 But off by again, just saying, thank you all for participating and coming and joining our meeting today. I hope everybody is safe after the series of storms we've had over the last week. And as we continue to see some of this weather come through, I hope we all have the opportunity to stay safe through this. We do have a couple of opportunities just today, or not just today, but today I have the opportunity to introduce 2 new members of the city. I'd like to go ahead and give both Nikki Gronley and Steve Dick an opportunity to introduce themselves. Nikki Gronley is our new director for the world development. Nikki, would you like to jump on and introduce yourself? Hello there, I'm coming to you all from lovely Oklahoma and Cedar Shores, where real development is having a two day state meeting to work on goals and strategy. But I come from the broadband industry and was familiar with real development and the work they do from that side of thing. And I'm excited to join this group and also get to know your group better. Perfect. Thank you so much, Nikki. Really happy to have you on board. Steve, would you like to take an opportunity? Sure. Thank you, Tony. Hi, my name is Steve Dick. I'm the new SED for the Farm Service Agency. I come to this organization the last 17 years working for a farm coalition called Ag United for South Dakota, but also come to it as a producer aspect from a Cook County. So certainly a lot of I also was in Oklahoma last week, so we got the room already there for you, Nikki. SEDASCO, the employees organization, had their convention there last week. So certainly appreciate the opportunity to introduce myself and certainly appreciate the work that NRCS does in the state technical committee. So I know later on, you're going to hear from Owen Fagerhag, our NRCS, our CRP experts who deals a lot with your staff. So thank you, Tony. Perfect. Thank you so much, Steve. So really excited just to have a full team with USDA here in South Dakota. Really awesome opportunity. So I'm just glad we're fully staffed. We also have one of the opportunities to actually be face to face, at least here with the NRCS staff. And while we are holding a virtual event this time, our next meeting that we're going to be holding is going to be a hybrid. We'll have everybody will have different locations that will be we will be gathering, but we still will have remote or virtual options available. Because we do appreciate everybody who's been calling in. I know that travel and distance can be a challenge for some folks. Yeah. So again, thank you very much. And we also, let's see if I can, your mom. Thank you. We have a couple of our representatives or representatives of our representatives here. So, Ryan, would you like to introduce yourself? Sure. Thanks for the opportunity. I'm Ryan Donnelly with Senator Thune's office in the DC office working on ag and conservation policy to start. You know, really start to hear about the, all the damage throughout the state last week and our office is willing and able to help as we can as you're running into issues that through USDA, where we can help. We are happy to do so. And then, you know, we're also continuing to work on the farm bill, trying to get ahead with some roundtables in the state focused on various titles of the farm bill and working on getting some marker votes. Out there. So, at the end of March, Senator Thune introduced a CRP bill to try to fix some implementation issues with the 2018 farm bill. And to make grazing more readily available for CRP contract holders. And then just last week, he joined Senator Kloschar from Minnesota in introducing the ag innovation act. And I will shoot you guys some more information on that here shortly, but the idea is to have USDA do a better job of collecting conservation data across the various agencies and storing it in a secure data center. So that researchers, we think of South Dakota state and other trusted research partners of the department can utilize that data in a manner that maintains producer confidentiality to determine which conservation practices are having the most benefit. So producers are aware of, you know, the effects of cover crops, no till other other conservation practices and, you know, the impact they have on improving soil health and ultimately reducing their risk and improving their profitability, especially right now, as we think about the concerns of food shortages, it'd be helpful to know what what practices have the most benefit. So we've got a lot of support on that bill from the conservation community and we'll welcome any input you have on either the CRP or the ag innovation effort and looking forward to working with you all on the farm bill. Feel free to send ideas my way. We'll be interested to get feedback from you all. Thanks. Thank you, Ryan. And thank you for being so supportive of agriculture across the state. Really do appreciate that. And also just for being so open with the information. So this process that we're doing today, while we have a lot of information we're going to be sharing throughout our meeting today. The locally led process is a critical part of what natural resources conservation service does. We need to hear from our partners and from our from our producers across the state. And again, while we're presenting a lot of information today, we also want feedback. This is a process that we want to hear what you have to say. We want to take those, take that feedback. And if we have the opportunity to incorporate that into our processes here, this is what one of our big goals are. So please, as we're going through our presentation, if you have comments or feedback, we're listening. We're listening and we want to hear what you have to say. So with that, I'd like to go ahead and just continue to move down the agenda. Next on the agenda, we have a farm service agency update, including conservation reserve program with. Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Tony. Just a few things wanted to touch on. So I guess first off, we've got a few things in the works on the conservation side. We concluded the general CRP sign up. We had 20,909 acres offered and there were 14,063 acres accepted. So about a 41 42% success rate on our general CRP sign ups. Our grassland sign up 204 just concluded on the 13th. We do have some residual work to do here through the end of this week. But nationwide, we had 566,000 acres applied on offered under the grassland CRP yet to be ranked. So we don't know what our successes on that will be. But I'm not 100% positive, but at one time we were leading the nation on offered acres under the grassland CRP sign up. So a lot of interest in that conservation still very prominent within South Dakota. We do have in addition some extra some additional programs coming at us. Mark Norton with Game Fish and Parks may speak to this later on in the discussion or maybe wants to weigh in on it now. But we do have a CRP initiative on the Sue River watershed area that's been proposed. That process is in a comment period on the NEPA analysis and in the affected counties any producers that would like to comment on impacts to that. There's information available at the county level where they can go in and be part of that comment period. But that crap initiative is being lifted and will in essence mirror the Jim River watershed or James River watershed crap that we currently have. So more opportunities for participants in that front. I'm going to segue into the emergency conservation program and then come back to one CRP item that the state tech committee does need to to make some action on. But just an update. Currently we've got seven counties. Mostly west of the river the Missouri River corridor that are currently implementing emergency conservation program for drought. Recently you know things have improved we've been seeing some rains throughout the state but we do have some impacted counties utilizing the ECP program for drought. And then most recently as of last Thursday the ratio that went through the eastern part of the state. It's been determined and applied on we're waiting for concurrence. But basically we did every county from the 281 highway corridor and east it affected 32 counties. We've asked for a blanket approval to implement debris removal. Conservation structure restoration shelter belt field windbreak restoration and potential fence restoration or replacement. So very impactful that storm that went through. The debris removal just in kind of summary is going to help. Remove debris that was deposited on farmland to make it possible to be farmed again. And in some instances can help with cleanup on the actual farmstead. If the debris is. Is directly impacting the farming operation. So an example that I give would be the machine shed or the pull bar. And collapsed on the planting equipment. To remove that plant that debris so that that planter can be freed up and utilized in the farming operation. Not going to be wholesale where we're going to be able to touch every aspect of that farmstead but would help with some of that cleanup. So lastly. We have a notice that we're going to be able to remove the entire farmstead. We're going to be able to touch every aspect of that farmstead but would help with some of that cleanup. So lastly. We have a notice that was issued. Back in late April. Which announced the request for newer modified. Safe acres for wildlife enhancement proposals what we call safe. And we have two safe project areas in the state one is the pheasant safe which is mostly East River. And then we have a West River safe initiative which focuses on the sage grouse and some upland nesting birds west of the river. The notice requires that all safe proposals be revisited to conform with a new format. And I did share the notice with Kathy Irving and I have expectations that that will be sent out to the entire state technical committee. But it basically gives an outline framework of how our safe proposal has to conform. We don't expect to change any of the inner workings of our current safe proposal is just more of a. To conform to the new parameters. Mark Norton with game fishing parks is going to be helping. Massage our current proposal to meet those standards. And I guess what I'm in front of the state tech committee today asking is that we have authority. To convene the CRP subcommittee to meet the June 24th deadline. Of this submission of this new. Reorganizing of our current proposal. I don't know how Tony or Jessica you want to proceed with that if it's just. It's been talked about and that's how we're going to proceed or if there needs to be a vote or. I guess I'll open it up for any discussion or comments on what I've talked about and maybe some direction on where to go with this safe proposal. How what was the last time I don't know if we've had a CRP subcommittee meeting since I became the SRC 0 1. You know a truce you know I know there's numerous players we've had some. With our state priority area boundaries. We convened the NFCS game fishing parks pheasants forever. I think DNR was a part of that with the water quality piece so I've had kind of some conservation groups come together with input and then that's been kind of utilized for the subcommittee. But I don't I'm kind of with you Jessica I'm not sure that I have a I can pull this list and say this is our subcommittee group. So again. You know once we get this finalized between Mark and myself it would be getting it in front of that group. For concurrence with our also our state FSA committee has to weigh in on it so we've got some chores ahead of us prior to the 24th of June. Sure so would it be best for this group if they wanted to be a member of that CRP subcommittee to just email Kathy Irving. I believe that was acceptable and then we can do. An email poll once we get it finalized. Prior to submission. Sounds great Owen. Thank you. Any other questions for myself before I. Turn my camera. Mike off. Oh and this is Brandon I just got a on that E. C. P. for the question. Oh and this is Brandon I just got a on that E. C. P. for debris removal or removal of like buildings on top of equipment. Is that something that and I think we'll probably end up getting this question. You know some of that works already happened. People are cleaning stuff up already. Can they go back. We need to be made aware. And I'm waiting on some national office guidance but we're also exploring trying to secure a programmatic 850 for our environmental clients. And I'm hopeful that if that's received that we can do this after the fact approval. But we are waiting for the final say so on that but we realize that you know this happened last Thursday and we're at. Wednesday. Folks it's prime planting season so a lot of this stuff was already being taken place. But we're going to help where we can within the program provisions and hopefully. Help. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you much Owen. I really appreciate your update. Next on the agenda. We have Kent Bleeger with the soil health update. Okay good morning everyone can you hear me okay. We can hear you yet. I'm going to share my screen. Okay is that presentation coming through okay. It is yes. Okay good. Okay so good morning everyone. I'm Kent Bleeger state soil health specialist with the NRCS here in South Dakota and this morning we're going to wrap up our. No till doesn't work and neither do cover crops. No till doesn't work. So if you've been attending these meetings on a regular basis over the past year and a half or so you know we've been doing this series and. You know I really have the title here just to catch people's attention and it goes back to my field office days of working with producers. You know and they often say well no till doesn't work I tried that for a few years and doesn't work or I tried cover crops last year and those don't work. And so I'm really just trying to get people's attention. It's not that I don't believe those things don't work but I do believe they work if they're implemented following these principles. And so the series is really about soil health principles and then we go into a little bit of depth on each principle with each series. And today we're going to talk about livestock integration. This is one that is one of my favorite principles to to discuss. I think it's one that we sometimes have troubles with producers adopting or they're not interested in it or they are interested but they don't know how to get started. And so today we're going to cover a livestock integration as our fifth principle in the series. And just as a reminder I don't place any importance on a priority on any one of these are all just as important as the next. But this is the fifth one we'll cover today. Okay so integrating livestock and I throw this slide in there because these are my girls and they make me happy. So we're just going to get a start off with this. Why do we need to integrate livestock? It can. Yep. We're seeing we're not seeing your your we're seeing your just your first slide. Oh it's not a switch screen. Okay one second. One second. Okay is that coming through yet? We're still just seeing your first slide. Okay let's try this. How about that? Is that coming through yet? It looks like we're seeing your your desktop. Okay. Yeah maybe if you guys want to skip to your next in this series so I can get this fixed. I'm not being able to adjust in general quick. Yeah we can call out are you ready to go next? Yes good morning. So how was everyone today? Good I hope so. All right so they collect just a second here. Can you stop? Yep I'm trying to I got all sorts of stuff going on here. I'm trying to get it stopped here. Well he's working on that. Go ahead Collette. Thank you and sorry for interrupting you. No problem. Okay so I'm going to speak with you a little bit about the conservation innovation grants. The Air SEAS South Dakota did not have a CIG opportunity this year. Because of our budget a few other reasons last winter we opted to not have that announcement this year. However now is a great time to be thinking about next year. So the conservation innovation grants are an opportunity to to evaluate innovative ideas for how they might work. With our field office the existing suite of practices that are in our field office tag guide. So if your ag producers are out there doing something that's not currently available in our suite of practices. Then let's talk about it. Let's talk about what we need to do to put a proposal together to how we can take that innovative idea and get it tested. And so it would be potentially accepted into our tech guide. So that would be the conservation innovation grant CIG. So on the conservation collaboration cooperative agreements this year. We did have an announcement and it closed last Friday. So we currently receive some proposals and I'm working through those with the community. So it'll be it'll be a little bit before we'll have some time to get through the review process and looking at the grants within this division to get those available. But I'm really excited about it. And I look forward to seeing what everyone has in those proposals. So if you have any questions don't hesitate to give an email or call back. All right. Thank you much Collette. All right Kent. Have you figured out your PowerPoint yet? Kent if you're talking you're on mute still. Kent's throwing his computer in the trash. We also we also had another field representative from one of our senators arrived. Jim did you want to address the group at all? No sir I don't really have anything for the group today. All right well we appreciate your attendance so thank you. Yeah I apologize for being late I lost track of time I was busy doing other stuff and then I realized that I was late so. Oh no worries we just appreciate that you're here so thank you. All right well Jeff we're going to go ahead and move into you until Kent can figure out his PowerPoint. You bet no problem. All right good morning everybody. Hope you're having a good day out there. Quick update on the conservation implementation strategy. Did a little something different this year we did a pre-proposal process. And those were due boy I want to say back in April I believe or maybe March somewhere in that ballpark. And we got 40 41 pre-proposals submitted so I want to thank everybody that submitted one. We had a bunch of partners along with a bunch of NRCS folks put proposals together so we really really appreciate seeing that many proposals get submitted. We had a review committee go through and and kind of look in and I won't really say rank but sort of you know made selections on which pre-proposals we would ask back to submit full proposals. And so we've asked 20 of those folks to take their pre-proposals and turn them into full proposals and those full proposals are due July 1st. And so if any of you out there have you know written one and are working on the full proposal and you know would like some guidance some an opportunity to ask some questions or to discuss your proposal in any way. Please don't hesitate to reach out to me and we'll be glad to try to you know answer whatever questions you have or kind of guide you in the right direction on on your full proposal. With that you know once we get those in in July we'll go through a process again to make selections with the intent of having those selections out by early August. So that those that do get selected will have an opportunity to start the planning process start the outreach process. Start you know communicating with with the general public about the opportunity so that'll all be coming here in the next couple of months and we should have some some actual. Proposals to tell you about come come the next state tech in August so just be aware of that our previous selections. We're kind of halfway through the funding process on our previous ones as far as the ranking and actual obligation process goes because it's just that time of year where we are actually obligating those contracts and. And we should start getting some stuff on the ground here pretty quick through those contracts so excited about that opportunity and the results that will come out of that here in the future so. That's kind of a quick update you know and to add to that I guess one thing to mention if it's not it's not too early to start thinking about a proposal for next year already. That those announcements usually come out in November so if you want to have a conversation about an idea you have. Willing to discuss that idea to and get you ready for that announcement that'll likely come out in November as well so never too early to start thinking about next year when it comes to. CIS and projects like that so. Give me a call if you need something or shoot me an email all the above works so. Thank you sir. Right so are there are there any questions at this point from the group regarding the CIS process or CS in general. Thank you Colette Colette as opposed to the link to the CIS web page in the chat if anybody's interested in learning more about our CIS process. Jeff do you want to go ahead and continue on with your programs update event didn't offer skipping back to cancer. Can't turn that so I pause. OK so our CPP update. Let's start with the proposals that got submitted. We had four proposals recently that were submitted. Three of them were South Dakota only and one of them was a multi-state proposal so there's a total of four proposals that were submitted. Two of those proposals were alternative funding arrangements and two of them were our CPP classic type proposals. So right now we are in the review process where each state has the opportunity to look at the proposals that were submitted and provide comments back to national headquarters. The headquarters folks are the chief really is the person that makes a selection on our CPP. It is not left up to the individual state so we provide our comments back and then you know those are taken into account with the chief when he makes his selections. There was a little over 300 million dollars available for our CPP and we can have up to 15 alternative funding arrangements selected. So I would say we have an above average chance of having at least one of our AFA proposals selected for funding and the two classics. I would say there's a fairly good chance that at least one of those two would be funded as well if not both. The numbers of applications or proposals submitted this year was down from previous years. I think some of that has to do with the one billion dollar climate smart egg opportunity that's out there. I know a lot of partners were jumping on that boat and I'm glad to hear that as well. I just know it I think it reduced our number of RCPP applications as well. As far as our current RCPP projects go it's I'm kind of excited to announce that we're finally get to the point where two of our projects are actually taking applications ranking applications and are ready to start obligating contracts. And those two would be the the Big Sioux Water Quality Project and the Belfoose River Water Quality Project. So those two projects are kind of leading the way here in South Dakota as far as this this whole new RCPP process that we've had to work through. So we've got the agreements in place and those two are are ready to start obligating contracts. One of our other ones with Ducks Unlimited that covers pretty much all of Eastern South Dakota parts of North Dakota and Montana as well is an alternative funding arrangement. And that one too will be announcing a sign up period here very shortly. That should be coming out any day now. That one is like I said it's an alternative funding arrangement. So DU has those funds. DU will do the ranking. DU will do the obligating of the contracts and working directly with the producers. So NRCS is providing funding and NRCS is providing some technical oversight to the project. But it is pretty much a DU project as those dollars basically go directly to Ducks Unlimited to work directly with producers and getting conservation on the ground. So very excited that we're finally getting to the point of making some of this happen. To go along with that a quick kind of personnel announcement. Kree Shaledi. She's our district conservationist up in the mill bank office. She'll be working here out of the here on office for the next hundred and twenty days as the RCPP coordinator. So she'll be helping me out working with our existing projects as well as those four proposals that we have in the system and working with those folks that they get selected. So excited to have Kree Shaledi on board. She actually doesn't start till June 5th. But so she'll start here in a couple of weeks. But excited about that opportunity to have a little more assistance to work directly with partners and getting RCPP really rolling here in South Dakota. So again, if anybody out there is thinking about RCPP in the future, it's never too early to start thinking about it. Those proposals take a little bit to put together. And again myself or Kree Shaledi would be glad to work with you guys. And help you start at least putting an outline together for a proposal here in the near future. So keep that in mind. I have no idea when the next announcement will be. I imagine it'll be sometime in 2023. But wouldn't hurt to start thinking about ideas. So let me know if you got any and be glad to discuss those with you. So thank you. We can Jen. Go ahead with your team. Yeah, let's Jen's up next. So we'll turn it over to Jen. Good morning, everyone. I don't have a lot to share for equip, but Jeff mentioned we're kind of in the thick of things right now and getting contracts obligated for fiscal year 22. We unfortunately did not receive any additional funding in our first fund assessment request. But we are going to proceed moving forward with what we can. We've got about half of our CIS projects ranked and moving forward. Half of them are still in the process of getting ranked so that we can select for funding there. All of our general funds are being selected and working towards contracts right now as well. So unless you guys have any other questions for equip, that's about all I have to share this this time. Anybody on the call have any questions for Jennifer before equip? So just a quick comment at this point. We're not taking any action as far as any kind of disaster sign up like you heard about with ECP from Owen. We're not really sure if there's much of a place for equip in that role at this point. But if anybody has some feedback or information on specific things that were damaged, we could certainly look at opportunities. But no action at this point is being taken directly for dealing with a disaster that kind of rolled through here last week. So just want to let you guys all know that we're open to it. If you've got something or can let us know about something specific. But at this point, we don't have anything specific plan for equip and dealing with the disaster that kind of rolled through. So if there's a specific contract holder out there that was affected, they can certainly visit with their local office and or Jeff or I and we can figure out what we can or can't do to assist them to. All right. Thank you, Jennifer. Thank you. Looks like next on the list is Joyce with a conservation stewardship program update. Good morning. I do have a hand sheet in the handouts that does go through the CSP classic allocation that we did receive this year. I will try to share that quickly just to run through it with you. We did do an early sign up this year with the CSP classics trying to get the obligations done early enough that we could actually maybe get some more money later in the summer or at least have time during the summer to work with the producers. So our application deadline for the classic was January 21st this year. We had 523 applications and our initial allocation was 8,640,000. So we had an organic allocation of 200,000 but we did not receive an application for that. So we did have to return those funds. Our obligation deadline was April 29th for the first allocation amount. We funded 59 contracts with that money. We received an additional 4,004,000 on May 9th and it looks like we're going to get 19 more contracts out of that. We put that obligation deadline at June 3rd. So I do have a chart here for you that you can look at. And this is just the first allocation that 8.640. 8 million 640,000. I can't even talk about it. Anyway, and then on the bottom I did separate out the beginning farmer renter and the socially disadvantaged so you can see what was actually spent towards those two. Then on the CSP renewals, we actually have had an application deadline of April 15th for the 2023 renewals. We did receive 333 applications and that obligation deadline will be after October 1st. We don't know exactly what that will be right now but they can, the field officers can move ahead on working on those applications and we don't know our allocation either. But that's what I know for right now. So if there's any questions, I'll take them otherwise. I'll turn it back over. Thank you, Joyce. Any any questions from the group Joyce regarding conservation stewardship program? All right, Joyce. Thank you. Thank you. So next up we have Brandon with the agricultural conservation easement program and hang milling requirements on easements. I know Brandon was traveling today. You didn't know if he'd be able to join us or not. So I'm not sure if he's on for sure. If not, I'll cover it for him. We'll see him jump in. No, I don't see him jumping up either. So quick update on ASAP specifically what I'd like to mention is some new guidance that came out concerning compatible use agreements and and the dates that producers would be allowed to hey their conservation easements. If you guys, some of you may or may not remember last year during the drought, you know, obviously the number of requests that we had for hanging and grazing easements increased due to, you know, kind of lack of vegetation out there for livestock. And what that ended up leading to was some confusion between when the South when the state allows vegetation to be used on their properties versus when we allow vegetation to be used in CRP. Those dates were different as well as the easements dates that would allow for hanging of easements was different and that caused a lot of confusion for for some of our producers. One thing that has happened is our headquarters has come out and asked that each state align their easements mowing dates to match up with the CRP dates unless we have specific reasons not to have those dates match up. So yesterday we actually held a subcommittee meeting with several individuals to discuss what direction South Dakota wants to go with these dates that will allow producers to hey their easements and I need to be very specific. This does not affect grazing of our easement. It only affects hanging so that you guys are aware that there is a there is a difference between the two when it comes to our compatible use agreements. So currently, prior to this bulletin coming out advising us to change the dates, our date to begin paying a NRCS easement was July 15. And currently the the first date that you can hey CRP is August 2. So there is a two week essentially a two week difference in those dates. So during the subcommittee meeting course a lot of different things got discussed. What I would tell you right now we've been made aware of some maybe research slash literature review that would discuss when nesting birds actually complete the nesting process to where mowing of an easement or mowing of any kind would not actually be detrimental to that wildlife species. So rather than have to maybe change a whole lot of things right off the get go what we're going to do is we're going to ask our headquarters for basically a bit of an extension to let this research play out and give us the science that would would basically solidify the date that we pick to allow hang to to begin on our easement. So we're going to ask basically for a two year extension not to change our dates at this point pending the outcome of this research that's being completed. And I've got I've got that research that I can attach to my request up to headquarters. So currently that's kind of the recommendation that's coming from the subcommittee. Obviously if there's anybody on here that would like to provide us additional comments were certainly open to that. But our fear is that if we change the dates now and that literature comes out and maybe would support our current date. You know now we change the dates now we would change the dates back. We wanted to avoid a whole lot of confusion that potentially could happen there. So that is currently the route that we are planning to take. I will tell you just like I told the subcommittee yesterday just because that's what we propose does not mean that we will get approval for that and we may have to still switch to the August second date. But we are going to at least make a request or or you know kind of try to get a short extension to making that change. Just in the off chance that the research that's just about done would would actually support our July 15 date. So that's our plan. If anybody's got questions on it be happy to take those now. Or if you've got comments that you would like to provide me in support of or against our plan I'd be open to those as well. And last thing I'll say before we start taking those comments in your handouts there is a map to that shows the different nesting dates currently since you can see where we fall in as compared to the other states around us as well. So, you know, take a look at that that's those those nesting dates or what drives the the our ability to begin mowing or basically mowing or hanging and easement. So take a look at that. And if anybody's got comments or questions, I will certainly be open to them. So any any questions or comments or feedback for Jeff at this point. And as you have a chance to look at the doctor the handout if you have questions later Jeff Jeff will take questions to email also. Yeah, absolutely. Alright, so we'll go ahead and cancel you ready to give this a try one more time. Yes, I certainly hope so. Okay, so I'm going to advance my slide of some will let me know if they can actually see it this time. Yes, we can see it. Okay, you can see it. Okay, great. So let's try this again. Sorry for wasting everyone's time. I'll be be efficient in brief of my presentation here. So anyways, the soil principles is what we've been covering. And today we're going to cover the fifth principle is which is livestock integration. And like I said, it's one that's near and dear to my heart, because I love working with producers and adopting this principle. And here we go. So livestock integration picture of some of my girls where apparently that didn't go through the last time. So this is where we're going to get started. Why do we integrate livestock? It's a question we often get, especially with our with our road crop producers, but if they don't have livestock, why do I need livestock on my crop land? What's the importance of that? And usually what I try to do working with producers is remind them of this. This is why we need livestock on our land here in South Dakota. We're fortunate to have very productive soils, very resilient soils. And we can thank hundreds and thousands of years of grassland and large herds roaming across the landscape, managing our soils essentially for us. We had bison, pronghorn elk, we even have to look at our turkeys and grouse, our our fellow friends. So they were all out on the landscape. Our turds of bison are grazing. And as they're grazing, they're doing many things that impact the soil. They're eating and processing that above ground growth for us and that's returning back to the soil. So when we think livestock, certainly I do when I when I do in South Dakota, I'm guilty of primarily thinking of our beef. And it's certainly one that's most visible in the landscape and probably our largest animal operations in the state have these. So one of the important reasons we have livestock and integrate them into our crop land systems is that they can actually process a lot of that above ground dry matter during what I call the off season. Or when it's cold or when it's dry. So if you've if you've got a producer, for example, that's adopted cover crops, but they don't have livestock. A lot of those cover crops over the winter months are just kind of sitting there idle. There's not really much going on. Yes, they're providing cover, but they're not cycling back into indoor soil to make it more productive and healthy. So when livestock can do that they have a warm moist moist environment in their gut and they process that and it comes out the back end in the form of the perfect fertilizer. This is this is a slide I promise we won't get too much into the weeds on this one, but it's a very important one. It's one I talk about with our our feeding operation or our CAFOs in the state on a regular basis on why it's important to have manure and livestock on our crop land. This is from the whose field experiment station. It's in the UK, probably one of the oldest egg experiment stations in the world. And what this graph is showing is that in when this experiment station started in 1852, they had essentially three different plots and one of the pots received no manure. Two of the pots received manure on a regular basis for the first 20 years. After that 20 years, one of the plots that have been receiving manure no longer had manure applied on a regular basis or at all. And you can see that red arrow there shows when that stopped and where those two lines top lines diverge. So then if you fast forward over 100 years later, you can see that the plot that continued to receive manure continued to rise and kind of plateaued out eventually. But the plot that had received manure and no longer receive manure for 100 years still had a higher organic matter level than our bottom line. So what I try to point out is that manure is important in our systems. It has a long term effect on the health of our systems and in our organic matter sequestration. Okay, another reason we want to integrate livestock under our crop land is that it adds value to our crop land. This is a photo from the James River Valley of cover crops that have been planted after a small grain and this producer then grazes those in the fall. So I know many of you will hear if you're working with producers trying to encourage them to add small grains into their operation into their rotation. A lot of times you'll hear them say, well, I don't believe the small grains are profitable or I can't make much money on those. Well, I tend to disagree and the reason behind that is because we can manage those, we can have cover crops following those and we can graze those which then adds value onto that crop land that you attribute back to the gain in the livestock. We do see on a regular basis many people that aftermath graze, especially their corn stocks. And while I love to see that, I think we have another opportunity on those corn acres for livestock grazing after corn harvest if you have interceded cover crops prior to harvest. And this is a great photo why I think if you were any form of livestock and you're turned out in this field, it would be a little smorgasbord for you. It's got green growing plants. It's got dry matter that will be harvested and available for them also. And so it's kind of a perfect balanced diet for our livestock. Okay, so we've been talking a lot about beef. Let's not forget about the other livestock that we have here in South Dakota. This is just a couple of examples goats, sheep, and certainly any of our follow friends, chickens, turkeys, all that stuff we need to have adopted into our into our landscapes. And really, this goes back to the principle of maximizing diversity. All of these livestock have different services that they provide for the landscape. We look at turkeys and chicken, you know, they're going to be eating a lot of those pest insects that maybe we don't want in the landscape. Well, we all know that goats and sheep are going to eat very different plants and select for different plants than beef are going to, for example. And they're also going to process those plants differently and apply them back on the landscape for us. Okay, so the big question is, how do we do this? How do we integrate these these livestock onto our cropland acres? The first thing that many producers are going to think of is, well, I don't have the the field fenced. The fence had been taken a long ago when we started row cropping, and we don't have water. So really, that's what I encourage producers to do is think on a temporary basis on this infrastructure. Temporary fencing, we have great suppliers out there for lots of different turbo wire, hot wire that can be applied really quickly, and it's very effective. We can do temporary water systems above ground pipeline if you've got a water source close by and temporary tanks. For the most part, we really don't want permanent structure on our cropland because we're going to need to be able to drive over those acres with our equipment the following year to plant and harvest. So think on a temporary basis, a lot of this stuff can be very effective. Crop rotation, your corn, soybean rotation is going to be a little tougher to adopt livestock integration. What do you need to do to make that work? Can you diversify your crop rotation by adding small grains? Can you diversify your rotation by adding cover crops through inter-seeding? Those are the things that you need to be thinking in advance of. Cover crops in inter-seeding is something that we need to think of if you look at the bottom right photo there. I think there's a lot of promise with this. I know there can be some headaches with the adoption and the learning curve with using this, but I've seen some promising results throughout the state. Integrating perennials into our cropland systems. This is something that it's almost a land use change. But I think there's lots of opportunity, especially at James River Valley with our saline problems. Perennial vegetation to restore those saline acres doesn't mean that those acres are not productive. You can still use those for haying and or for grazing and still make some money off those acres while you're restoring and hopefully mitigating the salinity problems. The last thing to think about is management management management. It's kind of like in real estate where they say location location location anytime you're adopting livestock into your cropland. Management is the primary thing that you really need to focus on. And it's an area that I see where it produces are adopting this and they're putting livestock on their cropland. This is where I see the most area for improvement. And I also see this as an area where a lot of producers kind of give up sometimes because it didn't work. Well, this is something we need to try, try and try again. Hey, get creative with your infrastructure. This is a producer from over by the Arlington area and it's really kind of a traveling power source and feed source. You can see the old tractor here and you can see it's got a feed wagon behind it and it's a traveling power source. And this is what he moves throughout the field as he's moving livestock. And so this is certainly a very creative solution to a problem that this producer had. Okay, this is just a really great photo of management and really intensive management on cover crop acres and cropland. This is from Blue River Ranch and so many of you were on their tour they had last fall. And so what you're looking at here is the herd is kind of focused in this area. And it's basically a half mile long. I'd say by roughly 150 feet wide and this herd has access to this area for roughly 12 hours give or take. And then they will move on to the next site and they can go back for water, but they only go back for a day or two. And so you can see where I have the red lines drawn there. The red line on the right is where there is actual offense so they cannot cross back through there. The red line on the left actually there is no offense. They can go back to the previous day's grazing, but they really have no reason to. They stay on the area where the fresh growth is for grazing and they only go back for water. This is another photo. This is from the demonstration farm here south of Huron by the Betel Conservation District. And this is a Ciri Orion vetch mix that was grazed in the spring, excuse me. And then when that is done, they follow that up with another cover crop mix that is then grazed in the fall. So you can see it's a creative way. It's a flexible way of managing some cropland acres. This picture is from last year and so we all know that it was pretty dry. And so if you, for example, have planted that Ciri Orion with the intent of seeding into that your soybeans the next year, but you get really dry and you don't think it's going to be or make any sense to plant those soybeans. You can let the Ciri Orion come and turn your livestock out on there and then plant cover crops when that growth is done. So it provides some flexibility by adopting livestock into your operation on cropland. Okay, so this is a video. This is from Jesse Hall and it's a great video because it shows all the livestock. They all look fat and happy, right? And they're grazing on this great green growth. And this was even in a, this is a photo from, or video from last year. And so with the drought year, you can still see cover crops can be successful even in a drought year or dry than normal. You'll notice again that they are all basically staying in where the cover crop growth is fresh and lush. There's a line you can see right there, almost right through the middle of the photo. And there is no fence there, but they have no reason to go back there. They stay and they separate themselves out and they stay on the fresh acres. Okay, so for producer absolutely cannot adopt livestock or don't have the time or the resources or just don't want to have livestock out on their cropland. This is the next best option. And this is through the application of manure. Hopefully the proper application of manure where you are measuring the nutrient content of what you're applying and applying it at the right rate. We have a fantastic ag waste or ag nutrient management team out of Mitchell that will work with producers on this. So if you can't get actual hoof out on the ground, this is the next best best option. Okay, so to summarize and wrap it up here. This is you see two photos side by side. One is a photo I took when I was at a conference here several years ago. I'm in the Mankato area and I was up for some morning exercise. And as I was walking down the sidewalk, I saw this sign here by a landscape center pulverized black dirt. And I kind of got a little chuckle so I took a photo of it. And the photo on the right, you don't have this in your handouts just because I just added this. This is the photo actually took out yesterday when I was out collecting samples. This is not too far away from here on but I see this all over the place. I travel around the state quite a bit. This is a common occurrence that I've seen this year. This sign should really be on this field also. We don't have to have this. I think we all know this. We know that we can we can affect change. We know that we can adopt these principles that the principles are profitable. And not only are they profitable but they're sustainable over the long term. We don't need to have bare ground like this anymore. This is a planted field. Enough is enough in my opinion. We know how to do this. We have five principles of soil health. Most of us are in the in the world of working with producers and adopting these. We really need to encourage to adopt all five. If you adopt all five, you can promise and I can promise that this system will work. There's many ways to adopt each principle. So there's not a once one one size fits all. It's us for up to us as planners. And professionals in the ag and conservation world to work with our producers. And hopefully affects and change out there in the landscape. So with that. I'll leave it open for any questions or comments. And if there aren't any, certainly there's my contact information. You can either email me there or contact me through phone. Thank you for your time, everyone. And with that, I will turn it back. You can I'm going to stick you on the spot just for one question. Over this last week, we had a pretty major storm that came through and there's a lot of pictures that were popping up on the news of a large dirt storm that was going over Sioux Falls. Do you have any thoughts on that? Um, I do. My first thought is we should know better. We have all the tools where that doesn't need to be happening anymore. I, I think that we all see that. I think everyone recognizes that it's not good, but I think we have short memories and we just kind of move on. I think we really need to really need to focus on that, you know, our agency was basically formed to stop that erosion event that we saw. And we saw multiple times throughout the spring. And I think sometimes that. Sometimes we see it, we know it's bad, but we say, Oh, there's nothing that could have been done about it. That's just kind of an act of God or a freak storm. We all know that that soil is not coming from fields that had last year's cover crop residue on them or that were no tub was a lot of residue on there. Those events don't need to happen. We've got all the tools to stop it. Let's let's work towards that change. Thank you. I appreciate that. All right. So any any questions or comments for for Kent. All right. We'll go ahead and continue down the agenda then. So next on the agenda is Laura Stern with a lateral effects policy update. Right. Thank you, Tony. Good morning, everybody. NRCS is nearing completion of our project to provide consistent lateral effects information to producers in the region, which includes the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Minnesota. In the past, there have been concerns raised from stakeholders that that that information was inconsistent among the four states that it was delivered by different means and that it changed over time without modification. In response to this, the four states have standardized the equations and procedures by flooding drainage setbacks, and they've been formalized in a common four state supplement to the National Engineering. The setback databases have been calculated on the current soil survey data and will remain static. They will only be updated upon agreements of the state conservationists for Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota when there's a clear need to do so. Some setback distances may have changed for some soils. The differences are minimal. Also, all four states will also direct producers to a common website. On this common website, then producers and contractors will be able to retrieve information that's readily accessible. And should they have any questions about information that they're getting off that website, website will also direct them back to the local NRCS office. Any questions they might have about setback distances or planned drainage projects. The website is planned to go live in June, so I can't demonstrate it for you today or show it today, but I sure could do that at a future meeting if there was interest in doing that and seeing it. Alright, thank you, Laura. Any questions at all for Laura at this point? We really are just trying to do an update or get the information out that there has been an update to the policy. And there's going to be more information I'll be coming as the website becomes live, but does anybody have any questions right now? We might be able to address a question or at least take a note that we can get more additional information if we don't have an answer. Okay, it looks like we did have a question in there, Laura. So what is the static date for the soils information? Do you know that? November 2021. Any other questions? And if you do have questions as you think about the presentation or the update, don't hesitate to reach out. You can contact, you can send an email to me or Laura, would you be willing to take some emails also? Yes, that would be fine. Okay, Laura, if you could, would you put your email address as soon as the chat so that if folks didn't have questions regarding this, they could contact you? Yes. Great, thank you so much. Alright, so we'll go ahead and move down the agenda then to Deak Hobbock with an update on South Dakota wetlands HAL compliance. So here's the screen. This is the kind of the update I give. Every time, it's just our wetland workload or compliance workload. So we'll start with the wetland work. We got your 569s there, obviously includes carryover from 2021 and our numbers. But we do have a few more 569s this year than in most years. So we got 18 in progress and move on to 1026s. So this number, we average by around 1400 the last eight years. This is down just a little bit. It could increase though at any time. Once planting is done, it seems like people tend to come in and request more wetland delineations to determine what they can and cannot do on their fields. Request age is looking pretty good. Everything's kind of getting held within the four months for sure. But most of everything's getting answered in that one, two, three. Move down to highly rotable land. And we do a lot of these HAL determinations. We only got 1,098 completed nine outstanding, you know, 673 new breakings and 180, the 108 of those are determined HAL. I understand that when we do HAL determinations, it's usually involving, you know, land that hasn't obviously had a determination done on it. And many times it is a new breaking. So it's all I have for the numbers. Anybody got any questions dealing with any sort of compliance in the state? All right. So do you have a question? How many acres of new HAL? Yeah, I don't track that. We'd have to get FSA to determine what they have for, for what their fields are getting broke out for HALs. I don't know, is Owen still on? Yes, I am. I am, Deake. I don't have that information at my fingertips, but it's something that we could look at. Okay. Yeah, I didn't figure you probably did, but I should be some way to compare annually the difference in HAL acres on the lands. So follow up question. Would those be grassland acres? Yeah, I mean, more often than not, I mean, if the field hasn't been determined, the acres are better be in broke or some sort of grassland that hasn't. You know, a lot of times it's smaller areas that are, you know, farm stands, wind breaks, things like that, but there's no doubt if you go around, there's plenty of grassland being being farmed this year that hasn't in the past. So it's anything from a tenth of an acre to one acre to a quarter. Right. Any other questions for Deake at this time? All right. So at this point, I'd like to move into partnership reports. I'm asking Collette to go ahead and leave the process for me. So Collette, if you could take it, I would appreciate it. Great. Good morning again everyone. So the state technical committee has been a wonderful venue for sharing information with our constituents. And I just wanted to take this time along with the rest of the leadership team to invite some of our partners to provide updates. So I thought we would do kind of around Robin style, just in the real depth, but a few little updates of what your organization is about, because this particular platform. We have a lot of leaders in South Dakota here today. And we have a lot of support staff here too. And many of you are working on things that are unique to your agency organization. That's terrific. And many of you are working on projects to agreements with us and that's here. And we just like to take this time to share a little bit of information, because the ultimate goal is that as we communicate more than we have the opportunity to help all of our ad producers, farmers, ranchers, local foods, folks, whoever. To help them to have more conservation of their life, which will be healthier, natural resources, which will lead to a more sustainable operation and be productive and provide food and fiber for all the world. So if you would please just turn your camera on and I'll recognize you and you can take a few minutes to hear what everybody's. It's one in their organization. So if you're ready, please turn your camera on and you can go from there. If you don't have a camera option, you can just do a microphone as well. So, Kevin, I see your cameras on I guess. Well, thank you Collette and Tony nice to meet you virtually. I know we had a meeting scheduled for last week. I'm Kevin Roblin, secretary of game fishing parks. What a fantastic group of folks here today and I just really appreciated the conversation and the presentations on especially livestock integration. I just moved all my cows to pasture on Sunday, actually. So I am a big, big player in that as well and I truly appreciate all those efforts as far as soil health and the messages that this group and others have been sharing across South Dakota in this nation. We can make a difference and we are making a difference and I am a true believer of that in our farming practices and making sure that we look at the profitability of producers as the number one goal. But then habitat conservation as a byproduct of that goal. So super exciting times across South Dakota and I'm very happy to lead the team here at game fishing parks and really focus on that. We are laser focused on habitat habitat habitat and what comes along with that is access of hunting as well and fishing and trapping and looking at all those things combined. It's an exciting time because I feel like the messages from all these agencies across you know the state have are are singing the same they're singing out the same sheet of music in a sense and that has been very beneficial. Our partners have been fantastic. I'm looking at a bunch of partners on the phone right now. We're on this call right now and they've been helping us sell those habitat programs. We've reprioritized people within the agencies. We have eight more private lands biologists. We have wildlife damage specialists, conservation officers, wildlife biologists all talking to producers about habitat and conservation and profitability and all of those things that this group is very focused on. It is the number one priority in the wildlife division. No doubt. And we are really hoping to meet the producers where they're at, not necessarily making them come to us. So it's a proactive approach. We're knocking on doors, sitting at coffee tables and developing those needed relationships across this state and having those one on one conversations and it's starting to pay dividends. And I'm very excited to see what those results look like, not just this year, but five years from now. Those are some of the things that we're actively working on within the department. The working lands program CREP was mentioned already by Owen and also woody habitat development and grass, grass, grass, grass. I'm actually going to a grassland summit next week in Fort Collins. And I think there's a lot to be said there with the storms that were occurred east river and that big dust cloud people seen. Obviously, we've talked about that already and it's very tried and true. So yeah, I mean the department is very, very focused on this habitat component and looking at profitability and making sure that we integrate livestock. That was a great presentation, by the way, and into those types of conversations. So a couple other things we're keeping a close eye on. Recovering America's Wildlife Act. This is in Congress right now. This could potentially bring Owen the tune of about $16 million to the state Wildlife Agency game fishing parks to help manage. They're called the greatest conservation species, greatest concert needs species. There's 110 of them in our wildlife action plan. Things like the Dakota Skipper things like, you know, non game in a sense species that aren't directly being targeted with license dollars that we we utilize so, you know, so heavily in the department across the state. So we're keeping a close eye on that that is actually going to be likely up for vote in the Senate here. They're talking within the next month and I see Ryan is on and I'm sure he knows a lot about this as well. So that would be a big shot in the arm. I'll use that as far as what type of dollars that can be spent on and a lot of that could be habitat. A lot of that could be the things we're talking about right now. And then the byproduct obviously is going to be benefiting both game non game producers be direct, you know, landowner payments, those sorts of things. So looking at that keeping a close eye on it. The big server crepe was already mentioned. That's out for EA right now and have some public comments on that we should be closing that in the next though I think mark 30 days and correct me if I'm wrong. And then we should have things lined out hopefully by July and we're hoping that we can hit the ground running this fall with enrollments already. And that's a very exciting project 25,000 acres along the Big Sioux River. We are going to work very, very, very hard on reaching out to producers meeting producers and talking to them about those opportunities of putting, you know, perennial grass 15 year commitment on the landscape with public access along with it. Lots of exciting things happening within the department. Yeah, we're we're just so excited to really, really focus on habitat because we know it is the foundation of wildlife management and it always will be and we need to really put our eggs in that basket and we are so any questions from anyone in regards to game fishing parks. Alrighty, well thanks Colette for the opportunity and I'll let the next person go. Thank you Kevin. Thank you, you're welcome so we'll hop on over to the Association of Conservation Districts with Angela. Please. Good morning. I have with me today, no only Kelly Tassler who is our no low coordinator now she's working on our non operating land owner project and we're extending that and trying to build that. A group of people that are interested that don't own land but also still manage land, or they own land but they don't actually manage it on on daily basis so Kelly's going to be working on that project with us which is a collaborative conservation agreement. Behind me is CSI that says we're good things girl I just want to highlight that project. You should be seeing those advertisements or PSAs on all the radio stations around not the radio sorry. Television stations around the state they've been playing them quite we had five series there and I think it's really receiving broad support we're getting good feedback on that program and getting a lot of people sign up that are interested. Do you want to say anything quick Kelly. Okay. I didn't tell her she's going to do this until a few minutes ago. A couple other items that I want to mention you mentioned about the big dust clouds. The conservation districts are seeing an increase in our sediment and erosion control complaints, and they are working through those as they can. We are providing additional training to the conservation districts in coordination with the Department of Ag and natural resources so that the conservation districts know what the law is understand how to follow it, and make sure that we provide the best service to everyone while we're doing that. The final item is June is our month for area meetings we have seven area meeting set from June 14 through June 23. And we'll be working with the conservation districts providing them updates from ourselves as well as our partners. And if you want further information about those let me know. Didn't want to take too much time so unless somebody has some questions we are done. Just a quick comment Angela, the videos on where did things grow great great job on those. If anybody hasn't had a chance to go to the where good things grow website and take a look at those those public service announcements, they're very well done. We had two retired nrcs public affairs persons that worked on those Lynn Beths and Ron Nichols. I agree they're very well done. And I hope that we can continue those. Thank you, Angela. Thank you, Angela. And yes, that was a really cool agreement that we've ever working on. I appreciate you folks carrying the ball and and making that happen. So, I think there's a lot of opportunity for the where good things grow campaign to be expanded with our partners. And that's part of the reason why I was happy when you brought that up because I think that it doesn't matter whether what part of stuff go to your end. Okay, I'm going to move over to Jim Ristow. He is working with self put a corn. Good morning. For those of you that don't know me I'm Jim Ristow I'm director of sustainability for South Dakota corn and I work in under an agreement in a partnership with nrcs and to advance, you know, trying to get better practices on the land through the grower organizations. I just was going to touch on a couple of things we're involved with. We were in support of a RCPP project that American Coalition for ethanol received in South Dakota. And that is not quite finalized, but we're working through the details on that and trying to get it together. But basically it's going to offer opportunities for producers in seven counties to be paid for adoption of better practices or climate smart practices, if you will, things like for our management, reduction in tail age, addition of cover crops, those sorts of things that we talk about in soil health. Those counties are Brookings, Kingsbury, Lake, Minor, McCook, Minnehaha and Moody. And there's a research component with this that will SDSU will be doing some work to try to capture some information as to what those practices mean as far as carbon life cycle analysis in the production of corn for ethanol. So there's the potential to take that and get credit through some of the existing market places that are out there that are trying to reward lower carbon fuel, transportation fuel sources like in California. That is also being looked at as kind of a pilot program, you know, at the recent climate smart grant announcement that was kind of replicated into a seven state project. So we'll see how that turns out. We'll anticipate those grants and then also there's another grant that I was involved with or I'm aware of that is seeking funding just to pay for cover crops. And that was submitted by a coalition of groups including Corn Soybeans or National Corn Grower Association National Soybean Board and the National Pork Board. So that's kind of neat to see a collaboration to advance better practices on the land such as cover crops. But thank you. Any questions for me. It'll be fine. Thank you, Jim. Thank you very much. So I appreciate hearing about how things are looking together and the other partners that are being brought into the project. That's very cool. All right. I see that we have several other folks on the line. I'm going to recognize Sandy Smart please. Good morning everybody. Sandy Smart. I'm the Ag and natural resource program leader for SDSU extension. And we just completed a last week series of face to face meetings with the drought concern out west. And those were very successful and partnerships with NRCS and FSA and talking about the different programs and opportunities. Obviously we're responding to the derecho weather incident that we had this week and there's some opportunities for some to interact with some information that we have available on our website. Also, if you do know of anybody that might have had some livestock that need to be housed somewhere else. I know you can contact Warren Rushi who has some nose of some available pen space if animals need to be moved. So he put that out there. If you know anybody that's kind of in a bind there. But yeah, it looks like a lot of proper damage. I know that. I believe on our extension radio network that Pam Geppert does. John Ball will be talking about trees and pretty much trees that are have any type of damage are most likely not salvageable. So, you know, those are going to be have to be cut down and disposed of so a lot of shelter belts definitely going to be affected. And like I said, the one that occurred in Iowa a few years back, you know, in August and so it was really hard on a lot of those mature or maturing crops like corn. And of course, a lot of the deciduous trees, we would have been in a much worse shape. They've been fully leafed out. So I know there are still some people that might have been without power as of Sunday or Monday. And so hopefully they're restoring power to a few of those locations. But yeah, just to know that extension is available. If you have contact some of our specialists that are eight regional centers and our state specialists. The growing season is kind of for especially planting is a little bit behind in certain areas. We're getting much needed moisture on the special on the eastern side of the state. I had three quarters of an inch in my rain gauges morning from yesterday. You know, it was kind of spotty. It looked like showers were saw by 90. Yesterday morning. So anyway, things are starting to progress. Entomologists are just going to start doing some scouting and getting those scouting reports out there. So, you know, the, I think the biggest issue is probably to get the pre-emergence herbicides down to get control. And I know that that's somewhat difficult, you know, with wet conditions. But we're going to be in a little bit of a bind this summer as the post emergence herbicides are probably not going to be available. Just to just because the supply chain issues and that's going to make we control a challenge this summer. Especially like in no two situations. So just because roundup is so scarce. So hopefully if your growers have gotten made purchases before the supply tighten, but and also we're going to see some challenges because of the war in Ukraine. We're seeing issues with global markets and disruptions in the supply chain. So I know that you'll continue to see probably higher prices, but we have high input costs that go along with that. So yeah, if you have information or just leading information, you can check out our, our websites. If we do have economic information on new different budgets for crops and livestock as well from the econ side of things. So I'll be happy to take any questions if there is. Well, thank you, Sandy. And please, if anyone does have questions throughout late, maybe you could raise your hand or or tool camera on or something for any of the people that have provided updates, that'd be great. But we'll keep moving along here. I do know that sdsu has had worked with the South Dakota grassland coalition and I don't want to step on their toes by by saying this, but they had done. And thanks for bringing it throughout sandy. The grassland coalition had orchestrated an effort earlier this spring for a outreach for grassland managers. And it's on a website called sd drought plan.org. And they've just done a tremendous job of putting information out there and how to help people to to try to plan ahead and do some prevention before it gets to be really, really bad because even though we've had some moisture. We're still not as flush as we should be in well in much of the state and then we have the extreme beneath the part of the states. Anyway, so I will move over to Bruce toy. Please. Morning. Good morning, everybody. Thanks for the opportunity to be here. My name is Bruce toy, the manager of conservation programs for ducks unlimited here in South Dakota. I thought I'd just give a little, a little more of an update. Jeff mentioned earlier upcoming RCPP project. Maybe just add a little color to that kind of tell you what what we're looking for and what the program is all about. Anyway, it is a three state proposal that includes South Dakota, North Dakota and Montana. South Dakota is the lead state. Each each state is operating somewhat independently. So with the lead state here, we're going to kind of get to get the ball rolling. This is a new program for for both sides. So a lot of things that we need to learn learn through the process. So we're anticipating kind of a soft roll out here in June. We'll probably have a brief batching period and a pretty, pretty restrictive sort of screening right here at a really kind of flesh out the best of the best type of projects and really hoping to start off with the, you know, five or 10 good, good projects to help us get our feet wet. But what we're looking for it's called scaling of soil health in the soil in the very pothole region. So encouraging producers that are transitioning from conventional towards regenerative farming systems. So practices like incorporating cover crops and reducing tillage and increasing crop diversity and getting livestock on those crop land acres as well. The other component is grass restoration. So adding adding more grass into our grazing systems. One of the unique opportunities we will have with this is not only restoring grass through an equip practice like range planting, but also coupling a CRP type rental payment for two to three to four years during that establishment phase. So while that grass is developing, the producer is not going to be out income for that time period that he can transition right into a grazing system with the infrastructure that we're helping to put on. So lots of need opportunities there that will be good for the program. But with the screening criteria we're looking at just to kind of give you an idea, we're looking for producers that will be using three of the four practices in a soil health system. So, you know, those four are, like I said, the cover crops, reducing tillage, crop diversity and prescribed grazing. Or if the producer is restoring at least 80 acres of grass in their system, they're going to help screen high in this process. Of course, if they're doing both of those, they're really going to be the best of the best. Also looking for growers that are interested in collecting data on site. So we want to do some soil sampling kind of a before and after scenario. These will likely be a five year conservation plan. So we want to collect data that we can help show the gains in soil health over that period. Now we're looking for growers that will be committed to attending soil health workshops, put out partners throughout the state. So connecting those folks to them and really think that's going to help with long term retention of these practices as well. Perhaps even hosting workshops on these sites that have demonstration sites and that sort of thing. Also looking for a 10 year commitment from the grower. So an agreement to keep grasslands as grass for 10 years and keep their wetlands as wetlands for 10 years. So adding a little bit of a time period to the standard five year equipped type of agreement. So if they're saying yes to all those, they'll likely screen high in our higher priority counties and we'll be looking forward to moving forward on those applications. But if you have any questions on any of those, you folks should sure reach out to me after the meeting here. Thanks. Thanks. That's great. So we're really excited about that too. So looking forward to see it. So, okay, we're going to move over to our friends over at Dan are and Chris, if you're ready, we'll just spot next. Yeah, so I just wanted to give an update. Chris Dozark with Department of Ag and Natural Resources working the watershed protection program. So I'm in charge of administering our section 319 grant funding, which is basically part of the Clean Water Act that points towards nonpoint source pollution, I guess. And basically we implement using EPA money. So this year we were allocated a little over 2.7 million. We had three projects that came in for requesting funds. And it's pretty cool because most of these projects kind of interlap with the RCPP and equip and other projects that everybody else is kind of working with. So with those three projects, the Belfoose River watershed project, they're getting a pretty good chunk of money out of that 2.7 million. They're going to get about 1.3 million for implementation work here in the next three to five years. Soil Health Improvement Planning Project through the Soil Health Coalition came in. They're going to get 123,000 for an amendment for, you know, they're doing pretty good work. So they're spending money. So they came back in for some more and we amended going to amend that project. Soil Health Central Watershed Project kind of ran through the Jane River Water Development District. They came in and they're going to get an additional 626,000 for the next couple of years as well. So just wanted to give an update on those 319 projects. The next October 1st will be the next request for proposals. Proposal applications will be October 1st will be the next deadline for that. So just working on getting our DA&Rs application in to receive this money for the Section 319 funding. And then we'll work with these 3 projects to get amendment and contracts done. So that's where we're sitting as far as 319 projects go. Thank you. Thank you very much. So I see that we have a hand up. Matt Moorlach, did you have a question? Your hand is up. You know, I'm just playing for my turn. My camera, I went through my third camera now. So my camera is down again. So I don't have a camera. You worry. Did you have an update that you would like to share? You have to put down the spot or anything. Yeah, I know that's that's great. Thanks everybody for those that don't know me. I'm Matt Moorlach. I'm the state coordinator for both of Dakotas for pheasants forever. We're in that unique position. We don't have our own programs. We just help sell all of your guys. And they're just talking to the staff over the last month. I'd like to report back that interest is still high. They're all staying really busy. Lots of landowners wanting to do anything from reenrollment of CRP to a lot of interest in grazing systems. They're probably back to grazing, things like that. So I think, like Sandy said, inputs and the high input costs are keeping a lot of folks in check and still wanting to do more. So I just wanted to quickly say interest is still high from what my team's saying. So all things are good and click the normal cylinders. Perfect. Thank you. Okay, so we will have Cindy next. And I just want to take this moment to say it's really cool to see how all of our partners are done telling things together. So people had mentioned, you know, providing, you know, projects and things. And like Bruce had mentioned about having that are an option for their producers to attend schools and training sessions. So we work very close to the physical health coalition and with the grassland coalition and other folks to put on those schools. And it's just really cool to see how each of us have our own niche that we work in and that they come from each other. So with that, Cindy and I say please take it away. All right. Thank you, Collette. And thank you everyone. I have had the opportunity to visit with other states. And I kind of brag about the opportunities we have in South Dakota. Excuse me, because so many partners do come together and not all states are like that. So we greatly appreciate the opportunities that NRCS and all of our partners have provided. One thing that I want to kind of highlight today since Kent's presentation is the grazing exchange. I have met with game fishing parks in some different states as well. But the grazing exchange is an opportunity for the landowners and livestock owners to come together. The drought conditions, you know, we can work with producers that have the aftermath grazing available. So we want to provide that information out to them and just make those connections so we can keep their assets with them and to be able to keep our grasslands healthy as well. The drought conditions did severely affect some areas, not mine personally, but in some of the other areas. So that one we have been promoting pretty heavily. The staff has been working directly with producers throughout the state implementing, like Chris said, our 319 project funds. The directors have been in the midst of trying to prepare some other grants to get some additional funding from different sources. But we do want to also highlight an agreement we have with NRCS. We are promoting or working toward a mentoring platform for producers to be able to end professionals to connect with each other. And that's called the growing connections and I'm confident it will be done here shortly and be able to have all that information out to everyone and have their partners and their clientele to be able to be aware of that. Project as well. But I want to thank all the partners for all the continued efforts. Like you said, the last week was quite evident. We still all have some work to do and we want to keep that moving forward. So, thank you. Thank you, Cindy. Gosh, this has been really great. So, is there anyone that I've missed? If so, please, please speak up. And if there are no takers, then I'll turn it back to Tony. So I thanks everyone. I appreciate the updates. It's really exciting. All right. Thank you so much Colette. And thank you so much to all of our partners that are helping us get our mission completed. And really getting conservation in the ground across South Dakota. It really does take everybody to make this happen. And just as all of our partners expressed in the last half hour or so is. We all are doing a little bit. We're all doing our part to try to help keep farming happening here, keeping our natural resources in place. And just thank you all for your efforts and making this happen because not one of us can do it alone. So just thank you. At this point on the agenda, I want to just open the floor up if there's any general questions or if there's any comments that anybody has. And this will be one of the last, this is the last agenda item before moving into scheduling our next meeting and closing out today. So just I'm going to open the floor. Does anybody have any questions or comments? I'm not seeing anything pop up in the chat. And I'm not seeing any hands up or anybody coming off the mute at this point. So I just want to, again, big thank you to everybody for your participation today. Again, it takes everyone of us. And as there's comments that as you think about the different presentations today, as you think about the different comments made from our partners and from the staff. If you have, if you have questions, please reach out to us. Please ask. We are listening. We do want to continue to make our programs and our products better for South Dakota and we're always open to comments and feedback. So please don't hesitate to reach out if you have any of those. And with that, our next meeting that we have scheduled right now is going to be August 17. We are going to be attempting to do a hybrid model where we will have a larger room available for folks in an area, but we are going to be offering this virtually also. So if you don't, I'm not sure if it's going to be in here on or if it's going to be in pier at this moment, but we will get that information out here soon. But there will be a virtual option for those who don't want to or can't travel for whatever reason. So thank you again for participating today. And I guess we'll see you again next time. And hopefully I'll get a chance to meet several of you between here and there. So please take care, be safe and have a great rest of your week.