NRCS Strategic Plan focuses on "Productive Lands--Healthy Environment"

By:    Ginger Murphy
         NRCS Maryland State Conservationist

I am pleased to announce the release of the new NRCS Strategic Plan for 2005-2010 which sets the direction for the agency and describes our conservation priorities and goals. I served on the partnership committee which created the Strategic Plan and can say with pride that this forward-looking and far-reaching plan challenges us to reformulate some past approaches and develop and adopt new approaches.

The Strategic Plan will guide NRCS in implementing key overarching strategies, managing agency business lines, meeting customer needs, and developing and strengthening capacity to achieve our mission goals.

The plan was developed with input from a broad cross-section of our employees, partners and customers. Over the past year, we’ve been discussing where conservation on working agricultural lands needs to go in the years—and even decades—ahead. We sought input from employees through a survey. We’ve met with partners and farmers and ranchers. We’ve consulted agricultural organizations and academics.

The charge was clear: be bold. Look ahead not just 5 years, but 10, 15, 20 years. Develop a clear vision and an agenda to make it a reality. Toward that end, we took a close and careful look at our customers. What landowners have we been working with? And who should we be working with in the future? We considered resource concerns—where do the problems lie? What are the solutions? What are the strategies we need to employ to make it all happen?

For the first time, we defined a suite of five agency business lines and 15 associated products and services that we provide to our customers. Now we are ready to share that plan and begin putting it in practice.

Every office will be receiving printed copies. The Strategic Plan is also available on our website – www.md.nrcs.usda.gov. The plan focuses on NRCS' mission of helping people help the land, using three strategies: cooperative conservation, a watershed approach and a market-based approach. We've settled on three foundation goals—traditional NRCS concerns:

• High quality, productive soils;
• Clean and abundant water; and
• Healthy plant and animal communities.

We've also identified three venture goals that take aim at emerging resource issues:

• Air quality;
• An adequate energy supply; and
• Preserving working farms and ranch lands.

As we move ahead, completing the work under the 2002 farm bill and looking forward to the responsibilities of the next farm bill, everything we do every day should contribute to achieving these goals.