Free Conservation Plan
Free Conservation PlanI'm Lacy Gray with Washington Ag Today.
NRCS Washington is currently offering a free conservation plan on private land in Washington State through the Voluntary Natural Resources Conservation Plan sign-up. Peter Bautista, Program Manager for the NRCS State Conservational Assistance Program, explains how this plan differs from others.
BAUTISTA: This plan looks at all your operations within your farm or ranch, or operation what have you, it could be a tree farm, it could also be an aquaculture operation. What we'll do is look at your entire operation, look at all your resource concerns, identify and access them using our tools and come up with the assessment of how you're doing with the planning criteria.
Bautista says that conservation plans such as this give producers a snap-shot of the resource concerns on their land, help them to make decisions, and will also give them a better chance of gaining funding for conservation efforts in the future.
BAUTISTA: We'll be providing you a free plan. The plan will be comprehensive; it will address your resource concerns and determine the level of quality that those resources exist currently. If improvements are recommended, we'll provide you a list of practices and alternatives to making improvements to your operations.
The sign-up will be open until March 20. The simplified application form is available on-line or producers can apply at their local NRCS office.
That's Washington Ag Today.
I'm Lacy Gray with the Ag Information Network of the West.