue to grow, and, along with this, we will have growing needs for communications and marketing. Here are some things we need to do as communicators in the coming months:

1. Market a vision of NRCS as a catalyst for conservation – the enabler of private lands conservation on the ground.

2. Make sure every farmer and rancher, including those in traditionally underserved segments of the producer population, have access to farm bill programs and conservation technical assistance.

3. Provide transparence in our priorities and by placing them on the Internet. We are making our EQIP rankings available on the web, and we have placed the Field Office Technical Guide on the web. In today’s information age, persuasion and influence lies with sharing not holding information. For example, we need to publicize the national and local priorities, so farmers and ranchers can better focus their applications to address those priorities.

4. Help management communicate with our employees. Our internal customers are every bit as important as our external customers. You are key players in communicating change in both directions.

5. And finally, tell all Americans the benefits of private lands conservation – to really put an end to the Secret Conservation Service.

We have a Public Affairs presence in every State, Puerto Rico, and the Pacific Basin. We need to use this presence – your talents – more strategically, just as the entire NRCS and all of its partners need to be very strategic to succeed in implementing the 2002 farm bill and our larger conservation agenda.

Some features of an overall communications strategy are already in place for us to build on.


A Consistent Visual Image

The simplest form of communication is to have a consistent, recognizable visual image. That’s why the Headquarters staff has been working to create a standardized visual image for NRCS. This effort includes going back to the time-honored raindrop logo that served us well for so many years. We also have been modernizing and standardizing our presence on the Web.

I want to thank all of you who have been involved in this effort. Through your hard work, our Web sites now clearly represent the many services offered by a single agency NRCS, which is part of a larger whole – the Department of Agriculture. Similar standards for our print products are being developed.


Clear and Consistent Messages

The next strategy in communications is to have frequent, clear, and consistent messages. As you may have noticed, we have pursued the press a lot more aggressively in the past year. We made a special effort to be timely and consistent in the messages we put out about the 2002 farm bill. The members of the farm bill communications team came from the NRCS public affairs community, and they are doing a great job.

Another way we are trying to make our messages clear and consistent is by posting speeches and articles by President Bush, Secretary Veneman, and other USDA leaders, and our own NRCS leaders on the Web site. I hope these speeches and articles are helping bring consistency to our messages across the nation – and making your job as communicators easier.

We will be calling on some of you from time to time to help develop clear and consistent messages on emerging issues. And we need all of your help in being alert to obsolete or inconsistent messages in all of our communications products at the local, state, and national levels.


Outreach Activities

Another important part of our overall communications effort is outreach. We have stepped up our outreach activities to make sure all segments of the producer community have access to NRCS services. Good outreach is the key to diversity, and diversity is the key to fairness.

We have tended to treat outreach and public affairs as separate tasks in NRCS, but, in reality, it is impossible to tell where one leaves off and the other begins. Secretary Veneman instituted a series of farm bill outreach sessions around the country to make sure all segments of the producer community have access to farm bill information. Many of you were involved in these sessions, and I thank you for your contributions to their success.

Several of you in pilot states helped reach out to producers to find out what they wanted out of our Technical Service Provider process. I thank you for your help in creating a workable process.

We will need to do outreach in the near future to make sure all segments of the producer community have the information they need to use Technical Service Providers to help them reach their conservation goals.

Outreach is also important in our recruitment of employees and volunteers. We must have a workforce and a volunteer force that reflect the diversity of our customer base.

Part of our farm bill outreach was to translate farm bill materials into Spanish. I know many of the States have materials translated into Spanish and other languages, and we are working on some new Spanish translations in National Headquarters

Expansion of our customer base is so important to me that I have hired two new special assistants to the Chief to help me. Taylor Oldroyd is working with Communications on marketing efforts. Taylor comes to us from Rural Development. Dave Gagner is providing outreach to wildlife groups and other organizations. Dave formerly worked for Ducks Unlimited.

Taylor and Dave are looking for marketing opportunities nationally, but I also need the Public Affairs Specialists everywhere to keep their eyes open and capitalize on as many opportunities as possible to get our message out. When you have a success story, please let Terry Bish or Taylor know right away, so we can tell others that the word is getting out.

The Department, the White House, the Congress, and many others benefit from knowing what we accomplish. After all, success breeds success.


Accountability

Finally, good communications is based on good accountability. The opportunities presented by the 2002 farm bill come with increased accountability. In addition, this Administration established a set of Presidential Management Initiatives: strategic management of human capital, competitive sourcing, improved financial performance, expanding e-government, and budget and program integration.

The management initiatives are key for you all in knowing how to boost the marketability of your efforts. We are being challenged to link future budget levels to performance – or results of implementing each program.

We do not always have measurable results for our public affairs activities. The Earth Team does a pretty good job of tracking results. We need to do a better job of tracking our Public Affairs accomplishments.

I give you a lot of credit for encouraging thousands of farmers and ranchers to apply for farm bill programs, but we don’t really have much in the way of measures to back that up.


Conclusion

By continuing to strengthen our visual identity in all of our communications projects, by continuing to develop clear and consistent messages, by expanding our outreach efforts, and by strengthening our measurement and accountability, we can build an even stronger communications program and maybe even – finally, after all these years – put the Secret Conservation Service cliché to rest. The new NRCS will, in fact, be known as the enablers of conservation. Thank you.