Farm Bill: CSP

The Conservation Security Program provides financial and technical assistance to promote the conservation and improvement of soil, water, air, energy, plant and animal life on tribal and working lands (cropland, grassland, prairie, pasture, range, and forests). The CSP identifies and rewards those farmers and ranchers who are meeting the highest standards of conservation and environmental management on their operations.

For CSP, NRCS decided on a staged, watershed-based implementation process. This was done for economic and administrative reasons (reducing the costs of processing a large number of applications for which funding was not available).

The potential for improving wildlife habitat across the landscape through the CSP is enormous. By using the watershed approach, states can target locally or nationally significant wildlife species or habitat types that are in critical need of improvement – and by concentrating the management activities in selected watersheds, the benefits can be far greater than if the same management activities were scattered across a state.

**The Kind bill lifts the current cap on CSP and makes the program continuously available to all farmers and ranchers who satisfy the highest levels of environmental performance.