06/30/06 CSP reporting good numbers

CSP reporting good numbers. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Remembering back to school getting a good grade was, at least for me, a bit of a struggle. To get a 99 percent&well that was something. The latest numbers have been returned by the Natural Resources Conservation Service on the CSP or Conservation Security Payment contracts. Ninety nine per cent of all CSP contracts signed in 2004 were modified, increasing conservation and incentive payments. Bruce Knight, Natural Resources Conservation Service Chief says the recent modifications fit the conservation and incentive goals of CSP. KNIGHT: We last year gave those folks who already had contract that we signed in 2004 a chance to modify their contracts to give us a direction of where they're going. And we saw a 32 percent increase in stewardship payments. Folks going from tier one, some of them jumping all the way up to tier three. The increase is due to modifications such as advancing to a higher CSP tier, adding enhancements for improvements in environmental performance above the CSP minimums, and in some cases adding eligible acreage. CSP is an innovative, voluntary conservation program that supports ongoing stewardship of private, agricultural working lands and rewards those producers who are meeting the highest standards of conservation and environmental management on their operations. Begun in 2004 in 18 watersheds, CSP today is available in 280 watersheds nationwide. Knight says that they are working to make it easier for good stewards to get even better. KNIGHT: We're trying to put incentives in there for folks for even the ones who are good stewards today to be even better stewards in the future and one of the things it has done is to allow people to modify their contracts. It is significant because we're seeing those same stewardship payments went from a little over 5 million dollars to about 7 million dollars. We would like to be able to do very similar contract modifications with 2005. We would like to be able to do that in the very near future. We certainly want to continue to do this; we're seeing a great return for the taxpayer. Folks are committed to conservation and committed to conservation improvements. And we see that as something that dovetails well with the theme of CSP of reward the best incentivise the rest. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.