 All right. Good morning, everyone. We'll go ahead and get our meeting started this morning. We still have some people who are joining in. First, I'd like to welcome everybody to our May State Technical Advisory Committee. I wanted to touch on just a couple of things as we get into this agenda, the purpose of the State Tech Committee. This is an opportunity for partners to hear what NRCS is up to. If you have any thoughts, questions, feedback for the agency, are there opportunities for us to serve our State better? Are there ideas on the technical side or programmatic side that we could work to improve? If things are going great, I'm happy to hear that too. But I do want to hear the feedback and that's really what the main purpose of this meeting is, is to allow our partners an opportunity to provide feedback. In an effort to work on this and to ensure that there's an opportunity to provide feedback to NRCS, we're doing something a little different on the State Tech Committee. During this meeting or towards the end of this meeting, we will be in the chat, we'll be dropping in a couple of links for breakout rooms. There's going to be a breakout room that'll be set aside for programs. There will be a breakout room that'll be set aside for technical. That room will also include discussions on CRP and CREP, and then there's going to be a breakout room for urban agriculture. We will have agency liaisons in each one of those rooms that should be there to be able to answer questions and record any feedback that you may want to provide. With the links being in the chat, and again, we will drop those in the chat here shortly, you can move between the meetings if you'd like to. You just have to return to this main meeting in order to access those. But if you have any questions as we move through that, don't hesitate to ask. We're happy to try to help you get to the room that you want to get to. So we're going to start off with just our main agenda this morning, and then we'll move into those breakout sessions towards the end of the meeting. So for our agency, one of the major focuses that we have had over these last few months, and we will have over the next few years, is this Inflation Reduction Act funding. This is a once in a generation opportunity that NRCS has received that we can make good investments across South Dakota and the nation. We're trying to find different ways to make this work, and the State Tech Committee is definitely one of those ways that we're looking at trying to get the feedback to make sure that we're investing those dollars in a wise way for South Dakota. We are also going to be working on improving our local working group process to make sure that we're getting more feedback at a local level, to make sure that we are treating the resource concerns that matter across the state. In an effort to continue doing this, we are going to be looking at continuing and expanding opportunities for partners through our agreements. We'll be looking at opportunities to expand our staffing capacity. Right now, for South Dakota, or up until this point, we had a staffing cap of around 300 to 314 staff for NRCS. We are looking at expanding that number up to 340 to try to absorb and increase capacity to be able to deal with this increased workload. We are also going to be working on increasing our training across the state to our staff, as well as partner staff, to try to absorb this additional workload. We have a significant backlog of work that this additional funding will help us reach. We are really excited about this opportunity, and I know that we're going to have the opportunity to actually get this on the ground over these next couple of years, especially with the help of our partners. So right now, we are working on going through our current list of our CCGA. CCGA. What does that, can you help me out with that after the weekend? Can you even her own accurate information? We'll have to make Colette come up with the acronym or say what it is. There she is. Good morning. So the CCCA is the Conservation Collaboration Cooperative Agreements, and that is the funding opportunity that we had for this year that closed last week. I'll report more on that later. Thank you, Colette. So there's going to be more opportunities through things like the CCCA. We are going to be going out with an announcement for our conservation innovation grants, our CIGs will be going out here shortly. We're going to have a little shorter window in those. We're going to open it for a 30 day opportunity. So you should be seeing that here shortly. But there are going to be continued opportunities as we move through these next couple of years, especially as we start working on getting started with our strategic plan and the National Office has been putting a lot of emphasis on our roadmap to success on getting these IRA dollars out the door. We are working on getting a contract put together right now for our strategic plan. Once that contract is in place, we will be holding three listening sessions across the state. The locations are still working on final locations for all three of those partner meetings. But the idea behind it is we want, again, to hear from our partners across the state to help drive where is NRCS going over these next few years. Our strategic plan will be a five year plan. So that's what we're looking for. And we definitely need your input. NRCS is a locally led agency and we need the feedback from our partners to help ensure that that's what's happening. So I'm going to go ahead and open the floor up. I saw Rebecca, do you want to step in and say anything on the senator's behalf? Hi, everyone. Looking forward to the breakout sessions, actually, I think that's a really neat idea. So I'm excited for that. But right now in D.C., we're just waiting to see what's going to happen with the debt ceiling. Senator Rounds has been really busy with banking hearings this week in that realm and also just kind of tracking the CBO score and what's going to be happening with the Farm Bill with regards to the spending. So looking at all of that and diving into that, but nothing of real detail at this time. Thank you so much, Rebecca. Thank you for attending and thank you for that report. Do we have anybody on from Senator Thune or Representative Johnson staff? OK, so next on the agenda this morning is going to be an update from Farm Service Agency. All right. Thanks, Tony. Good morning, everyone out there. Mine will be brief just a quick update on what's currently available under the CRP and CREP agreements. So obviously ongoing is the continuous CRP signup and the active CREP agreements. And currently in South Dakota, we've got five active CREP agreements. The Big Sioux River watershed and the James River watershed. Both in conjunction with the game fishing parks. And then we have the three tribal CREPs, Ogilala, Lakota, Rosebud and Cheyenne River in conjunction with those tribal nations. So all those signups are currently going on, accepting offers and working with NRCS to get plans and contracts in place. The general signup was earlier this spring. We're waiting on results from the National Office on the acceptance and results of that signup. And the other active signup we have is the Grassland CRP. And that signup concludes May 26th, and then it will be forwarded on or available for rank and review through the National Office for acceptance into that program. So that's currently what we have on the CRP arena with Farm Service Agency. And I guess I'd feel that any questions if there are any. All right, so any questions for Owen? I'll remind everybody that Owen will be a part of these breakout sessions later on this meeting. If you have any specific CRP or CREP related questions that pop up later, he'll be in the technical breakout room. Thank you. Thank you, Owen. Kent is next on the agenda with a soil health update. Good morning, everyone. Am I coming through? OK, Tony? Yes, you are. OK, so I'm going to be relatively brief here this morning. There's a busy agenda and then with some really good breakout sessions that we'll have at the end. So I did plan on giving just a short kind of educational talk on soil organic matter and and it's important and important in various forms. But I've been doing a lot of demonstrations with the rainfall simulator here over the past three weeks. I've run it 18 times the past three weeks and I had a really good question or comment by a producer last week in Watertown. So I had run it and we were just talking and in conversation afterwards and and you made the point of this is a great demonstration, very effective. It's you know, it does what it's supposed to do. It shows the importance of management on soil and you made a comment that I've heard in the past and I've had thoughts on the past, but basically said, said now what goes even if I want to change my management, you know, these demonstrations are great. But what's the next steps? And so that got me thinking and we had a great conversation afterwards. But we have a we have a great opportunity here south of hereon with a couple of demonstration farms. And one of them is the is the Dale demonstration farm with the Betel Conservation District and in association with Ducks Unlimited. And a lot of work's gone into into acquiring that land and, you know, just kind of getting up and running. And we can say that we're starting to do that effectively. But, you know, now the the point of that demonstration farm is to do exactly what that producer was asking for. And that is to demonstrate soil health practices. How do we how do you set up equipment? How do you how do you adjust your rotations? How do you how do you intercede? How do you put cover crops in in in short time frames? And so I'm just making everyone aware that we've got these this Dale demonstration farm and the Cane Creek demonstration farm, which has been in existence for a little bit longer, a couple of decades. There was a handout, hopefully, that you all got and it showed. Basically, a set of soil tests that we're going to be doing on this farm. And it was pulled up real quick and hopefully that's coming through. So this is a project that we're going to be doing multi-year on the Dale demonstration farm. It's basically going to track soil health properties and how they changed going from a conventional system into the soil health implemented system that we're that we're adopting out there. And so look through these. I'm not going to go through each and every one of these. Well, thanks, I thank Lance Gunderson from Regen Ag Labs for helping me with kind of breaking down these tests and making them understandable for even even the most lay of lay person. So I appreciate if you look through these, if you have any comments, certainly email me or contact me by phone or if there's tests on here that or that are not on here that you would like to see. In association with this project, we will also be collecting economic management data, economic yield data, infield assessments. We've got some cylinder restoration projects going on out there. So there's a lot of interesting data that we're going to be collecting over the years. We do have a tour that is or a field day going to be set up on Wednesday, July 12th. And so that'll be our next one coming up. And then we're working really hard to get some tours and things set up during the state fair. So maybe we can reach some people all throughout the state while they're in here on. So with that, I will stop sharing my screen and I will turn it back to you. Tony, thank you for everyone's time. I thank you so much, Kent. Our next agenda item is partnerships with Collette. Good morning again. Thank you for the platform time. So with partnerships, we've been very busy working with partners and seeing what things are going on later in the agenda. You'll see under partnership report that we will have time for partners to provide some updates on things happening with the organizations. So I have had several people ask for time, which is great. And then during that session, if you feel there's need to ask a question or something to your camera on and we'll be recognizing you so you can ask the question or provide an update in the organization. Then right after my report now, I'll be asking Trudy Ekafe to provide a partnership report on a national project. So with South Dakota, we had our conservation, collaboration and cooperative agreements, notice of funding. We started that in January and it was published for 60 days and it closed on May 6th. So the exciting news is that we have we received 20 proposals, which is great. And then those proposals have a value of about right about 17 million dollars. And that's that's really exciting. So unfortunately, we'll have to be. We'll be reviewing those and selecting the ones that best fit the needs of the agency right now for South Dakota. So but thank you to all the partners who submitted those proposals because it's really exciting to read through and see what see what ideas you have. So it'd be great to continue working with everyone on those. Let's see, the next thing, as Tony mentioned, we will be having a conservation innovation grants announcement soon. And that will be open for 30 days. And we will be sending out a notice on it. Something else you can do is go to grants dot gov. www.grants.gov and make sure your accounts are set up. And also, while you're there, you may want to browse some of the other opportunities happening through USDA. I've been seeing some really great notifications from the Office of Urban Agriculture and Innovation and then also from the Office of Outreach. So there's definitely some opportunities there that would be outside of our state announcements that you may be interested in and can qualify for. Anyway, just thought I'd mention that too. So OK, any questions on grants and agreements? First, I have to put it out of CS. All right, well, with that, I'm going to turn it over to one of our partner guests today and she has a report on their exciting new projects. So Trudy, I'm handing it over to you and then we'll go back to Tony. Awesome. Thank you, Collette. So wonderful to see some of the familiar names and some new names on the list here. And I'm thankful that some of you may know I was a former tribal liaison for the Pine Ridge Reservation. So I'm pretty familiar with what NRCS does. And for the last three years, I've been the executive director of Tonka Fund, which is a nonprofit organization loosely based out of here on Pine Ridge. So I'm here to talk to you about collaboration that we're doing at South Dakota State University. So I am not that familiar with teams, but I'm going to try to show my slide presentation here. Maybe, maybe not. Let's see if I can find the right one. There. I had, can you all see that? I'm going to start. Can you guys see that? I think you need a different screen, Dr. Caffee, it's showing the agenda right now. OK, let me see here. Let me try that again. Sorry about that. Like, so I'm not that familiar with stop sharing, stop sharing and see if I can pull this up. All right, let me see here. All right, there we go. How about that? Good, just go to presenter mode. OK, you see, I'll see that. All right. So your whole screen, if you can, if there's a Let me see here. I don't see your presenter mode on your screen, you're showing, but we see the whole screen along with the slides on the left and the. Helpful hints on the right. OK. The. Why it's not. Still the same, probably. Let me see if I can try this again. Apologies, I'm going to start my slideshow before I present. That might help me. Nope. And if not, Trudy, I do have your slides pulled up if you want me to share them instead. Yeah, would you do that? That might be better, because it's not letting me cooperate. Thank you. Great. Awesome. So, yes, this is a screen off. Yeah, this is a grant that we've been working on for over a year. And some of you may know that. A little bit about this already, but so I'm going to go through some of these slides pretty, pretty quickly if you could show the next slide, Darryl. So a little bit, just a little bit more about us, Tonka fund. We roughly have been in existence for six years. We are a nonprofit. And our primary goal is to support the reintroduction of Buffalo or Bison to the landslides and economy of Native people. Our sister organization is the Native American Natural Foods, which is Tonka Bar. And we also are providing assistance through a program called Track. So a little over. Well, I would have to say we've been working on this grant with SDSU for about a year and a half. It is a USDA NRCS climate smart commodities program. It is an $80 million grant that SDSU is been awarded over five years. Tonka fund is a small part of that. We're receiving about a million dollars a year to support this program. It's one of three that were very in the US that was awarded here. Next slide, Darryl. So I'm not going to talk too long about this. This is actually a slide that Dr. Jeff Martin from SDSU, some of these slides are his. So I'm going to give credit at the bottom to him for those. But it kind of just explains what we were thinking online as we support producers in this area. Next slide. I don't think I have to talk to you, the crowd of NRCS folks about what goals and accomplishments that NRCS wants to do. But this program, this grant is going to do the project overview as first incentive for producers. And then the second piece of it is the research. And then the third piece is the market development. Now Tonka fund is mostly on the end of incentives for producers and enrollment of those producers and primarily native or underserved producers both in the Buffalo and cattle world. Next slide. So our goal with SDSU over the next five years, these incentives that will be given are based on, this may all look very familiar to all, prescribed grazing, cover crop planting, forage and range planting and upland wildlife habitat management. Our goal is to look at at least 30% of the funding going to historically underserved producers. And it should over time, we're looking at 850 producers and I'll show a slide later on that. It's not just about South Dakota producers. It's a larger range than that, but we're looking at probably 50% of those coming from South Dakota. Looking at over the next five years, 3.9 million acres, over $24 million in incentives and then roughly $22 million, hopefully down the road for the commodities that will be part of this. The next part is what we're looking at, aren't we all looking at this, is the carbon sequestration, the communities. So all the ranches that we will be enrolling will do soil sampling on. Next slide. The next part of this and I'm not, Tonka Fund will not be necessarily a big player in the commodity part of this. So if there's questions around the market development, that's something that might, SDSU might have to explain a little in depth and we have a lot of other partners that'll be taking part in this market development outside of SDSU. So I can't explain to you a lot about what that looks like right now, other than that we're hoping animals that are enrolled in this program will be receiving premiums. What that looks like is still being developed. Next slide. So the partners roles, these are some of the partners, Agspire will be helping enrolling the partners, Tonka Fund, SDSU Extension, and the Center of Bison Excellence and Millbourne Seeds. Millbourne Seeds will be primarily responsible for some of the plantings. And then the next partner role will be basically in the research though, Tonka Fund and other folks will have some kind of technical assistance in working with the producers that we've enrolled in a deeper scientific background. And then Buffalo Ridge and National Bison Association and Cold Creek Buffalo Company will all be part of the commodity part, the sales of it. Next slide. So this is what we're looking at for target enrollment pools. So as you can see, South Dakota is the bigger piece of that. Basically looking at the Northern Great Plains and of course, grasslands. This is mostly affecting grasslands. I do know that the other two USDA and RC grants that were awarded, you know, we're looking more at the cropland pieces of that, how that affects South Dakota, I'm not entirely sure. We all are also working with some of the grasslands and places down in the Southeast. Next slide. So there is going to be the data collection and we're hoping, my hope is working with some of the tribal asons from NRCS and other NRCS folks here in South Dakota and other places. If we're looking for these ranchers that you might recommend to this program. There'll be the average rancher, basically very, you know, working with them on grazing, prescribed grazing plans, different types of seeding and that kind of thing. And then there'll be the research rancher, which will be a lot more in depth. So if you know of folks that might fit this bill that are, send them our way, at least the native producers or the underserved producers you can send toward Tonka Fund and some of the other ranchers to SDSU. There'll be a lot more information coming out about this as well as we develop, we're looking at a big media splash. So the average rancher basically will be doing some mapping, you know, doing some monitoring and some soil and carbon data. Next slide. And the research rancher, which will only be six across this landscape, will have a lot more to do with the research part of it. Those will probably be somewhat handpicked. And on top of that, the research rancher that is picked for some of this more in depth research that's going on, will actually receive a larger incentive. Next slide. So basically, you know, this looks very familiar to CSP to me, obviously, maybe with a little less paperwork in terms of getting selected and that kind of thing. But it looks very similar to me. So I don't, I think one of the things when I was talking with SDSU, we wanna be in partnership obviously with the local NRCS offices and that kind of thing and work on the same team. So that's why I'm really glad that I could speak about this today and at least get the thought process rolling on what that looks like. Next slide. So this is kind of the team we will recruit. And that was as Tonka funds main purpose, recruiting both beef and cattle producers, native or underserved. We will assess, you know, that the area, we'll look at the practices, we'll get them enrolled. And then the monitoring and the verifying will continue. So it's, again, looks very, very much like CSP, but maybe this can be just a little bit different and we'll work in collaborations with that. Next slide. Next slide. I'm stuck. So there may be more questions than answers that I have today. A couple of things that we know that we would need to do is to be able to, these funds have to be not already enrolled in NRCS program, which I would guess would look like CSP or CRP. They have to be outside of that. Otherwise, equip, I'm not sure. We're getting more clarification on that. As long as that equip practice is not something that is, you know, being enrolled in this play, in this factor. And is there any more slides, Darrell? No, I do, there is not any more slides that I can find. I was looking for a different one where you're talking about the different programs with NRCS, but I do not see it in here. Okay. All right. Yeah, you can stop sharing then and maybe I can just talk to that a little bit. One of the things that will be required, I don't know, is a couple of things. Of folks that'll be enrolling in this program is they will have to still go through the USDA program database. So that means their lands, they'll have to have control of that land. They will have to, if they're on tribal or allotted lands, we'll have to have permission. And again, that acreage cannot already be an NRCS currently funded program that is similar. They must sign the required USDA forms like the Form AD 1026 and the Form CC 941. As anything. So it has to be enrolled in the USDA, I would guess is the SKIMS program. They're true guys. They were able to share that one slide. It was hiding before, but now I'm sharing it on the screen to list that. Okay. Okay. There you go. So that is where, as partners with you all, we'd like to, again, be able to partner up. If you know ranchers and producers that might be interested in this program, you can send them our way. National Bison Association will also be recruiting Buffalo producers. SDSU and AgSquire will be recruiting, you know, non underserved producers. So again, maybe there's more questions than answers, but I'll take a few if somebody wants to throw them at me. Thanks, Darryl. Darryl for operating that for us. And thank you very much, Trudy, for your report. And we look forward to working with you. And this was a really exciting time for our ag producers. So, and we'll do our best to help you find those ranchers. And I was going to ask if you had mind, please to put your contact information in the chat. And then any of the people attending can grab that off for contact you directly soon. And then we'll watch for your news release soon as such. So. Thank you. Thank you. You bet. All right. Okay, so I'm going to conclude the grants and agreements update right now. And then I will turn it to Jeff Vanderwilt for the programs of fate. And I'll come back to our partners in a few minutes after in the partnership report section of this meeting. So thank you. All right. So I'm going to go ahead and hand this over to Jen Orts, who's going to give us a report on programs. Jeff is currently, Jeff's currently down in Arkansas right now, working through some solutions for our RCPP program. So he's working on trying to help us with some fixes to make that program a little more functional, which we're really excited about. So we're happy that he's there. We're sad that he's missing the day, but Jen's going to present on his behalf. So take it away, Jen. All right. Good morning, everyone. I'm just going to start out with equip real quick. And there should be a handouts in your packet with these numbers. This is our first tentative numbers for the funding in the various fund pools for equip for fiscal year 23. I'm not going to spend a ton of time going through each of these. There's a lot of numbers on here. So I'll let you guys take time to read through it. Please reach out to me if you have questions. We are not done funding at this time. There's still several of our CIS projects on this page of the handout with the TBD on there. Those are projects that are still getting applications ranking and we'll make funding selections on them, hopefully in the near future. So for equip, we're moving forward. And then I'm going to just spend a little time here on IRA before we go into CSP since I'm visiting right now with you. I know we've talked a lot about the inflation reduction actor IRA and the climate smart or climate mitigation and carbon sequestration. That is what we're going to focus on in some of the breakout rooms and how we can get prepared to utilize the additional funds coming to South Dakota. So just as kind of some expected numbers coming forward, this is for the nation, not just South Dakota, but 8.4 billion in equip, 4.9 billion in RCPP, 3.2 in CSP, 1.4 in ASAP and a billion dollars in technical assistance. And that is just, it's an awesome opportunity for our agency to really help our producers in getting additional conservation out there. Most of you have probably seen the list and I will share this list in more detail in the program's breakout room as well of the practices that are designated as climate smart or that climate mitigation practice that we can utilize the IRA funding for. And then just going forward off of that, we can also use facilitating practices to manage and implement that mitigation for climate. And these are just an example of some potential pairings of the IRA designated practice which would be here, conservation crop rotation, cover crops actually is another IRA, but we could do irrigation water management to support that crop rotation or the pest management conservation systems or what used to be integrated pest management. Those could all be facilitating practices to support the IRA practices. Prescribed grazing is gonna be a big one too across the state of being the mitigation practice, but to support that, excuse me, support that prescribed grazing system, we can utilize the watering facility, pipeline, fence, if we need a structure for wildlife or excuse me, for livestock which would be a fabricated windbreak, we could utilize them as facilitating practices through that money as well. And this slide just kind of goes into that systems for multiple different benefits of, yeah, we're targeting to the climate smart, that carbon sequestration, but there is other benefits to those systems which we all know we are all conservation minded on this call. So we're gonna be able to do some more wildlife benefits to different habitats through that, you know, just what Dr. Ekafi had talked about of getting livestock producers out there and utilizing prescribed grazing. Just a quick, a very quick overview of some of the IRA strategies in South Dakota. For EQUIP in fiscal year 23, our EQUIP ad hoc committee decided to target based on primary land use for the funds that we received in 23. So if the majority of the lands in application was cropland, we would target that towards cropland. Again, if it was grazing lands, we target towards the grazing lands and that just helped to spread some of the funding across the different primary land uses. Also through EQUIP, and this is another point we'll get into in the breakout rooms. We are piloting what is in our policy through the Farm Bill 18 called ACT NOW, which is supposed to be a more streamlined process for obligating contracts. So we haven't used it much as an agency and we haven't used it at all yet in South Dakota. So this is our first time out of the gate with that process. We have two different resource units, one in the pure area, one in the Brookings area that are piloting the ACT NOW process. So hopefully we can utilize that moving forward in 23 to have some more expedited funding opportunities. CSP and Val Duprez is going to present on CSP a little more here in a minute, but for IRA funding, we targeted towards the resource units and also beginning farmer and socially disadvantaged. RCPP is targeting on the proposal level for climate mitigation. And I didn't get this added into the slide yet, but ASAP is also having a national sign up and then we can have applications into that national sign up and Brandon will be talking about that later on as well. And we also in our breakout room going forward, we're going to be looking for different ways to utilize our partnerships and help to bring those opportunities to the producers. And let's see, I need to try to... That was all I was going to share on this PowerPoint at this time. I need to just be able to end it. All right, any questions? I know I was brief here, but I know we're going to be dealing with more of this in the program breakout room later on as well. And if not, I'll pass it on to, let's just go with Val. I don't have the agenda up right at the moment, but let's just go with Val to talk about CSP. And since Jeff is not here, Valerie DePrez is our new CSP program manager for South Dakota. She just started here, oh, about a month ago, taking over for Joyce Trevethick, who was the manager before that. So I'll pass it to you, Val. Thank you. All right, thank you, Jen. Yeah, I'm Val DePrez. I've been on the job about a month. This is my first state tech community with you, so it's a pleasure to be here. I am going to provide kind of an overview of CSP kind of on an annual basis. So for this year, we processed a lot of payments. That's just our normal process that we go through. We'll start processing payments in October, and our goal is to be completed by March. So we've had a few staffers, got a few payments hanging out there yet that we're still working on. But for the most part, payments are pretty well wrapped up. We paid on over 1,200 contracts and 2.6 million acres. We paid out about $36.5 million for activities that were completed in fiscal year 2022. We rolled into our 2023 renewals and general signups. Our renewals were obligated by the end of December, and our general signups were still obligating now, but we're getting close to wrapping them up. So coming into the year, we had 984 applications that were deferred or rolled over to this year, and we were able to fund 85 renewal applications across 234,000 acres with pretty close to $11 million. So of those nearly $11 million, we had more than 20% of those dollars going to historically underserved participants that's beginning, former, and or socially disadvantaged applicants. We fast forward to our classic application period and obligation period, which started, we ranked in February, March, and we've been working on obligations since. We were able to fund 97 applications across 227,000 acres with little over $14 million. There again, over 20% of our obligations been allocated to historically underserved producers. We had a CSP grasslands conservation initiative. We obligated 33 contracts across 1900, a little over 1,800 acres with 172,000. So the eligibility for that GCI or Grassland Conservation Initiative ties back to some base acres that are no longer considering crop status. They're more of a grazing or forage base. There's some criteria that is associated with that, and it goes along with some of the reporting at FSA. We're currently working on our 2023 inflation reduction act CSP sign up. We received $4.8 million for our IRA related CSP contracts. Our obligation date is set for mid-July. And at this current point in time, we've got 38 applications selected. I don't have an acre amount available yet, but we're just getting our letters in the mail to our selected applicants. So looking forward to this next quarter, we're gonna be looking at our 2024 renewal applications. So we have our fiscal year 2019 CSP contracts expiring at the end of the calendar year, and they're eligible for renewal. We have about 245 contracts covering 713,000 acres. Our sign up date was April 28th. I don't have a final number on the number of applications and we don't have our allocation yet. So more information to come on that. Thank you. All right, thank you so much, Val. Jen, thank you both so much for the report. Do we have any chance to have Matt on today? Matt, should be on, I don't think Brandon is on as well. All right, are you two ready to give some sort of report also? You bet, I can go first here. All right, hopefully you guys can see my screen here. It's on page 10 of your handout from Kathy. So a brief update on ASAP before we go into our breakout session. For fiscal year 23, we had 45 applications for WRE. From that pool. Brandon, your handout moved to the side. So we just see your desktop. Okay. There you go. All right, from that, like I said, we had 45 applications. We did have enough funding to select eight of those, which covers about 817 acres for pretty close to 3.3 million. For ALE, we did have eight applications this year. From that, we were able to select one parcel. It's just a hair under 1,000 acres. So we're moving through the process with our acquisition process for all the easements. Regarding IRA, I'll get into more detail in the breakout section, but in a general overview, all of the applications that were not selected for funding in the normal farm bill were all turned over and also ran through the system for IRA. So that's roughly 37-some change for WRE. And then we did have an additional one for IRA for ALE. So we submitted nine applications for the ALE funding. As Jen mentioned briefly earlier, that was a national signup. So we as the state are not making those selections. Those are being handled by our EPD team from the follow-up information I got yesterday is those selections are not made at this time. They are currently being routed through the EPD leadership for their selection. So we're getting a little late in the timeframe when it comes to easements and the acquisition process. So like it's fingers crossed, that gets handled soon so we can wrap up. So we'll cover a little bit more of that in our breakout session and I'll hand it over to Matt next for RCPP. All right, morning, everybody. Those of you that don't know, I'm Matt Morlock. I'm the new RCPP coordinator for South Dakota here and I've been on the ALE didn't move for me. Don't know about you. All right, sounds good. Oh, I'm sorry, technologies. Something we're learning. But anyway, I'm the new RCPP coordinator. I gotta say I'm used to being in your guys' seat. So it's a little bit odd to be on the inner CS seat now and having this spotlight on me with this program. But we're excited. There's a lot coming up and going on with our CPP but we haven't given an update in a long time on this program. So what I thought I'd do is kind of walk through the eight active contract or programs we have going on right now. It's gonna give you guys a brief update on each one of those. And the first one we have is the Big Sioux project which is one of our most long lasting prices have been going on for quite a while. Currently we've got 13 producer contracts that are in the obligation phase. So we're gonna be funding about $171,000 through that project. It's been, we're getting close to closing out that. We've about have all the funds obligated with that program. We'll probably be holding one more batching period through the RCPP with Big Sioux. I don't know what that is. They're pretty evenly distributed in the watershed with Lincoln County, Minnehaha. New Orleans Union all have contracts going on through that, this sign up. The next project, we have the Northeast Glacier Lakes program. This is a new one. They had their first batching period which closed a couple of months ago and which is typical of what's a new one. There was one project that's been multi-obligation phase. We typically start out small and get the King's worked out and they'll be setting up a new batching period soon to open it up for applications again. And we'll expect a bigger sign up this next time with that project. WWF has a building ranch resiliency project going on that's active all of Western and South Dakota and then 10 counties in Nebraska as well. That project is currently open for sign up and it is open through June 1st. So you have partners out there working West River if you know producers that are looking to do some grazing land improvement and being connected with the larger ranching community to talk about issues and resiliency. There's an opportunity going on right now. So I encourage you guys to, any producers that you think are interested in it, talk to them about going to the field offices and then signing up an application for this project because it's a good opportunity. There's about a million dollars available through that project. So there's plenty of opportunity to do some grazing work out West River there. The next project we have that's active is the conservation easements in the Black Hills through South Dakota Agland Trust. We finalized the programmatic partnership agreement which was a big step. I'm getting that signed and agreed to, takes quite a bit of time. So now we're moving on with that one into the supplemental agreement phase. So shortly we'll be able to take, the South Dakota Agland Trust will be able to enroll a couple of easements in the Black Hills. It's really focusing on development pressure that's going on in the hills right now. So be looking for more updates on that program soon. The fifth one I wanna talk about is the Lewis and Clark and lower James water quality project through the James River watershed development district. This one, we're very close to also having a batching period come up because we're just finalizing the last bit of ink on the supplemental agreement with NHQ on that one as well. So both that one and the previous one, we're close to being able to sign up producers. And we're excited to get those active and going because I know there's a lot of backed up interest in both those programs. I do have to apologize under this RCPP Classic slide. There is one project that I sent in an old draft to Kathy that was left off and that's the Belfouche River watershed project. That one's also an older one that we have going on and we're actually getting close to being able to close this one out. The previous batching period, there was six contracts that moved on the obligation phase that we're finalizing. And then we also have 20 new contracts that are going through ranking right now. Talking with the folks out there, they're looking at doing a second one, a second RCPP. So this project should be ongoing, but like I said, we're getting ready to close out this one. The other two projects are both AFA projects, which stands for Alternative Funding Arrangements. These projects are a little different than the ones I talked about because they're more partner driven. So our interest just doesn't have as big of a role in them, but they're exciting to us because they're very innovative. And the first one to talk about is Scaling Soil Health in the Prairie Pothole region. This one's through Ducks Unlimited. They have 17 projects that are currently about ready to be contracted and ready to be awarded. That was through their first batching window. I talked to Bruce yesterday and saw that they're meeting this morning to go over several new project proposals. So that one's gonna be an ongoing sign up and very actively enrolling as the year goes through. It's not gonna have a traditional hard batching window. The last one we have right now active in the state is expanding Soil Health through Carbon Markets, which is your American Coalition at ethanol. That one too is kind of working on a constant sign up and I know they're working with producers right now to get some contracts going. That probably is really focused on minimizing tillage and input costs and using cover crops and things like that to reduce carbon footprint. So I did all of that to kind of give you an idea of the broad scope of projects that are available and what we can do with our CPP. As you can see, there's a lot of flexibility. And that's leading up to the big part of what I wanted to talk about and that's an upcoming new notice of funding opportunity. That's gonna be coming out tomorrow actually. This new NFO is gonna be, it's gonna be a lot different I think than previous RCPP signups. As Tony alluded to, there's a lot of challenges that have been with this program, just getting through agreement phases and things like that. This new NFO is gonna be addressing that and I think it's gonna be a lot different process. So like I said, it's gonna be released tomorrow on the 18th and there's gonna be upcoming trainings for our NRCS staff is gonna be a May 23rd training date. So I encourage everybody to hold off questions and tell the 23rd when we actually have a training but get through and read those NFO that comes out tomorrow and start getting familiar with it. But then on the 23rd, we'll be having our training. There's gonna be partner trainings on May 24th and then on June 7th as well. And we'll be sending out notices to everybody on that so that you know that they're coming up and make sure you take part in them. But just going around with this NFO, funding's gonna be increased dramatically from what we previously seen. We're gonna have approximately 500, this one, which is an increase of over $200 million and that's because of IRA. And this is kind of a sign of what's to come. So there's gonna be a lot more need for partners and a lot more opportunity for partners to grow for our CPP. So I'm gonna encourage everybody to take a strong look at this NFO and kind of get ready for, if not this one, future ones, because there's gonna be a ton of funding available coming forward. The last thing I wanna hit on and then I'll turn it back over is at the next state tech committee meeting, we're gonna be asking formally for partners that wanna assist us in a review process of all the RCPP programs for the state. This is new, this is a new step. Traditionally, the state hasn't had a partnership ranking process. So that's gonna be coming. I wanted to get everybody to think about it because like I said, next state tech, we're gonna ask for people to formally volunteer to do this project. And I think it's gonna be a good, great opportunity for folks that are gonna be considering of all proposals in the future because it's gonna let you see what's going on and get a little bit of an inside look on it. So I'd really encourage partners out there to think about those opportunities and taking part in that review committee when it comes out in September. That's all I have. I'll turn it back to the state office. I'm gonna get me at something for you. Using somebody else that had something for programs, man. No, I think that's all, Tony. Unless there's questions. Okay, does anybody have any questions for the programs team? And again, if you have further questions, there will be an opportunity to ask them questions in the programs for a conference. So I definitely wanna say thank you to the programs team and also welcome to Matt and Val into their new roles. We're really, really excited that it's on board. All right, so moving down the agenda, we have Jess up with a update. Okay, good morning, everyone. Jessica Mulhulsky, state resource conservationist. I'm gonna have a pretty brief update. Our staff is going to cover any changes that we've made to practice standards and technical notes, both on the engineering side and ecological sciences side. Those will be covered in the technical breakout session. So if you wanna know specifically what changes have been made here in April, please join that session and that will be covered in that breakout session. But I just wanna provide a couple of reminders. Our staff, both the ecological sciences and engineering and soil staff all work together to update any needed practice standards and specifications and technical notes basically twice a year. We do that in either October or April in South Dakota, just to try and keep that to kind of a limited timeframe so that we don't get so overwhelmed with changes and our field office staff and partners don't get so overwhelmed with changes. So I just wanna remind everybody that that's when that happens. We also, our staffs work hand in hand with the program staff basically at about this time every year to look at any payment scenarios that are needed for our conservation practice standards for the next fiscal year. So if you are a partner or an individual that has some ideas about how we can improve our payment schedules, you can sure contact someone on the technical staff or the program staff and we can work through that. One example I recently worked with an individual who had wanted us to add some duct nesting boxes to our payment schedule. So we met and we're gonna be doing that for 2024. So it's just a good reminder that if we're missing something that maybe we should be looking at, that's what all of you are out there for is to help us with that process. But again, we'll cover more detailed information in the technical breakout session. I will have Brandon Walter in there on the ecological sciences side. We'll have Andy Oxford as the acting state soil scientist in there and then also Joy Cordier-Jensen from the engineering staff. I will be leading the urban breakout session because my urban conservationist, Rachel Fry, is actually all in the field today. So if there's any questions on urban, you can sure join that breakout session. That's all I have, Toni, thank you. Thank you, Jess. All right, so next on the agenda is partnership reports. We'll let if you would mind taking that over. Sure, you bet. Oh, this is the fun part of the meeting, I think. So we get to hear from our partners some updates on what they're doing. And it is my pleasure today to introduce Jessica Howell, who is going to tell us about the Smithsonian's shorebird collection. And then after Jessica, we will hear from Matt Gottlob and Bruce Toy in that order. So fix, I'll turn it to you, Jessica. Hi, everyone. Thanks for the time. I know a lot of you, I worked with ABC, American Bird Conservancy as a partner out of the Buffalo Field Office for the last four years. And I've been with the Smithsonian for a little over a month now. And I'm excited to talk about a new initiative under their migratory bird center, which is the shorebird collective. So the shorebird collective basically brings together thousands of data sets from over 30 species of shorebirds that scientists have compiled over the years. Oftentimes these are things that go into academic journals and they're not necessarily instantly available for conservation. So the collective aims to change that, to make that research more directly linked to the on-the-ground work. So that's the overall goal, is to be able to contribute to habitat work. And I am the local conservation specialist. We're a team of five. And I am based out of Cold Strip, Montana now. So a little outside of the state, but still pretty close by. And we're focusing on the prairie potholes and the Northern Great Plains. I can show you exactly why here in a minute, but you know that kind of the why is shorebirds have declined like unfortunately in many other groups of birds, often over 50% declines in the populations. Some species it's over 70%. I think everyone thinks the shorebirds is kind of a habitat specialist group, the little birds that are on beaches. But what's really cool is they actually have a really diverse array of habitats, including both the uplands on our rangelands, as well as wetlands that are on the rangelands or embedded in crop fields. And South to go to host a number of breeding shorebird species, as well as migrating species, species that are just stopping here in the spring and fall, maybe on the way to the Arctic, maybe in Alaska, maybe even all the way up to Russia. So it's pretty crazy how far some of these birds go. There's a lot of management practices that are really relevant to them. They like the short to medium grass on rangelands. So they're part of a healthy grazing system. They like wetlands with a low amount of vegetation and a nice shoreline providing kind of some water that's less than four inches typically. So I think there's a lot of connections with shorebirds between grazing management, soil health, and then also erosion, nutrient runoff and sediment runoff even. And a lot of those climate smart practices do pertain to shorebirds from prescribed grazing to wetland restoration and the kind of the practices that go along with all those. So I wanted to share, let's see if I can share the screen here. Can you see the PowerPoint I have here? Yes. Okay, yeah, so this is an overall map that shows those birds that have been trapped, overlays everything. And you can see that both when we're talking about the number of species and the number of individuals, the Dakotas, Montana, everything in the Prairie Pothole region, Northern Great Plains really lights up as well as the Gulf Coast. And that's kind of the connection there. We haven't done a state report yet for South Dakota, but we're certainly interested in doing these state reports. This is Wyoming's, and this is kind of a, I think just under a 250 square mile kind of grid showing where you've got different individuals using areas. So I think these kind of maps could perhaps be used for projects and all. Let's see, I'll stop sharing the screen now. For projects like CIS, maybe there's a roll with our CPP, maybe just providing mapping tools and focal layers, because these are really fine-scaled data. They can tell us about the exact times that shorebirds are in the area and even down to the exact field they're on. So I've got some ideas. I'd love to brainstorm with people looking forward to the breakout sessions. And definitely I'll drop my contact info in here, reach out with any ideas. There's definitely an outreach component too, because I want producers to be aware that they're caring for the habitat not only for breeding shorebirds, but for shorebirds that are just passing through on their way to the Arctic, which is really cool, the kind of connections between the Northern Great Plains and many other parts of the world. So, but thank you for the time and listening. And yeah, I'll drop my contact info in the chat. Excellent, thank you, Jessica. That is exciting. And it's fun to hear the enthusiasm and we look forward to working with you. Thank you. Yes. Next, we will have a report from Matt with Pheasants Forever, please. All right, thanks for the opportunity. Yeah, my name is Matt Gottlob. I am the new state coordinator for Pheasants Forever here in South Dakota. Been on just over two weeks here. So I worked with a lot of you through my previous position as a range wildlife conservationist out of Belfouche, working on the sage grass initiative. So June would have been seven years in that position. So I'm really excited to take over the team of biologists here in the state. So they're still chipping away as usual. Talked with one of the seniors this morning and they said the update is kind of status quo, just chipping away and moving forward. So do have a few more positions that'll be being either backfilled and or filled for the first time. So the peer position, we're looking the week of Memorial Day for the biologists there to get started. And we've transitioned the position from faith to wall and that biologist will be starting the 12th of June and the Belfouche position should be starting about the same time either the 12th or 19th, working through a few things with all those positions, just kind of little intricacies of little tricks with each of those. But then the Faulkton or Miller position that closes tomorrow. So hopefully be doing interviews the following week and then hopefully getting somebody on by middle to late June with those as well. So I'll drop my contact info in the chat as well. I didn't have a whole lot and if folks got questions, they can either ask them now or follow up later on. Thanks for your time this morning. Thank you, Nat. Yes, it's great to be working with you and congratulations on your positions with the business. If there are any other partners that would like to speak up, if you wanted to say a few words about what your organization is doing, just turn your camera on and then we'll be clear now. So Bruce, to you. Yeah, thanks Colette and good morning everybody. Thanks for the opportunity to hop on here. As Matt mentioned earlier, we've been pretty busy with RCPP in Eastern and South Dakota here. Last 2022, we had our first sign up and over the past couple of months, we've finally signed up three of those landowner agreements with RCPP, looking to impact about 2,400 acres in Eastern and South Dakota, including restoring about 600 acres of marginal cropland back to grass. So we're pretty excited about that and we have some pretty neat soil health management plans and a lot of grazing infrastructure to help with the livestock rotational grazing on those projects. Over the past couple of months, we had our second sign up and received about 17 applications for RCPP and we're in the process to kind of rank in those to help fund that next batch of applicants to the next year or so. So that will likely be wrapping up our South Dakota component of that RCPP process. As a reminder, it is a three state proposal. North Dakota had their first sign up here this past spring too. Another project we have, we were awarded a grant with the Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative. Don't have that grant agreement set forth yet but we're pretty excited about the opportunity there. I really look into trying to help find ways to connect livestock producers with some of those IRA dollars coming in the next couple of years and help folks get some more watering facilities and fence and help them manage the grazing lands in Eastern South Dakota there too. So pretty excited about that opportunity. And we do have a new biologist on the team here, Kenneth Hammons, out of the Sioux Falls area. They'll be focusing on kind of South Central part of the state, which our staff has kind of been missing over the past couple of years. So kind of helping out round out our conservation team. So we're excited to have Kenneth on board. But thanks for the opportunity here, Collette. You bet, and thank you. And again, it's really fun to hear all the exciting things happening and partners working together for our farmers and ranchers. So at this time, I'm going to invite any questions for our partners for their reports. You can either open your mic or you can put something in the chat. And if there are any folks who would like to provide an update for the organization, so that'd be great. I see Mike Beck, you have a question? Your hand is on? I think I think it was a technical glitch. Oh, sorry. That's good. All right, well, I thought I'd just check to see if any of our partners with the closer partners. I do want to take a moment just to recognize in June, there'll be some events coming up. And one of them is with our partners, the conservation districts. And as NRCFs are working us to keep planning the conservation districts also are doing planning and working with partners. So they will be having area meetings in June and the part of the point of those meetings is local round table discussions with partners. So please, please connect with Angela if you don't have those dates and locations and then that'll be an opportunity just for more, for collaboration and conversation about all these great projects and activities that are happening, but more so at the area and more local level for local conservation efforts. So, okay, I'll put that plug in. I guess if there aren't any other updates right now, I'll turn it back to you, Tony, so we can get started on the next session. All right, thank you so much Collette. And I failed earlier in the agenda to recognize our two sister agencies that are also on the call today. I saw that Steve Dick joined with Farm Service Agency. Steve, do you have any comments you'd like to make to this group? I saw him join. I might be looking at the wrong thing. All right, there you go, I'm messing up again. Okay, maybe he's not actually on there. I saw him on one of this, but maybe he's not actually on here today. So I would like to go ahead and the last agenda item that we have is other. And I know that one person came up and wanted to just make at least one announcement and Kathy, this is your opportunity to make your announcement. Can you hear me from here? Yes. First of all, I would just like to announce that I am retiring as of May 31st. So I just wanted to thank all of you for all the time that I have worked with you over the years. And I appreciate all your input when I ask for it or anything like that. So I just wish you all well and hopefully I'll see you sometime across at another time. And just remember to keep and encourage you to work with NRCS with helping the people help the land. So thank you. Thank you, Kathy. All right, so we are gonna go ahead and transition into our breakout sessions. So in the chat. So if you look at the top bar of your Teams app there could be a little chat bubble. If you click on that, you scroll through the chat, you should see some links. And the links will look, they'll say, for example, urban breakout session and it'll have click here to join this meeting. So if you decide which meeting you'd like to join go ahead and click there. I'm gonna give all the liaison from NRCS just a minute or two to get set up and going. So if you get them just maybe a five minute window to get into their respective rooms they will go ahead and get those things started. So we'll see you in the breakout rooms in about five minutes. If you can't get in for whatever reason just drop a note in this chat and I'll try to get there. So thank you all, thank you for participating and we'll see you shortly.