 it and start the recording. Okay, wonderful. I think the recorded is started. We still have a couple of people joining us here and there, but wanna go ahead and welcome you to the State Technical Committee for South Dakota to their quarterly meeting. I wanna take the opportunity to introduce myself. My name is Laura Broles and I'm currently serving as the Acting State Conservationist for South Dakota right now. I have been in the state since January and I am tentatively scheduled to be here until the May time period unless the vacant state conservationist position is hired before then. I see as our partners in the advisory committee to the State Technical Committee, I see lots of familiar names and participants today. So thank you so much for joining us. We're so glad that you're taking the time to be with NRCS today, but just wanna start out with a couple of housekeeping items. If you can please just make sure for the presenters that you try to keep your microphones muted. Also, as we present today, I know that we have a very full schedule and lots of presenters. So as we present, if you do have questions, please don't hesitate to put those in the chat and we will try to answer those as they come up. Also to the presenters today, as you present on your PowerPoint presentations. So I know when Kathy Irving sent out the invite for this meeting, there should be a copy in the invite of the PowerPoint presentations and the agenda for today. But if you are presenting, if you don't mind sharing your screen and pulling up that PowerPoint so that way you can share it with the rest of the crowd. But again, thanks so much for being with us. I wanna open it up. I'm not sure if maybe there are any congressional representatives that were able to join us today that would like to provide an update or a report. So I wanna open that up. Yeah, this is Jim Seltzer from Senator Mike Brown's office. We're on a, can you hear me okay? Yes, can hear you great, Jim. Okay, you never know about technology. So yeah, so we're on a couple of week recess. Obviously, like every other federal agency we got a new administration. So we're working through the nominations and appointments that are going on. And then obviously trying to continue to work through the pandemic issues and support to the public and businesses through that. So I don't know that I have a whole lot more than that unless there's any questions but I'm always available for questions. Okay, well, thanks so much for joining us today, Jim. We appreciate it. If you have any questions for Jim, feel free to put those in the chat and maybe he can see those and answer those. Any other representatives that might be with us today that would like to speak up. Hi, all, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Hi, this is Ryan Donnelly from Senator John Thune's office. I would just echo what Jim said from our perspective in addition to the nominations that'll come through the AG committee. We're working on a cover crop bill for prevent plan acres on the November one rule and Senator Thune's still working on the Soil Health and Income Protection Program. And we're hoping to have another sign up for that this year and have been working with folks in the USDA headquarters on the rollout of that. And then finally interested in the CRP sign up and what improvements can be made there to kind of get the CRP going back in a better direction. So those are a few things we're tracking but thanks for the opportunity. Thanks so much for being with us today, Ryan. Any other representatives? Okay, it doesn't look like we have any more right now. So thanks so much to Jim and Ryan. I wanna open it up to the Farm Service Agency and allow them the time to provide an update. Owen, would you happen to be on with us today or Jamie? I am on today, Laura. This is Owen Fegerhog from the Farm Service Agency. Get my camera on, can you see me? Yes, we can see you. I guess we, as an agency, we're in a pause right now with the Conservation Reserve Program as far as the general sign up and the grassland sign up is concerned. The continuous sign up has been ongoing but we are waiting as both of the representatives had indicated that there are potential changes coming to the CRP program and we do not know what they will entail. So at this point, the participation has been not as much as we wished. So I guess I don't have a lot on that front. I was just actually running some numbers as I was waiting to come into the call here. We've got roughly around 15,000 acres under the continuous sign up that are in an offer status right now. 1,300 under the FWP, which is the Farmed Wetland Program, which is a continuous sign up. We've actually got 39,240 acres offered under the general sign up, which is currently in a pause. So we don't know when that deadline would be and when those would be ranked to see what acceptance rate we would get on those. And then the CREP project area under the continuous sign up has roughly 3,000 acres that have been offered. So that's kind of where we're at CRP wise. Again, we're in that pause on the general sign up and the announcement of the grasslands sign up has been pushed down the road as well. So a lot of work to do once those get announced and big crunch time again, getting those plans completed and offers across the finish line. I don't know, Laura, if you wanted to transition into Mark Norton could add an ask of the agency or of the state tech committee to visit on the emergency hain and grazing policy as it was currently rolled out with the 2018 Farm Bill. I know Mark had had some discussions with Ryan Donnelly with Senator Thune's office. It might be beneficial if his time is limited to maybe engage that conversation now. I guess I'd defer to you on how you want to move forward with the agenda. That would be just fine. Is Mark with us today? Hello everybody, Mark Norton, I am here. And thank you, Laura and Owen for adding this to the agenda for the state tech committee meeting. That came about, I guess last year, we heard from some other states that experienced emergency that was concerning that the entire fields of CRP were being paid for emergency use. And that was, I guess, a big change from how CRP emergency had been done through history. In the past it had always been limited to 50% of the field and that way the program maintained its three co-equal benefits of soil water and wildlife habitat while still providing emergency forage for livestock producers. And it seems within the 2018 Farm Bill that it is still allowable to work in coordination with the state tech committee meetings or committee to make recommendations on how emergency hang should be done. And I think there's a lot of benefits to the South Dakota if our state tech committee at least requested or made a recommendation that if an emergency does occur in South Dakota that hang be limited to 50% like it had been in the past of a field. There's certainly benefits to the availability of emergency forage in that current emergency year. And then also, as we all know, sometimes emergencies in South Dakota last more than just one year. Sometimes we have multi-year droughts or sometimes we have a drought one year and we have floods the next year. We have obviously a unique climate that we live in in South Dakota and having that other half of that CRP field available in the following year for emergency use can be very valuable to livestock producers as well. And obviously having some standing cover on those CRP fields is valuable for wildlife for winter cover as well as a lot of wildlife depend on residual cover that next spring and having some portion of those fields still available is very important to the wildlife in South Dakota. And there's also water quality and quantity benefits of snow catch and things like that of having cover on a portion of that field. And then also hunting is a large part of our state's economy and honorable cover is another aspect to think about on CRP. A lot of pheasant hunters come to South Dakota every year and having some cover on CRP is very important to them as well. So my request to Owen and he did send an email out to the CRP subcommittee back at the beginning of March asking for input on what everybody felt about this. If we should request to limit, be able to limit emergency hang to 50% of a CRP field. And I guess that's really the question that I think we're looking for discussion and input on here. I guess permission to speak please. Yes, go ahead. Yeah, my name is George Van Dell. I'm representing a local chapter Delta Waterfall. I've been on involved with the state technical committees since they were, before they were state technical committees. I'd certainly echo what was just said when it comes to the shared responsibility of what happens during a drought. We have to keep all factors in mind. I certainly understand and appreciate the forage needs of producers. And I understand that the CRP and the hay provided off of CRP can be very critical to their operations and respect that. But I also think we have to keep in mind that wildlife is just as an important component of CRP is paying and grazing, even in a drought year. And our wildlife populations, be it ducks, be it gross, be it pheasants, be it songbirds, you name it. Deer fawns, everything in South Dakota is tied to the CRP acres. And if we allow mass whole fields to be hayed and grazed, that virtually leaves nothing for the wildlife that are also suffering during a drought. It's not only the timing of haying, but the amount that's hayed that can have an impact. Grazing, if done properly, doesn't have quite the impact that haying does. When you hay a field, depending on when you hay it, it can not only ruin this year's production, but that grass then is not available for next year's production. So it's kind of a double whammy. So it takes several years to come back for wildlife to come back. And that's why it's so critically important to leave at least half of that grass on the ground for our wildlife population. So I'd certainly strongly endorse that recommendation that we keep it restricted to 50%. And thanks, George. Are there any other comments? This is Pete Ballman from SDSU Extension. And Mark did a great job summarizing the, I think the feelings of the subcommittee. I think we had pretty unanimous agreement, or maybe completely unanimous agreement that that should be the direction we should go. One thing Mark failed to mention though too, and I think that we really have to take a hard look at is that the 2018 Farm Bill did respond in kind to the collective idea of working lands and getting CRP fields to be more of a working lands model, which opened up these contracts to actually what's really a great era for CRP and grazing and haying. And I guess what we had talked about in our subcommittee is that because of that, because of those actions, there's a lot of grazing and haying already occurring on these CRP fields, on these new contracts. And I think that's really a great thing. I think we all wanted that in South Dakota. So because we've gotten that essentially compromise, that conservation compromise, I think we have to be really careful to not take more cover off the land than those contracts are already allowing for. So I don't know not exactly sure how that's going to work in the emergency era either, where like grassland CRP or where they take a haying and grazing option. But certainly those contracts really should have be scrutinized pretty hard for additional emergency cover removal. When it gets to general, the general contract, so going back to the way things used to be probably, as Mark had stated, is probably the best, making sure that we don't have it more than 50% removal on those fields. So those are my comments. Thanks, Pete. Anyone else have any comments? Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Good morning. Thank you, Laura. Paul Lepastow with the South Dakota Division of the Isaac Walton League and also a member of the CRP subcommittee and just wanted to weigh in and say that support what has been previously stated this morning in regards to the 50% maximum harvestability of those fields. Thank you. Okay, thanks so much, Paul. Any other comments? Say, Laura, this is Bill Smith with Department of Ag. I know there's a number of people that probably couldn't make the tech meeting. More of a question for Mark and Owen. Will others have a chance to make some comments on this at all? Or you just want to move forward from here at this point. There might be some other people who have some thoughts too to weigh in on. The other option is Bill. So we are recording this meeting today. So after we are done for everyone that was invited that couldn't make it today. So we are going to send this recording out and the PowerPoint presentation so that way those that can't make it can at least go back and view it. So just something to possibly keep in mind. Okay, thanks, Laura. Would it be appropriate for a couple of quick questions, please? Sure, that would be fine. Yeah, I just like a status update on where we're at acreage rise with CRP. I kind of got from the CRP presenter that we're probably going to see about 50,000 acres, maybe depending on where all the stuff falls out. Maybe I'm mistaken on that of new CRP enrollments. And I guess I'd just like to know what the status of our CRP acres are as of the spring and then what we're going to see expire and come fall. George, can I, I don't have them right at my fingertips but I'll have them here by the end of the meeting and I can put them in the chat if that would work. That'll be fine or just send it to me on a, you know, an email or something like that because I'm going to have to leave the meeting here in about 50 minutes. So I might not be here for the full duration of the meeting but I just like to kind of keep a mental track on where we're at with CRP and where we're headed. And do you think my assessment of the approximately 50,000 acres is reasonably accurate for new enrollments? We want more than that but I don't think you're probably too far off. Mark, did you have the expiry and the tiered disposal there of what we had this year? I should have that memorized I don't have it right in front of me right now, no. Oh, I'll get the numbers pulled and then we'll see where we land. Yeah, maybe just do a follow up to those of us around the technical committee just so that we can kind of keep track. I thought Mark had those tattooed on his forearm there. Oh, and Mark, if you send a response, if you don't mind if you will at least put that in the chat so we can capture those in our minutes for the meeting so that way if anybody else asks we can provide that information to them also. Laura, this is Pete Baumann again. Just a quick question. So the process here, I'm just kind of curious so that the subcommittee makes a recommendation. Mark's identified that it's allowed within the CRP rules. What's actually the process? If the State Tech Committee agrees, what's the process of making sure that that's enacted in South Dakota? Or how does that actually work? Or Owen, maybe? So I just want to mark it indicated that there is a provision in statutes that talks about State Tech Committee recommendations. But the way it's been interpreted statutorily then arrived in policy and that's that's on the onset of routine a D2 level or a 40% below normal on production. And then the 50% provision limitation is enacted once we hit an LFP designation which is a higher drought designation. So it's kind of backwards from what one would think. You know, when we get to a stress level we should have the 50% provision in place and then continue forward with that. In this case, the concern is that it allows 100%. Again, I've asked the question of our leadership in FSA and they're telling me that there is no latitude. So I think the ask of the State Tech Committee today would be to revisit that and challenge the interpretation on the State Tech Committees authorities or ability to weigh in. So again, I maybe disagree with Mark a little bit on how he read statute that State Tech Committee can determine this but I don't think it hurts to bring it to their attention so that it can potentially be remedied. Is that fair, Mark? Yeah, I mean, I'm not saying the State Tech can make the decision at all. I just, they are supposed to be consulted with on all the hanging grazing stuff. And I feel if that hasn't been done yet since the 2018 Farm Bill and I would like, you know, the State Tech Committee to at least provide a request or for a waiver if there is no, if it is a pretty hard line or at least a recommendation on how our State Tech Committee feels about hanging grazing, especially in this emergency, under emergency hang. Owen, did you have another comment? I don't know. I'm trying to multitask here and find those numbers. So I think we're, I think I've said what I needed to I guess I think Mark did an excellent job and I fully understand the concerns and I guess I'm committed to help the State Tech Committee move forward in getting that recommendation to the folks that need to see it. So I guess I would maybe ask if the representatives for the senators have any comments on that or if they're reading it the same way we are. Hey, this is Ryan from the Senator Thune's office. Yeah, we in working on the statute wanted the State Technical Committee to be consulted. And, you know, we want to balance the needs of producers and, you know the wildlife benefits of CRP. So, you know, we want to work with you all on a path forward. And when you guys, when the State Tech Committee has a recommendation, if you wouldn't mind sharing a copy of it, that would be helpful as we're thinking through ideas to improve CRP. I appreciate all the comments on the emergency hang. It's helpful. Hey, Jim, I saw your camera turn on. Did you have a comment? No, I didn't know if Ryan was still with us, but yeah, I'm with Ryan. I think we need to take all the data to the decision whoever the decision maker is when we do emergency hang and grazing and then take all the factors into consideration. So. Okay, thanks so much. Is there any other discussion on this topic at the moment? Well, this is George and I'll be real brief here just throughout the history. I think it's great for the State Technical Committee to be proactive and do what we're supposed to do and let's give advice on issues like emergency hang and grazing. And I think it's very important we stay active in that. I applaud Mark for bringing it up. It's a good thing. I'm glad to see it on the agenda. Thank you. Okay. Thanks so much for all of the comments and to Mark for bringing it up. So as we move through this process, NRCS will plan to collaborate with FSA, on this topic. So hopefully there will be more follow-up. Okay, we're gonna go ahead and move forward with the agenda items. And next up we have a presentation and a soil health update from Kent Fleeker. Kent, would you mind sharing your PowerPoint on Microsoft Teams? Okay, so is that coming through? Okay, Laura. Yes, I can see it and I can hear you great. Okay, fantastic. Okay, so good morning, everyone. I wish I could say good to see you all, but hopefully we're getting closer to those days where we can meet in person again. So today we're gonna continue on with our No-Tail Doesn't Work series. And basically what we're doing right now is through this series, we're going through the principles of soil health. And I'm trying to kind of keep it so it's kind of for everyone to understand whether you've got a farming background or not. And that's kind of the intent of this. So today we're gonna look at our fourth principle of soil health and that's maximizing living roots in the soil. And this is one of the, this is probably the principle that I find the most interesting and really where I think we can really kind of shift what we're doing with our soils and improving their health throughout the state. And so this is a picture. And I'd like you to keep this in mind, this photo in mind as we go to the next slide. Now this is obviously a slide, a photo of a diverse cover crop mix in a field. And you can see many species in here. There's many that you can't ID. They're kind of down in the understory, but just kind of keep this as a picture in your mind's eye. So compare that previous photo to what you're seeing here. And this is a good slide. It's really been around for quite a while. And it shows kind of what our native prairie roots here in the Northern Plains, really throughout most of the Plain States. Really the impact they had on soils through their rooting structures and rooting depths and rooting types. And if you will look to your way far left on your screen and the words are really quite small at the bottom, not necessarily important, I know what they are, but on the far left, it shows Kentucky bluegrass. And so it shows it's a really short stature grass, obviously, and that short scratch also translates down into its rooting structure. Very short-rooted, not really much impact except for on that very surface part of the soil. But all of our other prairie plants, for the most part are very deep-rooted and have really extensive root structures. If they don't have really extensive root structures, they really have oftentimes really quite deep root structures. And so if you look at the fourth plant or one, two, three, fifth plant over compass plant, really looks like, you know, it's almost a fine root structure and kind of single strand type things, but it really, they have the potential to go 15 foot deep in the soil. So that's why we have the importance of continual live roots in our systems. And really the most area of impact we can make in the state with this is probably on our crop land side. That's where we have the most work to do with continual living roots. A lot of our, you know, a lot of our ranching and livestock producers, they're kind of, they have this really built in. They have mostly perennial systems. And so they've got that living root that's there for really many months of the year. Our native prairie plants oftentimes had living roots for eight months a year on average and sometimes more depending on the length of season. So right now we've got living roots in our soils in our native grasslands. We've got roots that are alive and growing. We're kind of into the growing season. I know it's a little cold this morning, but we've got living roots right now. And those living roots with all of our various species are gonna be growing and living well into October or even November. So that's where we get a lot of impact is through these living roots. Well, these living roots are doing many things. And we're gonna cover some of those. And this first one we look at here, this is a contrasting, you're really good contrasting photos here. These are both taking on the same day, ones in the morning and ones in the afternoon, as you can see a very different management systems within a few miles of each other. And you can see on the left hand side of your screen, there's obviously a nice living cover. In this case, it's a winter cereal and it's growing in the early spring. You can see it's early. There's no leaves on the trees. They're not even butted out in the background. Some leaves in the trees as you can see. But if you look to the next slide, this is just a county to the south or so. And really not much going on with the soil activity. In fact, very little. That soil looks pretty beat up. It's crusted over. And so why is this important to have this early growth? Well, it's capturing that sunshine. And when a plant is capturing sunshine, it's also capturing CO2. And through the process of photosynthesis, it's producing energy for itself, but it's also pumping energy into the soil. And it's doing that through its root exudates. And those root exudates are then in turn feeding below ground life and that below ground life is helping return some needed nutrients back to that plant. And it's that give and take cycle that really works and that's how our soils are improved. Okay, this next slide that we're gonna be looking at, this is some research that was done and we're not gonna go over this whole study, but there is a great publication of fact sheet that SDSU extension put out. And I would encourage you to go to their site and look for this study in the fact sheet they published. Some really great work done by some really smart guys, Navdeep Singh and Sandy Kumar and then with the assistance of Anthony Blind, David Kharky, they've got this fact sheet out. And what it is, is this. I just kind of really simplify it here for you today. This is something that's important for, something that's important in our living roots accomplish also. And that's the development of soil aggregates in poorer spaces. So if you will look at the left-hand side of your screen, you will see two graphics. There's a graphic on the top and that graphic represents a conventional tillage system with very little crop diversity. It's only corn and soybeans. The graphic right below it represents what I would call a soil health system. It's got a diverse crop rotation with cover crops and livestock integration. And what you're seeing there is all of the green blotches and blobs and spaces. That is poor space. And they did this basically through X-ray or like a CT scan. They took a core out in the field and then they were able to scan it and then this is the end result they were able to produce this data with. And it really is quite impressive. It shows the poor space. What I will tell you, I didn't include the one they took on well-managed native range land. And that one's even more impressive. It's almost solid green. There's so much poor space in there. So why is that important? And how do living roots do that? Or how do they accomplish that? Well, living roots, like I said, they're taking that energy through photosynthesis and putting it into the soil. And through their root exudates and through biotic excretions of the blow ground life and through glycol proteins produced by like microazole fungi, glomalans are a great example. They form these soil aggregates. It takes all those individual mineral pieces and organic matter pieces and binds them into those aggregates. And when they're bound into aggregates that creates poor space. Some poor spaces are really small and some are a little bit larger. So that's really what's going on with a living root. We need those poor spaces to allow for proper infiltration of precipitation. We needed to store more water when we do get that precipitation. And those poor spaces are also great for air exchange, gas exchange. Those living roots, they cannot sit for the most part in low oxygen environments for very long. So the greater air exchange we have, the better and healthier those living plant roots are also. So I encourage you to go look at this study and maybe we can include that in our minutes and we send those out of a link attached to that. And if you look on the right-hand side of the screen this is just a visual representation of what we're seeing with the scan that the two researchers did. The spade on the right side is from a long-term no-till system with diverse crop rotation. And the spade on the left is one that would be just representative of the top graphic there. It is corn soybean rotation with heavy tillage. And you can see the difference just by looking at it. I think most people can look at it and tell you which soil would be healthier and better for plant growth. You can see that's really quite blocky on the one and it's really quite cottage cheese-like on the other. Okay, the next thing, and this is a really kind of a hot topic in especially the eastern part of the state but really all over the state we've got this issue is we've got salinity issues. Living roots in my mind and the longer the better are the best way to first off prevent salinity in some of these saline-type soils and it's also the best way to help remediate those areas and bring them back into production. So this is a slide from the James River Valley where we've got a really bad salinity problem especially the Northern James River Valley in South Dakota and this is another cereal grain and you can see the saline spot and you can see there's absolutely nothing growing where it's really heavily saline. But what you can't see in this photo is that this cereal grain is growing also where there is salinity that's high enough to prevent most row crop germination of corn and soybean. And so what this producer is doing is they're trying to shrink that area and year after year their hope is by having their more intense crop rotation with living roots in the soil longer that they're gonna hopefully drag these salts back down into the soil profile where they belong. So living roots do this a number of ways address the salinity issue and that's by using water and that's really what our salinity problem is it's a water use issue. It's kind of a broken water cycle. And so if we can use that water take that water up through the plant instead of that water getting to the surface through capillary action and then evaporating it's not when it does that through capillary action it takes the salt to the surface and doesn't allow the salt to go anywhere while the water evaporates off into the atmosphere. So if we can take that water through the root and up through the plant the transpiration that's the ideal method. And also like we looked on the previous slides having that living root improves the soil aggregation and improves infiltration rate which on a lot of these saline and sodic soils we have problems with infiltration. Okay, the next thing the living root does is it captures and releases nutrients. This is really a simple photo but it's one of my favorites. And this is where I think as crop producers where you can start getting more creative with our rotations and our management for some of our favorite crops. And so for example, soybeans it's a great agronomic crop grows well in South Dakota. Most producers are all very familiar with it. But one of the downfalls of soybeans downfall might be a strong word. One of the things that it doesn't quite do really well is that usually one of our later planted crops it doesn't really use as much moisture as corn for example, it certainly doesn't use it early on. It doesn't have a lot of residue cover when it is harvested even in an old tail system it's not as much residue that's left on the surface. So we need to find ways that we can make that crop work just as well or better. And one of the ways is planting that soybean into either a green seeded into a winter cereal like cereal rye or terminating that winter cereal before planting. We've seen pretty good luck with this. The practice is used a little more extensively as you go east of South Dakota kind of in the eye states. It's really taking off here but there's also several producers that are looking at it here. And this is one way we can extend that living root is by having that living root planted in the previous fall and get growing men and then it grows in the spring before we plant our economic crop, a crop we're gonna sell for harvest. Okay, so how do we do this? We've gone over a few examples. There's certainly other ways but these are just some of the ones that I think will be most relatable. We've talked quite a bit about winter cereals obviously I'm big on those and using those in rotations either prior to a crop or just for your crop and then integrating cover crops following those. And so you'll see kind of a sequence of photos here. Obviously the first one is someone that's green seeding into some standing cereal rye. That's a great practice I think we can use not only for soil health benefits but also to get ahead of some of our weeds, chemical resistant weeds that we're starting to see. The next photo to the right in the upper right end corner that's a cover crop following small grains. And I think that's probably the easiest way that we see cover crops integrated in South Dakota. Really it's not difficult to do this, you harvest a small grain and plant a cover crop right behind it. And then ideally you've got livestock you can integrate on there. So really what we're doing is we're getting that living root through the small grain early on in the year and then we plant a cover crop that takes us through freeze up. And so really we've got that living root almost as long as we do with our native prairie. The next one on the lower left, this is an inter seeding photo of a corn crop just before harvest that's been interceded with rye grass and clover. And this is something that we got producers that are trying all different types, 30 inch rows, wide rows, trying to make it work. Lots of things that a producer is able to try to fit their operation with inter seeding. And then the last one is there is, and this is one that I think has a lot of room for at least talking about with producers and this is integrating perennials into your cropping rotation. You know, the living root is, it's hard to integrate if you continue a row crop but we know there's advantages of having those perennials out there for several years at a time. And I'm not saying to leave these idle that would be something that a producer could certainly do if they want to leave it idle for wildlife, for example. But I would encourage them if they're looking at doing this to integrate livestock in the system and really kind of get a kickstart to their soil health. Okay, the next one, and I included this photo actually in my previous presentation where we talked about maximizing diversity for soil health. And it's a photo from Jason Mock, some of you may know the name, he's an Indiana producer, really quite creative in his cropping systems. And, you know, this is kind of a polycropping example and this is where he's got small grains and then he also plants soybeans into those small grains. And so really what he's doing, he's extending that season where there's living roots in the soil. He's got that early on with the small grains and then the soybeans will grow a little bit later and then they have a little bit longer growing season so sometimes you can get a cover cropping then also. Lots of creative ways we can grow crops here in South Dakota. So, trying to keep my presentation short. So if there are any questions, I guess they haven't been paying attention to the chat box, anyone submitted anything, but if anyone has questions, I would love to take them from you now. Thank you. Okay, thanks so much, Kent. I haven't seen any questions come in on your presentation yet, but please, I encourage you if you do have questions, please feel free to go ahead and submit those in the chat box and we'll see if we can't get an answer for you on those. Okay, Kent, I don't see any questions coming in, but thanks so much for joining us this morning and providing the soil health update. So we'll go ahead and we'll move along with the agenda. And next we have conservation innovation grants with Collette Kessler. Good morning, getting my mic off, sorry. So first of all, thank you for the time for your attending the State Table Committee meeting. This venue has been very important for sharing conservation happenings across the state. And while I missed the in-person meetings, I think this virtual setting has some new opportunities for sharing information, so I appreciate your attending today. Just a quick note, earlier in the meeting, it was brought up about the topic of drought and mitigating the risks of drought. So there's an informal group of us working in the background between the Extension Service and the Soil Health Coalition and some other folks who are just working together to help get information out to ag producers, coordinating it to help them address the risks on their operation related to the drought status in their area. So just want you to know that that's happening. And so if you see things in the news from any of the groups that we're working together to help the ag producers as best we can to help mitigate their risks. And I can put a link in the chat box to those resources when they, as soon as I'm done with this statement. So regarding the conservation of the innovation grants, that's an opportunity for a competitive program for submitting proposals for innovative ideas for applying conservation on the land. And there are national SIG opportunities and we also have state conservation innovation grant opportunities. So for South Dakota, we will have $150,000 available with up to $75,000 per proposal available. So those will be announced any day and those will be open for about 60 days for you to submit your proposals. Now please, this is the important part is that there have been some changes nationally and all proposals must be submitted through grants.gov. And again, I'll put these links in the chat box, but you'll need to go to grants.gov and get the proposals submitted through there. If you're not registered on grants.gov as an account already, then you'll wanna do that soon so that you're ready for submitting your proposal. It does take a little bit of time. And the other key thing to watch for is to have your DUNS account up to date. And if you don't have a DUNS account, it does take a little time to get that set up. So please watch for those and watch for the details. And if you need help, just give a holler. But that was a change nationally in how to submit those proposals. So I guess if you have any questions, please know that with our leadership team across the state and the resource unit conservationists and the field staff, we're all available to help you. And if you have any questions, just please contact us because there's a lot of things happening and everybody's really busy, but at the same time, these are valuable tools for us. Thank you for the time, Laura. Laura, you might not be off mute. Maybe Laura had an interruption or something. I do see that her screens are stuck is what she's saying. Oh, rats. So I guess, I believe I am next on the agenda. So I'll probably just go ahead and get started. The update that I wanted to provide today is related to conservation practice standard updates. And there was a NRCS did publish a federal register notice on March 9th, inviting public review and comment on changes to the national, some national conservation practice standards. So I wanted to make sure to point out to this group that some of those practices are pretty commonly used in South Dakota. Just for example, cover crop, fence, windbreak shelter, build establishment and renovation. Some of the wetland creation, stream crossing, those types of practices are all on this national register notice. And I'll put the links for that information in the chat box in case any of you want to provide comments on those changes. And those are due to the federal register by April 8th. And then also I wanted to let you know that South Dakota NRCS is working to update some of our practice standards. The only engineering one that Jay wanted me to mention is the terrace practice standard. And that will be just updated to reflect the national practice standard. We won't be adding any extra information from the South Dakota perspective. And then as far as vegetative, many of you should have gotten a memo stating that we are seeking comments on some vegetative practices. And so with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Emily Helms, state range management specialist for her to go over that information. Thanks, Jess. I did put together presentation, hopefully works. You all see this okay? You're good, Emily. All right, cool. So just wanted to provide some background on conservation practice standards. In 2018, the Farm Bill required all conservation practice standards to be reviewed. And so far nationally, they've reviewed 74 of the practices and have updated them. So on September 30th, they released updates to multiple vegetative and engineering practice standards. So for today, I'll be focusing on updates made to herbaceous weed treatment, prescribed burning, forage harvest management, and pasture and hay planting. So the first one, herbaceous weed treatment. It was pretty simple changes, just updating purpose statements nationally and changing the additional criteria along with those updates. They just updated some of the wording and added some additional requirements to the plans and specifications section. So on the state side of things, we just made, we adopted the national standard and only made a few changes, adding some verbiage about where to go to make sure you have the proper license in South Dakota, I'll link to the South Dakota Department of Ag website. And then we also updated in the plans and specifications section of the standard that you need to see the documentation requirements document on eFOTOG for a list of applicable requirements or job sheets. And then the next one that got updated is prescribed burning. This standard was last revised in 2010 on a national level, so it needed some updating. They changed the definition and instead of calling it controlled fire, they say plan fire applied to a predetermined area. Then they also added a soil health on purpose as well as added smoke management and reordered the criteria section to better reflect burning planning. They also added a reference section because there wasn't one before and then updated some of those references that had been used in other states. So on the South Dakota side of things, we just added a few more details to the general criteria. As you can see in the blue, just more detail added that a burn plan needs to have firebreak conditions, surrounding fuels condition, as well as a list of emergency response contacts and numbers and the nearest medical facility. And then also include a contingency plan and a mop up plan. We also added that any planning that is done for prescribed burning should use South Dakota range technical note number 12 and then the job sheet, the South Dakota ECS-9 prescribed burn management plan. The range tech note number 12 is new for South Dakota and we will be releasing that at the same time as these practice standards get released in late April. The third practice standard that got updated was 511 for a child with management. They rewarded the definition a little bit. I think the old one was the timely cutting and removal of forages such as, hey, green chop or silage from the field. So they just took out a few words. We also added two new purposes, optimizing slow microbial life and aggregate stability and reduced soil compaction. And then new criteria were added to reflect those new purposes. And then they also made a few tweaks to the consideration section and updated the references section as well. So on the state side of things for our state standard, we added to the stubble height section under general criteria to see the implementation requirements or the job sheet for more information on stubble height and regrowth requirements. There's quite a lot of information in the South Dakota version of the Forage Harvest Management Standard. And that was the last time that was updated was in 2010. And so I'm trying to work on making sure we don't lose some of that information because I feel like it will be good for planners to have but trying to decide how to store that and what to do with it. So more to come on that. And then the last standard, pasture and hay planting. The big change here was that they updated the name. It used to be called Forage and biomass planting. And now it's returned to its old name previous to Forage and biomass planting, pasture and hay planting, but the numbers the same. They added a few purposes, air quality, and then improving soil and water quality was split into two new purposes. Then they removed the produce feedstock for biofuel production purpose. They also added the new criteria for each of those purposes and then updated the considerations, plans and specifications in reference to the sections. Another thing that they updated on this standard was the, somewhere in the standard they had mentioned that annuals could be planted through a Forage and biomass planting and they removed that verbiage. So it's a little more focused on perennials. And for South Dakota, we just added some verbiage about any, when you're using this practice and planning it, you need to refer to the South Dakota range tech note number four, the perennial vegetation establishment guide to get specific seeding rates, seeding dates, seeding equipment, seed requirements, all of that stuff. And we also took all of the information from the, from our old Forage or pasture and hay planting standard and we're putting that in a specific section of the range tech note four so that any information that's specific to a pasture and hay planting will be found in that section in the tech note. And then we also added one part to the considerations about planting momma cultures just to have, make some considerations for pest management, winter dia, Forage quality, bare ground, organic matter, other concerns. And then again, added a section to the point of specifications to see the documentation requirements. So comments on these state, the state changes to the standards are due by Monday, April 12th to me and we'll be considering those. And the standards will be updated by the end of April, 2021. And then all of the information will be posted to section four of the electronic field office tech guide more equal talk. My contact information is here for it was also sent out in the letter, hopefully. And with that, I'll take any questions. Any questions at all for myself or Emily? Thank you very much, Emily. It's a great overview. Thank you. Okay, thanks Jess. Thanks Emily, appreciate your time today. So I apologize while there are great things about Microsoft Teams and meeting virtually. Unfortunately, there are sometimes technical difficulties. So apologies on that, but we will move forward with our agenda and next presentation on conservation implementation strategy from Valdipri. Good morning. I am Valdipri and I am the acting assistant state conservationist for programs. I've got some pretty big shoes to fill following Jeff Vanderwilt here as he is on detail to Nebraska. So we have a conservation implementation strategy. It's called CIS. It's a targeted approach to conservation to best utilize our planning, implementation and financial resources to target our resource concerns within a geographic area. This is our second year that we're soliciting for applications for CIS projects and the application date is quickly coming in April. April 15th is the application date for CIS projects to be considered for funding and fiscal year 2022. So our fiscal year 2021 is our first year that we've offered the CIS and we're just rolling out some projects and finding some good response to some of our efforts. And we look forward to being able to measure the conservation benefits that we've provided in these small geographic areas. So if you have questions on that, you can be sure and email me. My email address is myfirstname.lastname at USDA.gov. There is a fact sheet on the CIS within the handouts. So if you have any questions, let me know. If you have interest in submitting an application ahead of April 15th, also let me know. I'm also going to tell you about a conservation incentive contracts option that came with the 2018 Farm Bill. This is a piece of Equip and it's kind of merging some CSP or Conservation Stewardship Program, pieces with our Environmental Quality Incentives Program, Equip pieces, and this effort is also looking at targeting specific resource concerns. And it's somewhat similar to the CIS option. It's new to the state this year. It will be, we expect to have an announcement, possibly in May, headquarters was ready to roll through things out here in April, but decided to delay things until May. So the benefits of this conservation program is it offers our Conservation Stewardship Enhancements through Equip and it would provide the full payment rate for a conservation practice through Equip. And then in addition to the conservation practice, we would also be able to pay for the conservation enhancement that would normally be offered through CSP. So this year, it's the first year that we're rolling things out. I can see that this would pair well with the CIS process. So maybe in the future, those would be things that we would look to consider. As we don't have all of the information out on our CIC or the Conservation Incentive Contracts, but we will definitely be looking towards this group to help provide us some direction on how to identify the resource concerns on the multiple diverse land uses that we have within the state. And we're excited that we have this opportunity and if you have questions, let me know, but expect to hear more. Finally, I'm going to also close up on the Regional Conservation Partnership Program, known as RCPP. That was a little bit later down the agenda, but I wanted to give an update on that as well. Currently, we're closing out our Duffson Limited Prairie Pothole Region Project for RCPP Equip. This year, we've targeted an area in Kingsbury in Minor County as a high priority area due to our Unlimited Funds. So this is the last year of the project. We're trying to wrap it up. We've got some really great projects that are eligible within that area. We've worked with the partner, identified this as a target area, and we're going to move forward and complete that project and have a report available soon on that. We had five projects funded through the National Solicitation last year. We're working to wrap those up. So we've got two of the projects that are close to being ready to start and incur expenses. And then we've got the other three projects, definitely making progress towards the completing the Programmatic Partnership Agreement and the Supplemental Agreement needed to have an active project. We submitted applications for the classic RCPP signup period this year. We submitted several applications within the state that we had received through our partners and they expect a funding announcement here around April 15th. So more information to come on on some great projects eligible for selection there. I wanna mention that we have an alternative funding arrangement through the RCP program that's referred to as an AFA. We sure like our acronyms, but our AFA option is a piece of RCPP that supports innovative and non-traditional approaches to conservation solutions at the local, regional, and landscape levels. So this is a good opportunity for those looking to address some natural resource concerns with a very targeted and well-thought-out approach. So nationally, all of the AFA is compete. We've got 75 million available for this year and we expect to fund up to 15 projects. So with that, I would take any questions or I'll turn it back to Ballora. Okay, thanks so much, Val. I don't see any questions that are coming in right now at this time period. So next up on the agenda, a presentation and an update on the environmental quality incentives program with Jennifer. Good morning, everyone. I'm gonna share my screen real quick here and let me know, somebody let me know if you can see that. Yes, ma'am, we can see that. Thank you. So these are also in your handouts. And right now, we're about a week too soon with this meeting to show you a good breakdown of what funded projects we're gonna have within each fund pool. The ranking batching date for General Equip and a lot of the state initiatives was last Friday, or not batching date, excuse me, it was ranking date was last Friday. So we are working through in sorting those out this week. And as we had explained last year with CART, we have the ability to fund in multiple fund pools for an assessment. So we're just kind of, we're working our way through them to try to make sure that we're not selecting anything twice. So I'm just gonna give you these handouts of what we had for initial breakdowns on our allocation. Our initial allocation for Equip this year was $15,067,000. This first page that I have up right now is the projects that were selected for the CIS projects from last announcement. So they were selected in fiscal year 2020 for the first year of implementation in fiscal year 2021. There are 16 of these projects and they're all in varying stages of announcement and selections on that. There are about four or five of them that are a little lagging behind. The rest of them are all working on rankings or have finished up rankings. So we will be making funding selections in those. The next handout for you is just a breakdown of funds from that 15 million into the different fund pools. So like last year, we have again, the 16 resource unit areas. One thing we have set aside 400,000 for what Vala talked about with that Equip incentives, definitely more to come on that on where we're gonna end up going with that for this year and we will be looking on how to roll it out for 2020 in a more robust way. The reservation fund pools again, overall that's about 19% of the allocation and then organic on-farm energy, high tunnels, national water quality initiative, forest, honeybee pollinators, we did get an increase obligation for that this year from what we had last year. The Northern Plains water quality and wildlife that was new from the Farm Bill last year, we are not having that as a separate fund pool due to a lot of lack of interest in it last year, but we're offering that in our general fund pools. Wildlife, we have 400,000 on that, we're setting aside 10% of the allocation. So between what is the wildlife fund pool and then our working lands for wildlife, which is the grassland bird effort kind of in the Northwest area as the priority area of the state for that, that is our 10% for wildlife funds, sage grouse of course, beginning farmers, socially disadvantaged, animal waste management facilities, and we have a set aside 150,000 of the equip budget for the CIGs, which Colette had talked about earlier. So with that, one thing that is not listed on this because it was not an initial fund pool is that about two months ago, we had the windy fire out in Perkins County. We are doing an emergency effort along with ECP out there to help some infrastructure replacement that was burned. And obviously with the new fires that are still probably burning right at this moment in time, we'll look at seeing if we need to announce a sign up for any additional funds there. With the windy fire, we put a request in for some disaster funds with headquarters. We got 175,000 for that and we need to match it with our own state funds. So we did reduce a little bit in the soil health initiative fund pool for that state match at this point in time. So anybody have any questions with equip? Well, let me know if there's anything else that come up and we will be in contact as we keep moving forward trying to figure out and getting our feet under ourselves on equip initiatives or excuse me equip incentives. Hey, thanks so much, Jennifer. And you will notice on the agenda, there's also an update on regional conservation partnership programs. I will also refer you to your packet. There is a document and a fact sheet on that program for you to refer back to. But Jennifer, did we have a presentation on that or just the fact sheet? It was just the fact sheet, but Val had already kind of touched base on that when she was talking earlier. Okay, thank you, ma'am. Moving along with the conservation stewardship program and an update from Joyce. Good morning. I'll share my screen with you. So you have my presentation and hopefully that came through for everyone. This is also on your handouts and we'll just do a brief run through of what happened with CSP in the last 12 months, hopefully. Or actually, maybe it's a six months, but anyway, we'll start out with our last obligation was the CSP 2021 renewals. We had 693 applications received. The allocation originally was 7.8 million. We got another 1.5 million in early February and the initial and final allocations actually are below. You guys can all read those of what we ended up spending in each fund pool. The deadline was February 26th and so we had 65 contracts for 9.2 million, a little over $9.2 million and 165,000 acres. So we'll roll on here down to the CSP GCI signup, which the deadline was December 31st and this is the 2021-1 signup. We had 46 contracts for a total of $326,600 and there was 3,628 acres included in that signup. The GCI, I mean, the CSP, excuse me, the CSP 2021 classic applications, the deadline for that was actually just last Friday, March 26th, the obligation deadline is September 3rd. So we're just getting into that ranking period for assessments and all the initial allocation, we've received $7,850,000. So a lot less than previous years that you've received, but along with our renewal that we just had about similar to that, the CSP classic, we did just receive those funds on Friday that we got 200, I mean, I'm sorry, the CSP classic organic and transitioning organic funds we did just receive Friday. So we do have $200,000 for that fund pool and then the CSP 2022 renewals are due March 31st which happens to be today, I believe. And that obligation will be in the first quarter of fiscal year 2022, so after October 1st. So that's kind of a short brief, quick rundown on CSP for this past few months. And if there's any questions, I will take them. Okay, thanks so much Joyce. I don't see any questions coming in but I will draw your attention to the chat box. If you do have questions on programs or the updates to the standards that have been mentioned, you can refer to the chat box. There is some information provided in there on who you can contact. But moving on with the agenda and updates on easements is Cody Warner. All right, good morning everybody. I was acting easement state coordinator last six weeks and Brandon Codkey did return on Monday but I'll be presenting what we have going on right now. In 2021, our application period ended on February 5th the state had 88 applications and 19 of them were screened as high or very high. Our ranking deadline was March 19th so we are going through them right now and we received three and a half million dollars for initial allocation for 2021 for WRE and we're gonna plan on making an additional funds request. Here that has to be done by April 1st. So I believe that was already done. I believe we requested one million dollars. So we will see how many of these we get funded and which ones we decide to fund. And we also did have three agricultural land easement applications. We have two new applications and one rollover. So we are gonna be evaluating those as well very soon. Our monitoring for WRE, WRP and EWP and EWRP, the offsite and ownership reviews, that deadline has passed and we have gotten the vast majority of those done. In fact, I believe we have them all accounted for. The next step in our monitoring for 2021 will be our on-site monitorings and those will be put into NASA to get them done. The on-site monitoring usually starts in roughly, we usually like to start them in about May. And the next thing that we're really busy with right now is compatible use agreements. And we are receiving a lot of requests for compatible use agreements, hang grazing plots. So the staff is out evaluating those and submitting them state office for review. Restoration work is ongoing. The vast majority of our easements in the last few years have been done through the federal contract. We do have a few outstanding landowner contracts that we're working with and but we are working to get those completed as well. This in 2021, we also did receive some stewardship funds. We received about $1 million in funds that are to be used to restore cleanup and generally just improve existing WRP, EWRP and WRE. And so we have a good list of projects so far that we're gonna try to obligate here soon but we are looking for new projects as well. Our water bank program, we did actually just see in the last couple of weeks the National Bulletin went out for water bank. So we will have funding available in 2021. State guidance with timelines will come out next week with an expected application deadline of May 21st. And our last program that we work with is EWP and at this time South Dakota's gonna receive any further EWP funding. And I guess with that, that's kind of just a brief overview of what we got going on with ASAP. If there's any questions, I can certainly try to answer them. Okay, thanks so much, Cody. I don't see any questions coming in for the time being. Moving along, so an update on the emergency watershed protection program with Jay-Caw. Good morning, everyone. Thanks, Laura. Thank you for the opportunity to update you on the emergency water protection program, the recovery side for South Dakota. I was gonna share a screen but I'm technology challenged here. Is that coming through, Laura? Yes, sir, I can see it. Okay, and this will be very brief and we'll go through it very quickly. But we previously reported that we had five active watershed emergency watershed protection projects in the state. And I'm happy to report that four of them are now complete. And those projects were repair of the Murdo Dam Auxiliary Spillway and the repair of the Belvedere Dam Auxiliary Spillway. And then we had a project to remove debris from a couple of creeks in Todd County. And there was another project in Bennett County to repair the erosion on the backside of an ag waste holding pond along the Little White River. And all those projects are complete. The one project that's still pending is repair the Auxiliary Spillway for Brulee 26. And I know they're starting to gear up and that we'll probably see some construction happening here in the near future. I expect that that project would be completed early this spring yet. I do wanna say thank you to the conservation districts that were willing to be sponsors of these projects. They really stepped up and they did a great job and they were very active in making these projects successful. So I wanna thank them for that. And I also wanna acknowledge Gamefish and Parks for their contributions financially to make some of these projects feasible. They really stepped up on Murdo and Belvedere to help the sponsors come up with their matching contributions to make these projects go. And I think Ducks Unlimited actually provide a little funding too on Murdo Dam. So I thank them as well. So thank you and I appreciate the opportunity to give you an update. And if you have any questions, please let me know. Thank you. Okay, thanks so much, Jay, and just to reiterate, thanks so much for all of the partners for your help on these projects. I know sometimes these are big tasks undertake. So we do appreciate all of your efforts and all of your assistance on those. Moving on with the agenda for a wetland HEL compliance update with DeCovic. Hello, everyone. I'm gonna share my screen here and Laura's gonna tell me if she can see it. I can see it, DeC. Looks good. All right, so here's where we're progressing so far this since October 1. Basically six in progress, six completed, seven received potential violations in the state. Art 80, 1026, which is our just general wetland delineation requests. Completed 533 received 413. We bounced between 159 and 180, it seems every month on the, how many we got sitting in the backlog there. The most important thing though, is like as we're looking here, compared it was over the last decade, we're sitting with about 80%, just a little over 80% of them of the backlog at three months or less. So getting the teams doing a good job getting the answers back to the producers in a pretty timely fashion. Then highly erodible land workload, which my team has taken over. We've completed 685 HEL determinations this year. We have 65 that are sitting there still outstanding. So, and out of those 312 new breakings. So about half, half of those are new breakings. The next thing coming up for the compliance team, we're gonna be working on food security act status reviews, working that into our regular wetland and HEL workload. So producers or participants in the farm program, a percentage of them are gonna start receiving letters in the mail saying they've been selected for a food security act status review where we'll go on site, look to see and make sure and ensure they're following wetland compliance provisions of the food security act in highly erodible land conservation provisions of the food security act. So that's all I have for an update as far as wetland and highly erodible land workloads. So any questions, let me know. Okay, Deke, I don't see anything coming in right now, but if you do have questions, please again, feel free to add those to the chat box. So we're trying something a little bit different this year on the state technical committee meeting. So here in just a sec, we are going to allow our partners to give a presentation on some of the agreements that we're collaborating. We want you that are participants today to be aware of all the great projects that are going on. A lot of these are through conservation collaboration grants, but just to give you a little more information on what these grants include, we're going to let Kessler start out with just a brief overview. Okay, thank you, Laura. So the conservation collaboration grants have been a really great opportunity for South Dakota NRCS. We've done them for several years now and we're fortunate to have that funding because not all states have the ability to do the financial ability to do the conservation collaboration grants or agreements. So I just wanted to say, you know, great job to NRCS employees, to the farmers and ranchers that are working on the land and our partners for all the good work you're doing for conservation across South Dakota because of what you're doing, our budget does allow South Dakota to have the conservation collaboration grant or agreement opportunity. So again, there's been some changes nationally for CCGs. And one of the things that they're emphasizing this year is that they're looking at the agreements or the proposals, excuse me, for how will they help NRCS to deliver technical assistance and deliver farm rail programs? So if you've got proposal ideas, please take a hard look at how you can integrate with NRCS and help us to continue to deliver conservation for our great state. Again, nationally, they've made some changes and all proposals must be submitted to grants.gov. So it's the same process as the CIG. And I did put those links in the chat and we can have them when Kathy sends out the notes for the meeting that'll be recorded here. So grants.gov and watch for the funding opportunity. We expect that to be announced any day. It will be open for 60 days and then those proposals can be submitted to the national, they'll come back for our state for review and selection. So it's coming soon, be ready. You can watch grants or excuse me, Gov Delivery. Several of you have given your email addresses to me or to some of the other staff for watching for the announcement or you can go to Gov Delivery to sign up for a subscription. It's like our email lists are for announcements or watch our news releases on our state website for that announcement coming soon. So we've had some really great projects and unless there's any questions for the forthcoming announcement, I will turn it, oh, one more thing. The funding announcement for South Dakota will be a little over $4 million up to that amount. And the minimum amount is $20,000. So please be aware that projects can be of any size and of course all kinds of shapes too. But with that, I'll turn it back to Laura to introduce our partners for their updates. Okay, thanks so much, Collette. Like Collette mentioned, there are a lot of great partnerships, a lot of great projects and grants that are going on right now. So we wanted to take the opportunity this year just to share a couple of those by no means. Is it all of the agreements that are the grants that we're involved in? You know, this time we'll share a couple and hopefully in the future we'll continue but there may be something that as a partner that sparks your interest, there may be information that you can glean from these other partners on their agreements and what's taking place. But first presentation, we wanna open that with the South Dakota Soil Health Coalition. Cindy, are you with us? I am, thank you, Laura. I will share my screen. Can you hear me okay? Yes ma'am, I can hear you fine. Wonderful. And you can see my slide? Yes ma'am, I can see it. We'll turn it back to you. All right, thank you so much, Laura. And thank you for all the partners that are joining today. The Soil Health Coalition is happy to be here and very fortunate to have the partnership with NRCS. We are a producer led non-profit organization that promotes improved soil health. We do have nine board of directors and six employees and we focus on improving soil health utilizing the five principles of soil health. We have technical staff and educational resources that we are providing to our partners and our producers throughout South Dakota. This agreement does end on December of this year. We do conduct some on-farm research and provides necessary follow-up to producers increasing the number of continued conservation practices and the awareness to convey further principles of soil health and incorporate those into their operations. The Soil Health Coalition expects to gain some knowledge necessary to further establish our scope of soil health message, not just to the current adopters, but also to the non-operating landowners, maybe some of the non-believers and even hopefully reaching those future and young producers. With that, we did do a survey with some students in agricultural education classrooms as well as the staff. We created a South Dakota grazing exchange and the soil quilt. With the youth, one of the key takeaways from that survey was the relationship between students, formal education and exposure to soil health principles and then their understanding associated and the benefits of that. So the benefits for the water quality, the wildlife benefits and the soil organic matter, water infiltration and making sure that carbon cycles the nitrogen, it's clusters of carbon, which in turn reduces fertilizer and fuel costs. So from that, we were able to create a children's book and it's called The Soil Quilt. It was authored by Amanda Radke, who is a South Dakota native agriculture, accurate agricultural author along with the illustrations by Michelle Weber, who is a graduate from SDSU. She paints and illustrates all of the content from that book. The grazing exchange, I liked the conversation earlier today with Mark Norton. This does provide an opportunity for landowners both from the livestock perspective and the landowners and operators that are seeking livestock. So this is a connection point. As you can see, there are points on the map and what it does is provides that link. This is an opportunity for a drought resource to work together and provide that avenue for a different definite feed source for people that are looking for it because of the possibility of some less forage availability in our native grasses and our pastures. They could possibly connect with someone with some crop residue or some cover crops or even some people that don't have the livestock on some of their pasture grounds. So they create a pin and be able to connect right through this opportunity. The Soil Health Coalition has a website and we do provide some educational technical resources. This March, past March, we had webinars that address the drought mitigation, integrating diversity through cover crops, the salinity management and then the five principles of soil health. All of those are recorded on our website and we do have two main events that the coalition hosts. Soil Health School, which is August 25th through the 27th. This year it will be in Mitchell. Producers and then local regional professionals provide the field and the classroom education as well as providing just some excellent resources to take home with them as well. And then we do follow up with them after the two and a half a day event too. The conference, we hosted a conference this year in January and our next year conference will be January 18th and 19th and it'll be in Aberdeen, South Dakota. And we're excited about that and opportunity to bring more education and adoption into South Dakota. The Healthy Soils Handbook is another opportunity for the partners to work together and I will have the handout in with the minutes and Kathy has that available for you that you could request one. The Healthy Soils Handbook provides information on South Dakota soils as well as breaks down some of the principles, gives them a good resource for the adoption of different ideas and just an easy way to go back and find that information. Soil Health Bucket is another opportunity for education that we are be able to share with our partners and educate our youth for soil health assessments on the ground. So here's a copy of our Soil Health Handbook if you haven't seen it. Like I said, the promotion flyer will be in the handouts. Another option we worked with a partner on was providing a postcard into a mailing that we're sending out and it is available on our website. So you can take a look there. It's a flip book and it is also able to be downloaded right there. It is available as well on the NRCS website. The real resilient farmer rancher stress survey was an agreement which will end this year. The high points from that agreement was South Dakota State University conducted the survey. We do have a fact sheet and the full survey right on our website. This past summer we did some video testimonials and we are releasing those to our partners and to the public with the information about keeping yourself and your operations healthy and how practicing those Soil Health principles has proven to be less stressful in your operation. The Building Connections Mentor app is a new agreement with NRCS. It's just getting started. It will be able to design and develop and promote an online connection for producer to British producer communication. So you'll have that right in the palm of your hand and be able to search out just like you would in that hard copy but be able to get instant answers via the app. So this we are hoping for the release date to be early this fall for the first scheduled trial. So I really look forward to getting this examples out into people's hands. It's just gonna provide an opportunity for not just producers but technical staff as well to provide comments and resources and be able to work directly through more of an instantaneous opportunity. So with that, I wanna thank again, Laura providing the opportunity. Levi Newhart is our chairman and I'm the coordinator and our contact information is there. Okay, thanks so much, Cindy. I know that that presentation was fast and furious for you but we will get a copy of that and provide that and it'll have the contact information if anybody is interested with following up with Cindy. Yes, thank you, Laura. Aha, thank you. Next presentation is on the Belfouche Watershed partnership, Matt, are you with us? Yeah, Laura, this is Justin Kraske with the Belfouche River Watershed Partnership. Matt couldn't be with us today. He had something unexpected come up but I'll be giving his report. Okay, thank you. Let me share my screen. Are you able to see that fine? Yes, sir, we can see it. I'll turn it back to you. Okay, thank you, Laura. Yeah, the Belfouche River Watershed Partnership has a CCG, two grants actually and therefore conservation technical assistance follow up for prescribed grazing and butte Lawrence and Elk Creek Conservation District which pretty much make up the Belfouche River Watershed. So Matt Stoltenberg is our range consultant for the partnership and he's completed the first grant. It's ahead of schedule but he completed his, the first grant December 2020 and we also have a second grant to continue follow up with producers and that got underway this month here in March. So just an overview of what Matt's been working on. The two grant projects address the need for follow up with producers who have been implementing NRCS prescribed grazing 528 standards within the watershed and particularly in New Lawrence and Meade counties. We worked with local NRCS staff to formulate specific questions and discussion topics as part of the project and then had a questionnaire consisting of over 20 questions focused on those prescribed grazing implementation topics. Matt was able to contact and coordinate meeting with 26 different producers within the project area and he's compiled quarterly reports and he's working to compile the final report for the first grant. So we'll get that out to probably the NRCS District Conservationist first in the partnership board and then once they've had a chance to review that and then follow up with any questions they have we hope to compile all of our findings from that first grant and let people, let folks know what we found out regarding that. So just a couple of accomplishments. As I mentioned, Matt was able to meet with 26 producers back starting in 2008, 2018 and he finished up just at the end of 2020. So we'll have that final report compiled this spring and overall this collaboration grant and the questions that we asked the producers was met with pretty good appreciation from the producers. They really liked the opportunity to discuss a lot of the topics in following up with that conservation technical assistance from NRCS and the programs. So overwhelmingly they just felt very appreciated that we were able to come back and ask some of those questions and get their thoughts and they certainly shared a lot of common themes throughout some of their responses but also some unique things that we look forward and share in with the NRCS field office staff. So as we move forward, we're continuing to, as I mentioned, compile that first grant. The second grant is getting underway and Matt will be meeting with producers and hopefully finishing up perhaps in 2021 but if need to, we can go into 2022. So with that, again, we've just had very positive feedback from those producers that have been able to be interviewed as part of this project. And with that, I can answer any questions or take those questions and have Matt get back to us. Folks on that. Okay, thanks so much for joining us today, Justin. We appreciate it. Thank you, Laura. Okay, moving on with the last presentation will be for Pheasants Forever. Matt, are you with us? I am here. Thank you, Laura, for this opportunity to give a little rundown and update to the State Tech Committee on what we've been doing through CCG. And I'm going to try to get my screen shared here. It's been moving smoothly. So I'm sure I will be the one to make it not work. All right, I think you guys can all see this screen. Once again, this is a great opportunity for us to kind of share with the State Tech Committee what we've been doing through the CCG program. It's been very important to Pheasants Forever as a means to be able to dive into and do some work on some very specific initiatives that are important to both NRCS and Pheasants Forever. And since the program has launched, we have been able to receive three CCG grants. Starting in the fall of 2019, we brought on four positions to help USDA in some very important initiative areas. Three of those positions are Easement Specialists helping the Easement team at NRCS to help landowners work through those processes. We've also had a Soil Health Specialist on board since the fall of 2019. And finally, the last one that we've just gotten started and we've just got Catherine hired about a month ago is a position that's dealing with monarchs and other native pollinators and coordinating efforts there. So I thought, you know, with it being technology it'd be great to roll the dice and invite a couple of the team members to join me in presenting and tell us a little bit about what they are doing in these roles. So with that, I will turn it over to Ben Lardi, our Soil Health Specialist. I mean, he can tell you a little bit about what he does day to day. All right, thanks, Matt. Can you guys hear me okay? Yep. All right. Yeah, I want to throw it to the next slide, if you could. Yeah, so my name is Ben Lardi, Soil Health Specialist here with the pheasants forever based out of Webster up in the northeast part of the state. And I guess really the inspiration and motivation for this partnership position came from, you know, me as a farm bill biologist and several of my coworkers visiting, you know, various farms and ranches of early Soil Health kind of adopters. And time and time again, we were just blown away by the amount and diversity of wildlife on these operations. And even though wildlife might not be a priority on these individual producers, you know, goals for their operation, they're producing critters either way. It wasn't necessarily set aside acres or CRP. It was simply what they were doing on working lands. And some of you have maybe seen these folders before, they're kind of older, but photo on the left will be a season long cover crop out by Selby. And you can see on the left side of the frame there. Unfortunately, my camera shooting is as bad as my shotgun shooting, but out of frame, there's about a dozen more pheasants washing to the left as he was moving this cattle to another paddock in that cover crop. On the right is a pheasant crop. It was a road killed pheasant in the springtime adjacent to a small grain field, no-till small grain field. And along with the small grain, sure enough, you see some earthworms that that pheasant was shallowing down on. So these types of just anecdotal kind of things that we saw in the past really opened our eyes and made us realize that we have to get more involved in promoting and enhancing these Soil Health practices. Go to the next slide, man. There you go. Sorry. All good. So outreach is a large component to this position. Obviously with COVID this last year, it's been a bit of a challenge. We haven't gotten near as many workshops and fields as we'd like. Hopefully that'll change. Got to thank all the partners, especially NRCS and Soil Health Coalition for inviting the goofy pheasant guy to their workshops that they put on. But it's been really nice to be able to plug and try to connect wildlife with these working land practices. And there's been a lot of opportunity that I'm really looking forward to pursuing down the road and have done some work. But working on outreach events with sportsmen's groups like Pheasants Forever chapters and others and trying to educate them a bit on what producers are doing on their working lands regarding Soil Health. A lot of these folks are down operating land owners that may own ground for hunting purposes, but trying to help educate them on what their tenants may or may not be doing on the Soil Health side of things and creating habitat on those acres. So a lot of opportunity there. And look forward to continuing that down the road. What's the next slide? So it's no secret that what has a problem with salt-affected soils. It's a big priority for me and for Pheasants Forever as a whole. We've partnered with various organizations to create a handful of programs to address this issue. Bottom line, we found out that salt-tolerant perennial grasses and forages are the way to solve this. It's cost-effective. It creates great nesting and broodering habitat and we can get these acres producing something again. It's a huge win-win for us, for wildlife, for landowners. And we're always looking for new opportunities for funding and other ways to address this issue. Next slide. We've had an opportunity to design a lot of mixes for producers for various situations, whether it be prevent plant, season long cover crops, the top left boat, you can see the 60-inch corn rows there. That's actually on a game and fish property. So it's kind of neat to see that, you know, also we're seeing wildlife groups and wildlife agencies kind of keeping an eye on and adopting some of these soil health practices that South Dakota producers kind of set up and started up and kind of planted the seed there. So a lot of crossover there. You look at these photos, tremendous broodering habitat, tremendous wildlife, pollinator habitat. And, you know, I guess just as far as the last two days, I'm sure a lot of folks have seen some of the ugly photos of wind erosion going on right now. A lot of that was on prevent plant acres. And yeah, bound in a term into, yeah, turn those black fields and find out what the hurdles are for producers and get some sort of a cover like these photos here on them. Turning that black dirt and wildlife habitat and looking at some solutions there. Next slide. And lastly, it just does not just cover crops crop land, do a lot of work with producers on designing seed mixes on range land and hay land. Basically trying to find some ways to diversify those acres without breaking the bank coming up with cost-effective seed mixes to enhance the wildlife value on those as well. Otherwise, I can't thank NRCS enough for the partnership opportunity here. This position, the creation of this position has really opened the door to a lot of new landowners and partners that we want to probably reach out to in the past. And I really believe there's unlimited win-wins with the through soil health practices for wildlife for production agriculture and all the other stakeholders out there. So with that, I'll throw it to Kat. Hey, thanks Ben. Yeah, my name is Catherine Bell. As Matt mentioned, I was just hired just under a month ago. So we're just getting started in this position. In the first few weeks, we've tried to hit the ground running. I partnered with the Be in Butterfly Habitat Fund to get out some webinars. We had one with professionals and one with landowners. Both of those went over great. And then also the other big thing I've been trying to do is just work with pollinator professionals across South Dakota and all the different organizations trying to get a feel for what's needed and where I can help everyone out. Next slide, Matt. So the future endeavors, we're just getting started but hoping to work with NRCS and partners to improve our pollinator habitat across the state. And we are working on getting some events started going on this summer. So we're pretty excited about that. And this position is gonna be fun to do and I'm excited to be a part of it. So I'll toss it to Sam. Perfect, thanks Kat. So as Matt already said earlier, we have three easement specialists in the state of South Dakota now, starting in 2019. We basically have, our positions are a little bit different and that we do have a similar analogous position within NRCS. We basically do the same things that the easement support specialists in the state do being Cody Warner, Marcus Rock and David Flannery. So the one exception to that is that Pheasants Forever not being the regulatory agency on that we don't do any initial contact on violations. After that contact has been made, any violation that is in our area, if it's something that, if it's a violation that's simple enough to handle through a CUA or something like that, that work will get turned over to us to work with that landowner to get that violation resolved. Above and beyond that, pretty much we work on everything easement related and new applications, compatible use agreements, monitoring contract reviews and transfer agreements. ASAP we did have an emergency, we did have an EWPP sign up last year that we helped out with and then we also helped with the water bank sign up. Next slide please, Matt. So what we've done so far, some of our numbers for this fiscal year, between the three of us, there's myself, I'm based out of the Aberdeen office, Dan DeBoer is based out of Cicitin and then Cortland Jung is based out of the Huron office. We average around 90 landowner contacts per month. That number is actually down a little bit this year and just talking with those other two, basically that lack of where those numbers have come down is basically due to the NRCS offices not being open for public. So we're not getting that walk in traffic of somebody that might be in the office for something else and then see us sitting there and pop down and talk to us for 10 or 15 minutes about possibilities or something like that. Other than that, pretty much our landowner contacts, are on pace with what we've had the first two years of our agreement. This year, our monitoring assignments, we were assigned 226 between onsite and offsite. We've got all of our off-sites completed and turned in and our onsites will start working on here in the next couple of months. We just finished our application process. Between the three of us, we had 36 applications that we worked in in our respective areas. Our CUA workload for the year. CUAs are just kind of starting to get going for this year, but for the end of last year, we had 29 CUAs completed in the second half of the fiscal year last year and some that have been completed and turned in so far this year. Between the three of us, we have 11 that are in progress and we have about 15 requests that have come in and those are pretty much all coming in the last week. We're really kind of starting to get into the time of year where our CUAs are gonna be coming in and be our primary workload here for the next month or two probably. And then contract reviews. We've had 13 contract reviews that we worked on so far this year. Cody talked a little bit earlier about restoration projects. That's another thing that we've been helping out with. With those, and then from there, one thing that is kind of nice for us, Matt, if you can go to the next slide please. A few years ago, we, Pheasants Forever, started getting some drones for use for, to basically see how we could use them for to help promote wildlife use and different things like that. Basically just see how we could use the drones to basically further the cause of conservation. And so this was one of the things that we've used these drones on is for the easement monitoring. And when we go do these onsite monitoring, if you've ever looked at any of these monitoring packets or done them in the past, you get an awful lot of pictures like this one where you walk up to the edge of the wetlands, there's an eight foot tall wall of cattails. And yeah, this one's thin enough. You can kind of tell there's some open water back there, but you really can't get a good idea of what's actually going on out there on that easement. And that's one thing that the drones have kind of helped us with. Next slide, please, Matt. So pretty much the use of the drone, we can quite literally get a bird's eye view of this, of these easements when we go out and look at them. So you can see, yeah, there's this big wall of cattails and stuff, but there are plenty of pockets of open water out there that you can still see and are good habitat for wildlife and utilized by different wetland-dependent wildlife. Next slide, please. This is just another example of that. This is basically the picture in the upper left. That's just a ground level picture of an easement and then basically I took the drone, launched it and sent the thing up 50 feet and took another picture of the easement. So you can kind of get another view of that same easement. It just gives you a different perspective of it and a little bit better opportunity to look at the easement. Next slide, please, Matt. So we've also used the drones for new applications. This was actually some information sent to me by Dan. This was a project he worked on and he basically used this to help him figure out the individual wetlands. And then you can see the ditches running through this easement off or plain as day from this aerial imagery like this. And then basically helped him figure out where the ditches were or where to be putting in the ditch plugs and things like that. Next slide. So with that, that's pretty much all I've got. If anybody has any questions for myself or Ben or Kat, we'd be happy to take those now. Okay, I don't see any questions coming in. So thanks so much, Matt, Ben and Catherine and Sam for joining us today and for your presentation. Through these agreements and these grants within RCS, there's been some amazing deliverables and some amazing outcomes. So I would encourage you if you have more questions or if you might be interested in a conservation collaboration grant, please feel free to reach out to the agency and we can provide more information to you. As far as the agenda, there were two items that were included in the packet. I just wanna draw your attention to those so you're at least aware of them. There is a fact sheet on the State Technical Committee provides an overview, a role of the committee, who can be committee members, and if you're interested about future meetings or if you know of partners or other individuals or agriculture industries that might be interested in participating. So I wanted to draw your attention to that and share it with you. Also, there is a fact sheet or an informational sheet on the Leopold Conservation Award. If you are not aware of this award, I would encourage you to follow up. They have a website that you can go to. NRCS is a sponsor of the Leopold Conservation Award. There are a lot of partners in the state that are involved in this. I actually had the privilege of serving on the committee and looking at the awards for the future. And so what a great opportunity to recognize the producers and the conservation work that they're doing in the field. So just wanna draw your attention to that. And then I will say, obviously I'm not from South Dakota, but this is my first time to be in the state here as acting, but I can tell you as I've traveled around the state, I've seen some amazing conservation work and I wouldn't do due diligence. I feel like I need to recognize NRCS and our employees that are in the field and all the amazing things that they are accomplishing. I know that it has been a tough year with COVID. So just wanna let you know, as far as an agency where we're headed, so we're slowly opening back up our offices right now. We are slowly increasing our percentage and the number of employees that we can have in the office. We have not yet opened up to where the public can come to the office, but I know with the new administration, they are working on guidance right now with us taking our employees, their health and safety and the producer's health and safety into account. So those are all of the agenda items that we have for today, but I will open it up if anyone has any questions or comments that NRCS can address. Okay, I'm not hearing any questions or comments and I'm not seeing any come into the chat box, but I would encourage you, if there's something that NRCS can do to help you out, if there's questions that you have that we can follow up on, please don't hesitate to reach back out to us. We'd be more than happy to work with you and get you the answers to those questions, but with that being said, after this meeting, we will get the recording sent out, we will get all the attachments sent out and if there were questions or links that were provided within the chat for you to reference, we'll make sure we get those to you also. But again, thanks so much for joining us today. We appreciate you taking the time out of your day to join the state technical meeting and hope we have a good rest of your afternoon. Thank you.