Healthy watersheds are vital to ecosystems, agriculture and water users. Preventing erosion and protecting water quality are important responsibilities. Farmers use many strategies to protect their soil, and sometimes these efforts can be aided by partners and consultants including the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), formerly known as the Soil Conservation Service (SCS).
Conservation assistance is available through NRCS offices across the country – in every state and nearly every county. Local field staff work directly with farmers and ranchers to initiate or improve forage systems that strengthen soil health and reduce erosion. In Montana, State Conservationist Gayle Barry, State Resource Conservationist Joel LaLiberty and State Soil Scientist Nathan Parry are part of a team delivering the technical and financial assistance that supports these efforts. The programs they administer are available nationwide to any producer seeking voluntary conservation support.
“The NRCS helps farmers, ranchers, forest landowners and tribal nations make the land healthier and work one-on-one with landowners to help them achieve their conservation goals,” says Barry. “Our motto is ‘Helping people help the land."
NRCS staff begin by learning a landowner’s conservation goals and understanding what they hope to accomplish. From there, they can bring forward technical practices, applied expertise and program funding – through farm bill programs and newer efforts like the Regenerative Pilot Program – to support those goals. Participation is always voluntary; landowners initiate the process by contacting their local NRCS office.
LaLiberty and Parry have spent years working with producers across Montana.
“Our local field offices are points of contact with people who can visit with a farmer or rancher to talk about their concerns,” says LaLiberty.
Then they can work together to come up with a conservation plan or strategy to address those resource concerns. One of the strengths is the ability to reach people in rural settings and have a network of staff who can collaboratively develop solutions.
Young cover crop seedlings emerge through last season’s residue in a no‑till field, demonstrating soil‑protecting practices supported by NRCS conservation programs. Image courtesy of the Montana NRCS.
In situations where vegetation is gone, soil and nutrient movement can quickly become a concern. The five soil health principles are soil armor (keeping the ground covered), minimizing soil disturbance, maximizing plant diversity, continual live plant/roots and incorporating animal impact (grazing animals).
“We’ve done a lot of work relocating corrals and feedlots away from surface and groundwater areas to protect water quality,” adds LaLiberty. “We can help set up a corral system that’s more usable for their operation and better for the environment at the same time."
Winter feeding areas can also have a large concentration of nutrients from fed hay and livestock manure. On frozen ground, it can run off in the spring when snow melts and water flows across that field; a lot of those nutrients are washed off-site.
Wind erosion can impact overgrazed pastures or farming regions where fields are tilled and left without cover.
“In some places, we can establish perennial vegetation to help keep soil in place," says LaLiberty. "We offer management practices on cropland such as no-till, reduced till, nutrient management and other things that can increase residue, improve crop production and keep the soil in place.”
Cover crops benefit soil health, reduce erosion and provide forage. Farmers who don’t have animals can livestock partner with ranch neighbors to bring animals to graze cover crops. Cover crops can be expensive, but if they can also provide forage, it can help offset the cost.
NRCS programs can provide financial assistance for fencing, stock water systems and other practices. The NRCS has helped some operations get started with virtual fencing – there is a lot of increased management potential.
NRCS conservation planners consider all aspects of the land.
“This includes rainfall, soil, health of the land, the plants they are growing, etc.,” says Barry. “Then we recommend possibilities like fences and stock water, but always incorporate those with management. When you put these structures on the land, you also have to commit to manage the resource, like moving cattle rotationally.”
Every individual operator has different levels of labor and resources to put toward a grazing management plan. The best scenario is that the implemented practices are good for the land and for the farmer’s quality of life. Each producer chooses options that suit their circumstances and time frame.
The NRCS is also implementing the new USDA Regenerative Pilot Program that began this year as a partnership between the USDA and Department of Health and Human Services to restore America’s natural strength – soil, water and natural vitality – by empowering producers with simple outcome-based tools.
Producers observe cattle performance to guide daily grazing management decisions. Image courtesy of the Montana NRCS.
“We look at regenerative agriculture as a conservation management approach that emphasizes natural resources through improved soil health, water management and natural vitality for the productivity and prosperity of American agriculture,” says Barry.
Nationally, $700 million in funds is dedicated to the farmer-first Regenerative Pilot Program through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), plus technical assistance. Participants in the pilot program will work toward increasing forage production, reducing erosion and improving soil health.
“It puts the farmer first – to benefit from a single application and reduce some of the red tape; we want to make conservation easier to access,” she adds.
The Regenerative Pilot Program supports the administration’s Make America Healthy Again initiative, improving access to American-grown food. Consumers want to know where their food comes from, that it is healthy and know that it will help a farmer if they buy it.
“One of the things we ask farmers to do is take a soil test at the beginning of the five-year contract and at the end," says Barry. "We’ll have an outcome report and be able to give farmers tangible credit for conservation improvement."
Parry adds that one of the required practices for the pilot program is CEMA 216. CEMA stands for Conservation Evaluation and Monitoring Activities – it enables producers to hire qualified individuals to take soil tests, looking at organic content and how much is active carbon – food for the soil biology.
“We look at the carbon-to-nitrogen ratio, along with soil respiration, which is also an indication of the biology – microorganisms in the soil," says Parry. "The wet aggregate stability test lets us know the soil texture and its ability to hold water, and how quickly that moisture moves down through that soil profile."
They also look at pH and water-holding capacity – looking at the physical, biological and chemical makeup of that soil and how it changes in five years with management and then hope to see an improvement.
There are many NRCS tools and educational resources to help producers.
“We also have YouTube videos showing conservation at work or showing someone who did a certain project,” adds Barry. “Even though we are speaking for Montana, a lot of this applies to other parts of the country as well.”
Other resources
Jerome Faulkner works in the NRCS office in Washington, D.C.; currently, he is the acting Idaho state conservationist. The NRCS has a field office technical guide that lists the practices recommended to landowners and producers to assist with conservation, depending on their natural resource goals in their particular state.
The practices offered and their descriptions are listed on the USDA-NRCS website.
NRCS offers both technical and financial assistance through its two largest working‑lands programs – the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) and the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) – helping producers address resource concerns and strengthen long‑term stewardship.
