 All right, good morning, everyone. Welcome to our first quarter installation of our state technical advisory committee meeting. I appreciate everybody calling in today and we will have some folks that will be joining us over the next few minutes, but I want to go ahead and get started on time. So, we've had a lot of a lot of exciting news that has been coming up over the last couple of months. 1. Big item and Jeff's going to talk about this in more detail later will be the passing of the inflation reduction act. This is going to provide a very large incentive or not incentive, but investment to conservation across the nation for South Dakota. We're going to be looking at approximately a 25% increase in funding starting this year, followed by a 50% increase in funding and 24 and then up to 100% increase in funding across most categories for fiscal year 25 and 26. With this additional funding, we are going to have to find ways to target and prioritize our funding and find different ways to adjust our processes to make sure that we're able to utilize this one to move it forward. But it is a really good opportunity to invest in agriculture and conservation across South Dakota. So, I'm really excited about this. It will it will bring some changes to the agency, but it's something that I don't work through the task and we're we're starting to work on this right now. I'm expecting to see an increase in our funding coming as early as as December of this year. Another another opportunity that has popped up across South Dakota is the climate smart partnerships. This was an investment that was made in the agency or in conservation about a 2.8 billion dollar. Investment made in partners, we had several partners from across the nation that applied for opportunities or for funding through that climate smart partnerships opportunity and 70 applications that were accepted and funded South Dakota has been named in about 19 of those. So, it's, it's a really, really cool time right now for South Dakota and the investment that's being made in conservation. And I'm really excited to see where we're going to be going with this over the next few years. We have been focused on trying to get our capacity bill here in South Dakota. We have been a little low on staffing across the. Right now, our our ceiling for staffing is about 314 and we've been sitting really close to 285. So, we're, we're about 30, 30 staff members short right now across the state. We have been actively hiring. We probably have a an advertisement on USA jobs weekly. We have had quite a few retirements. We have had some folks move into other agencies, but we're gaining also and while we're not gaining as fast as I'd like to gain, we are, we are picking up staff. We are gaining and we're going to be working on a reduced focus on on technical training and just building that staff capacity. Some positions that were we're entertaining that bring to the roster would be a state economist position. Also, we're open that that's going to be helping us to work with our landowners at a different level to start discussing financial or economic data. A little bit better so that the producers are a better understanding of how our conservation practices will impact the bottom line. They're farming operations. So, we have a lot of really cool opportunities and this is. We're going to be leaning on partners heavily as we move forward through these next few years. We're going to need the help. We're still working on coming up with some ideas as far as how best to engage our partners across the state, but we will be looking at agreements. And new opportunities. So really, this is going to be a stay tuned as we work through this process. And really excited about what's coming over these next couple of years. I would like to acknowledge, do we, do we have any, any of our congressional representatives on the line today? Not for that. Well, what I'd like to do then is only if you're on the line, would you mind coming on and giving an update for farm service agency? Sure. Thanks, Tony. Good morning, everyone. Just a few things to highlight and then to recap on some things that have happened here. I guess I see Ryan's popped up there. Maybe you want to default back to the Congressional's Ryan. Welcome. How are you this morning? Hey, good morning. Good to see you, Tony. Did any other Congressional's go? Sorry, I'm late. I think you're the only one on right now. Okay. Sounds good. I don't have much for you guys in the Senate. We're still kind of figure out who's going to be in power next year. So that'll kind of determine some of our efforts. But in the meantime, we have an Ag Committee hearing next week on the Farm Bill. It'll be the first full committee hearing on the energy programs in the world development title. So now it looks like we may, we may have lost you, Ryan. Perhaps some of that work issues are not. Can anybody hear me still? Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you now, Ryan. Okay. I just got a message that my screen had gone blank. But anyway, I was just saying we have our first Ag Committee, full Ag Committee hearing next week on the world development energy programs in the Farm Bill. We might have another hearing or two this Congress, but bigger ticket items like the conservation title, commodity title, we won't have hearings on those until next year. And that's when the real Farm Bill drafting work will kick off. We have a few bills out there on CRP conservation data that we will seek to get included into the Farm Bill. We also have a proposal on the emergency conservation program, trying to expedite assistance through that program. And I'm happy to share that with anyone who is interested. I can drop my email in the chat if anyone wants more information on Farm Bill things or has ideas. We are interested in definitely seeking input. But yeah, the Farm Bill will be the big ticket item for us. And right now we're just waiting to see who is going to be in charge in the Senate when it comes to writing the Farm Bill. But thank you for the time and apologies for being late. Thank you so much, Ryan, really appreciate the update. And thank you for all your work on the upcoming Farm Bill work. We're excited to see what the results of that are going to be. All right, so with that, do we have any other staffers calling from any of the other congressional from rounds office or from Johnson's office? Okay. Well, and I'll hand it back over to you. All right. Well, we'll do the good morning again here. Gonna just update you on a few things that have happened since the last state tech committee meeting and some things that are maybe in front of us going forward. I'm going to attempt to share some documents. We'll see how well I can do with this. Not very obviously. So I guess I'll just talk it here and then see if I can get something to show up. But I wasn't able to get these handouts to. And our CS prior so we can get them posted later, but the state CRP subcommittee. Met on the 19th of October. And discussed a grassland priority area. And this priority area is going to be returning a 15 point value. To the. Any offers submitted under the grasslands. CRP this. Cal darn it. Why can't I. You bear with me 1 second here. I'm going to win. But you guys see a map. Did I my successful. Got red, red shades. Okay. So the map highlighted here on the screen is the priority zone area that was used for the last. 3 grassland CRP signups. What the CRP subcommittee proposed. Recently, or is the county shaded in green on this, this map. What was reviewed and evaluated was the prior 10 years worth of data for. Grassland converted to cropland. And we also looked at prior data statistically on offers that would have been accepted in these. In these higher conversion counties. Had the 15 points been attributed in those counties for prior signups. And just in the last sign up alone, we would have had 71 more offers that would have been accepted. Under the sign up 204 grassland sign up had they got the 15 points. In counties that weren't getting them previously so. Had some really good discussion. And landed with these counties. So this has been submitted for proposal to be the new priority area going forward for the. Upcoming grassland sign up for 2023. And. Just wanted to give you guys that heads up that that action had been taken on behalf of the state tech committees CRP subcommittee. And. So that's that the other exciting thing we have. We just conducted training last week for the big sue river watershed CREP. Project. See if I can. Get that to come up here. So counties. Included in that. Are over on the I 29 corridor so the counties. Within that blue highlighted boundary. Are included in the big sue river watershed CREP. There's 25,000 acres available for that. And that sign up started on November 1st. And it's a continuous sign up. So going forward, it's it's available as needed. Kind of mirrors what the James River watershed CREP was entailing. But just wanted to highlight that that did get off the ground and we are. Are taking sign ups for that big sue river watershed CREP. I guess those are the, the key points I wanted to discuss and if there's anything else. That anybody has questions for myself or discussion on those two topics. I'd welcome them at this time. Any questions for all right. Yeah, and I do have to jump off here in a little bit have some other obligations, but. If any questions come up later through the meeting for myself, please let me know and I can reach out so thanks. And you appreciate it. So next on the agenda for this morning, we have pants Herman who's going to give us a soil health update. Good morning everyone. Kathy put together in your handouts the slides that I presented last week at the South Dakota stock growers meeting. I wanted to just give that to you because it was the first time that I had really gotten. Let's say. Crowd participation in the tabletop rainfall simulator. The intention was to do the full size simulator outdoors, but in the end, I think our outcomes were even better simply because we had everyone in the room. And we had, I think there were four FFA chapters, maybe not the full membership, but but we had some high school students there presenting and then stayed for learning and. I thought it was really good Colette gave some good feedback and actually had a lot of participants come and share that they appreciated the message and maybe even learn some things. So that's good. A couple points that I wanted to cover outside of that is just an update essentially been in this role now for a year and a half as the grazing land soil health specialist for the state and stationed in Rapid City. And just looking back through my calendar, the rough numbers are, you know, 20 of the rainfall simulator, the full, the full size one. I didn't count the tabletop runs since October 1st of last year, roughly 15 speaking engagements. I have a heavy dose of participating with the growing resilience team, one of our one of our agreements. If you haven't been to the website, I would point you to growing resilience sd.com. There are podcasts, there are videos, there are written blogs. I see Jessica Malski on my screen, her and her family are are featured on on more than one of those things. This really good stuff. Emily Helms and I have been for at least the current agreement, the main technical reviewers. And it's it's been really good. And the products are good. We always review things, but changes are usually not needed. We're heading down the right path. The messaging we're getting from our producer hosts, or most recently, I co-hosted the podcast with Buzz Clute, and we interviewed a college professor. And it's just really neat stuff. The most recent release, there are 41 live on the website podcasts. But I think they've probably got three or four more already recorded. And it's worth the time when you're going down the road, or if you're taking extended leave and need something to listen to, there's good content out there. Moving forward into winter, I'm looking at continuing education, professional development opportunities. There's lots of conferences coming up. I'm really appreciative that our our work life is resembling what I used to think as normal. And we're able to go and do in-person events. And that's pretty wonderful. Among the other responsibilities that I have is the Grazing Lands National Resources Inventory. We hire that in South Dakota to a contractor. There's two teams east and west river that go to the segments and collect the data after our field offices have reached out to folks and secured permissions. But my biggest responsibility in that is to facilitate the access to those lands first by letter. And if we don't respond or excuse me, if we don't receive response to that letter indicating permission or denial, then we ask the local field office staff to reach out to those individual owners. And then of course quality assurance after the fact. And that's that's first on my plate here moving forward in November. And finally, some exciting development with respect to having more access to soil pits for pasture walks tours and things like that. We've got the Cottonwood Research Station nearby the Sturgis Research Farm that SDSU owns. And we're looking at digging basically permanent soil pits and looking to put some dollars towards a semi-permanent cover over those pits so that they don't have to be re-excavated when they sit unused for six months and then a group is coming to use them. So kind of facilitating that discussion amongst our soil scientists and SDSU partners. Pretty excited that we might be able to get something like that rolling in the near future. Jeff Zimbridge has even offered to do one at his at his property and it would stand reason that any of the SDSU owned properties would probably be interested to once we kind of narrow down specifically what hardware and what costs we're kind of leaning towards. So overall, looking back over the past year, you know, I this spring before it started to rain and much of our state, at least the western third kind of hit almost normal forage production in my observation. We were pretty worried that we were going to be in pretty dire straits as far as forage production was concerned and range land condition. I volunteered with the Grassland Coalition to meet with most of them. We performed or recorded 11 pray for rain plan for drought videos that are also available on well that website pray for rain plan for drought. I think it was droughtplanSD.com and that's also included on the growing resilience SD.com website. Couple Dakota farm talk radio spots. All good things. I'm always looking for more. You know, what's the next thing, especially for these public demonstrations on soil health. You know, lots of folks have seen the rainfall simulator and we're not going to stop doing that. But what more can we offer? I'm always on the hunt. So if anyone that's on this call has any ideas or has tried something, even if it's only appropriate for fourth and fifth graders, I want to know because we do get into some classrooms and and present especially this time of year. So thank you for the spot. Hopefully I filled in well for for kins series. I know it's not on topic for for look like organic matter is the current topic. But Kathy gave me the go ahead to just provide an update. And that's what we've got. And it's really appreciate your time this morning. Does anybody have any questions for cancer before I let them go. Thanks for all your work to all your partners and staff. Thank you, dance. So next on the agenda this morning, we have a collect Kessler is going to give us an update on conservation collaboration grants and cooperative agreements. Hey, good morning, everyone. Yes, thank you, Tony. Okay, so thanks for the time today. We did have some success last year with our cooperative agreements. Unfortunately, our budget wasn't as strong as we had hoped. So we were only able to fund a few of the proposals that were submitted to us. So, that being said, looking forward to this clear 23. We may have some opportunities coming. As Tony said earlier, we. We have an initial allocation and we may have some opportunities with some funding coming forward where we could possibly use that funding for agreements, but we won't know for a little while yet. I guess the bottom line is, it is likely that we will have a funding announcement for agreements. And I would hope that if you have some ideas, or some thing that you'd like to discuss, please let me know or any of the leadership team know that we can start working on those proposals. We don't again, we'll have to wait until we have our budget and until we have a no. So, on a side from that, along with that, Tony had mentioned the climate smart agricultural practices for agriculture and forestry practices. Those are all really exciting. And as we look at how to implement those in South Dakota, if there are some. There are practices that you're using on your farm around to that you know somebody's using that's not in our suite of practices with the within the tech guide. Please consider the conservation innovation grants the IG. They have national opportunities. And we will be pending whether we have a state opportunity but I think it is likely that we will. If you, if there's something out there that people are working on that is working on their operation. And it's not in our suite of practices. That's something that we could use. We could enter into a CID at conservation innovation grant project or with the work with university to get the research needed to document it. So that it could be potentially hopefully integrated with a suite of practices that are available for cashier funding. The programs. Okay, so those are the 2 things I had. And just since I have the platform today. I'll give you a little heads up. At the end of the meeting have a partners of the section. So if there is someone who would like to give an update on what's happening with their agreement or what their organization is working in. We will have some time for you at that point. So just to head it up. Okay, with that, I'll turn it back to Tony. All right. Thank you so much to let. Next on the agenda this morning is Jeff Vanderbilt with update on programs and the inflation reduction act. I also want to welcome Jeff back to South Dakota. He's been off. In cheese land for a while. But we're happy to have him back. So welcome back Jeff and floor chairs. All right. Thank you, Tony. Yeah, as Tony said, yesterday was actually my first day back from Wisconsin. For those of you that may not know, I spent the last 5 months. As the acting state conservationists over Wisconsin. So. I am going to share some stuff with you today and I will apologize as well. Since yesterday was my first day back. I did not get. My hand out prepared in time to get sent out to you guys, but we'll make sure that we. We can make that happen, but. I will share. Some information on the inflation reduction act here with you guys just to give you. Some idea of what we're talking about here in South Dakota, just to. To put some numbers to it a little bit. So. What I have up on the screen. The top portion, the equip and CSP. Are my best estimates of what South Dakota. Will receive for IRA funding moving forward. So as Tony said. You know, roughly, roughly about a 25% increase. In funding. For sure. Yes. Sorry. Thank you. That's right. There you go. Is that better? Yes. Thank you. You're welcome. So. Equip equips looking at a $250 million. Addition in IRA funding here in 2023. So for South Dakota. In the equip we've been get we get we're getting about 17.5 million. In 23 through the farm bill. But with the IRA funding that will push us up to almost 24 million. So, you're roughly about an additional. 6 million dollars. A little over 6 million dollars. Will be coming to South Dakota and IRA funding. In 24. It jumps kind of major. Overall they're looking at a 1.75 billion. With a B. Increase in equip funding. Just through the IRA. So that should push our allocation up over $61 million. That's likely in 24. In 25. It's a $3 billion increase. And of that we should roughly get 92.5 million. And then in 26. It's a 3.45 billion increase. And of that we should get about 103.75 million dollars. Now again I'm going to I'm going to state this because I can't. Can't make this clear enough. This is my best guess based off of some math and some. Some previous. Numbers that I know about as far as how the allocation is distributed. To the states. Okay, so these are not for sure numbers. These are my best guess. So CSP. You know, we get about 11.8 million in CSP funding. And as you can see these numbers as well, really increase as we reach out to 26. So instead of having, you know, roughly 12 million. By the time we get out to 2026 will be just shy of $50 million in CSP. Most likely. So that's a four, you know, a 400% increase in our funding. RCPP and ASAP will also see some very large increases. The problem with estimating ASAP and RCPP really come down to that. There's not quite as clear of a. Allocation formula when it comes to to these two programs. But these are the overall increases. Now this is on top of farm bill funding. So these this will be in addition to our normal farm bill funding. Increases in these programs. RCPP. There's a lot of unknowns with that. They're they're looking at a few options of not only continuing. With our classic and AFA signups, but also with renewals. And then there's talk of increasing what they basically are looking at as a grant opportunity through RCPP. So they're still working out some of those details. On exactly how the RCPP funding will be spent. But as you can see. You know that we go on from an increase of 250 million. This year in RCPP all the way up to 2.4 billion in 2026. So again, another large investment. In conservation funding over the next four years. The other thing I'll add, there's also a $1 billion increase and that's over. The whole span so there's they did not break that out by year. They're just adding an additional 1 billion. In CTA funding through IRA as well. So. Most of these additional funds like I have noted there, most of these will have to be spent on. Climate smart activities. We just received that list late last week. I have not had a chance to study that yet. But we'll be doing that over the next couple of weeks. And looking and working with Jessica and her staff. To see what in South Dakota fits. And what we can anticipate. Or what we need to kind of promote. As far as those activities go to make sure that we have a opportunity to spend these these dollars that will be coming our way. So. As you guys can see, large increase. This is going to have to be a group effort. I think Tony mentioned, you know. We're going to probably be relying on on this on the partnerships that we have here in South Dakota. To not only promote this to help us with outreach and finding new customers because that will be crucial. For us to make make use of these funds. And then as well as, you know, looking at some additional staff or partner positions, those kinds of things will all be things. Over the next 4 or 5 years that we will be really focusing on in order to try to do our best. To help. Make sure that this investment and conservation funding actually makes it on the ground. Makes it to our producers to help improve their natural resources and and, you know, just make a make a big dent. In in the resource concerns that are out there. So. I don't have a whole lot to add beyond that. If you guys have any questions. I'm going to tell you to stay tuned at this point. We're we're we don't have all the rules or the regulations to go with this funding yet. They're talking January is when we will likely get our allocation as well as. A little bit better idea of exactly what requirements are coming along with this funding. So. Don't have a lot of details yet, but. I do want to stress. And the reason I'm sharing this is I want to get your wheels spinning on ideas. On ideas, how to spend the money, how to partner and how how we can. Maybe look at some larger projects that maybe never had a chance to be funded because they were too big or something on that order. So. Everything's kind of on the table and we'll be looking for for your ideas and thoughts on on ways that we can use this increase in funding. So. Stay tuned and at our next state tech, which I'm guessing will be shortly after the 1st year sometime hope to have a lot more. Details for you guys and we can have a little bit more in depth conversation as to. Exactly what this IRA funding will look like, but. Wanted to give you a little taste and just put the put this out there and. Just know my best guess. So there's nothing, there's nothing solid about these numbers other than. Just Jeff's math and hopefully Jeff's math isn't too bad. So. With that, Tony, I'll turn it back to you. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. And I just want to reiterate. Also, it's this is going to be an amazing opportunity for investment in South Dakota. And we've been asked from, from the chief to, to find flexibility. Find flexibility and find opportunities to get this money out the door and we're going to have to challenge. Some of our, the ways that we've been doing business in the past to try to figure out how to get this money out the door. So we're definitely looking for ideas. Can't promise we're always going to say yes to an idea, but we want to hear what it is so we can see if we have the ability to entertain. Try trying something new. So, and this is, this is definitely going to be leaning on the partners to be asking for, for that flexibility or trying to find some ideas on what we can practice here in South Dakota to get this conservation on the ground is rapidly. So, with that, it's time for some program updates. I'll go ahead and start with. Let me for the RCPP. Good morning, everybody. I am going to give an update for RCPP. I am currently the acting coordinator and I'll be in that role and through January. I'm looking forward to working with Jeff now that he is back in the state. So, let me share my screen here. Can you see my screen? Yes, it's a little small. If you can zoom in on it, it would be helpful. You bet. How's that? Much better. Thank you. You bet. All right. So for South Dakota, we have nine RCPP projects moving forward. The one that has probably been around the longest is the Big Sioux Watershed Partnership Project. Currently, we took in 26 producer contracts and we're in the process of doing finalized payments on those and for 1.7 million. You can see the total dollars for that project. The other one on the western side of the state is the Belfouche River Watershed Project. That one took in six producer contracts for 570,000 and those contracts have been written. The next step will be to finalize those payments. The Northeast South Dakota Glacial Lakes Project is moving forward. We are looking at setting a batching date for December 9th. I believe the press release is ready to go. And that project, the total dollars were for 2.4 million. Some other newer projects that just had their project proposal finalized is the Building Ranch Resiliency in South Dakota, Nebraska. That was with the World Wildlife Fund. There's a renewal project with the Lewis and Clark Lower James Water Quality Project. And then our newest one for the classic RCPP is the Conservation Easements in the Black Hills of South Dakota. And we're excited to have those as a partner. So for AFA, our projects are with Dexon Limited. We have the Scanling Soil Health in the Prairie Pothole region. They took in 14 producer applications and are working with those cooperators getting those contracts finalized. The other one is with the American Coalition for Ethanol. And they had a really good sign up with taking in 70 producer applications. And I'm currently in the process of checking eligibility on those. And then we've also have a partner with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. And their project is the Great Plains Grassland Conservation. So you can see total dollars there for the classic is around 15 million. The AFA is 24 million. And our total RCPP program dollars in the state is right at 39 million. Jeff did allude to that moving forward. Our AFA, which is the Alternative Funding Agreements, those are going to be going towards grants. I believe that is because there will be a sizable amount of money that will be handled and it will be a little bit easier process to apply for those. Moving forward, the National Funding Opportunity will be announced in January. And looking at doing a similar deadline schedule as in last year, which that would be for March to have those due. Other than that, like Jeff mentioned, we will have a sizable amount of money. So if there are some partners out there that are interested in doing some projects, get in touch with myself or Jeff. And we will kind of start helping you get your projects going moving forward. The RCPP, as many of the partners know to do your projects, there is a portal. And in September, they determined that it was a little cumbersome for our partners to work through that portal. So everything going moving forward is going to be worked through with the coordinator. So there's only one of me. I'm really trying hard to get everything done for our partners, but that is the process. So if anybody has any questions, please reach out to me and my contact information is right here at the top of this. So thank you. Thank you. I really do appreciate your services, the acting RCPP coordinator. So thank you so much. Next on the list is Jen works with the EQUIP update. Good morning everyone. I have some handouts in the packet that Kathy had sent out. It is a summary of last year fiscal year 22's obligation. At the last day tech, we weren't quite done funding everything. So this is where we ended up. And you guys can certainly look through those. If you have questions, feel free to reach out to me. I see I have a table on their summary of 2022 not 2021 on the first page on the handout. So we obligated everything that we had. So we were at 100% obligation only sending back about $22,000 of. National water quality initiative money. So moving forward into fiscal year 23. We have a little. It's more focused on the projects. There are 3 years of projects continuing. The 1st 2 years are listed in the handout in the CIS breakdowns. But the, the 3rd year we have another 12 projects coming in as a new new projects this year across the state. So from our $17 million that Jeff alluded to earlier of our initial allocation about 12 million of those dollars are going to go towards CIS projects. The other pieces of those dollars are going to be broke up into the fun pools that we've had in the past. The equip CIC or incentive contracts will get around the same amount that we started with last year. Again, reservation fun pools, organic on farm energy. High tunnels with probably a little more focus into urban eggs, small farming practices in that fund pool. And our. Our state grass initiative and our national water quality initiative haven't received an allocation as of yet, but that should be coming shortly. But. We just sent out a news release last week for December 9th as a batching date for all of these. Fun pools. That would be the state initiatives and the. Some general funds through reservation. Most likely in a general fund funding pool is a lot less allocation towards that, but that still is a possibility. Because that is all I had 20 unless there's other questions. Thank you. Any questions for Jen? Thank you so much. All right. Next up is Christy Grant with a CSP update. Hello everyone. My name is Christy Grant. Active CSP coordinator. I will provide an update on the conservation stewardship program. I will share my screen. I have a just a quick handout here. Right. First item on the outline is the fiscal 23 renewal applications. The application deadline was April 15th. So let's go to receive 333 applications. Our state. Allocation is 10.9 million. 20% of those funds are allocated to our H.U. Applications. And then the remaining. Is divided between the 16 resource units and the N.I.P.F. applications. Ranking deadline was last Friday, November 4th. The state set a pre-approval deadline of November 11th. And obligation deadline of December 16th. These renewals need to be obligated prior to the active CSP contract expiring, which is at the end of the December. Next item there is the fiscal 23 CSP GCIs, which is the Grassland Conservation Initiative. The application deadline was October 14th. South Dakota initial allocation is $420,000. We have 49 applications on file on the field offices are currently working through that planning process and contracting process on those. And the obligation deadline for those GCIs is December 30th. Next. CSP sign up is the fiscal 23 classics. South Dakota initial allocation is 11.8 million. And 400,000 to organic. We had heard earlier from Tony and Jeff, we expect to see fund increase through the IRA. We're excited to see some additional funds come in through CSP there. So we tentatively set application deadline of December 9th. And then a tentatively deadline for the eligibility and ranking of March 10th. And obligation deadline of April 21st. And then the last item. On our, on the outline there is the CSP annual payments for fiscal 22. Field offices have been dealing with some issues with the business tool and fund issues. But they continue to work with producers to gather documentations for those fiscal 22 activities and implementing those in the business tool. Field offices need to have the completed fiscal 22 activities certified by November 30th in the business tool projects. CSP participants may request a payment in calendar year of 22 or calendar year 23. The payments requested in calendar year 22 will need to be approved by December 16th. And the, the request for 23 payment will need to be approved by February 24th. Field offices are encouraged to complete contract reviews prior to payment to ensure the CSP participants have control of land. Field offices now are able to document this on the revised NR CSP 13, the contract review form. And that is all I have for CSP updates. All right, thank you Christy and thank you also for for being an acting CSP coordinator for us really do appreciate the help. Thanks. All right. Jeff, would you be willing to give an ASAP update? You bet. Yeah, Brandon, Brandon took the week off we wore him out as he filled in as acting for me and he wanted a little break this week so I don't blame him there. There's not a whole lot to update on ASAP unfortunately. Kind of had a bad year this year. We made several offers out to easement applicants had several of them initially accept those offers and as we work through the process with what happened with land prices in South Dakota. Pretty much all of our applicants backed out. Just because our offers were not up to. Current land values, I guess you would say so. We did not have a very successful year in that regard with the ASAP program. So there's not a lot of news to share on that front. However, moving forward, we are doing a new market analysis to look at our GARC, our geographical area rate caps. Also looking at maybe doing more appraisals in order to hopefully be a little more competitive in the current market situation that we're in. So looking to make some updates working through that process currently as we get as we get some of those. Things approved at headquarters or market analysis back and get that approved. We'll be sharing that with our subcommittee and hopefully setting some new. New maximum amounts that we will be willing to pay for easements in order to be a little more competitive in the current land market. So. Basically looking to make some adjustments for 23 to hopefully make us more competitive is is the biggest update that I can give you guys this year and. Just know that we got a we got a nice allocation for for 23 so we will have some money. Obviously with the increase in values though the number of easements will be able to acquire will likely decrease just because of the increased costs so. We'll see what the IRA brings as well as far as additional funds and hopefully that will. Allow us to keep our easement numbers up with those additional funds, but time will tell on that as well. Probably won't know a lot of details until after the 1st of the year though, so we'll get you another update at the next state tech and hopefully have. More solid data to share with you guys as far as how we're going to move ahead with 23. Perfect. Thank you so much. Yeah, really do appreciate the update. You bet. No problem. Alright, so next on the agenda this morning, we have Joel Marano with a South Dakota wetland and each compliance update. Good morning. Good morning, Tony. Good morning everybody. Again, Joel Marano, 1 of the state compliance coordinators. I'm feeling in Ferdig for a few days, so I've got a little bit of information to share about wetland, highly reliable land compliance. First off, I'd like to say that in some of our higher workload areas that eastern part of the state we got we had a few vacancies, but we just recently got those filled one insistent. And one in Brookings and that's going to really help. It's a great time of year for for new staff to come on and learn the compliance job so that they're kind of proficient and ready to go within the next few months. This time of year. Compliance are compliance 1026 in progress is a little under 200. Again, this time of year numbers are very manageable. And we typically get a decent influx of 1026 is so those are those wetland determination requests this time of year folks have been out in their field harvesting crops. Seeing areas in their field that they would like to address so this time of year after harvest. We start getting an uptake of those requests so right now had a little under 200 in progress we completed a little over 1100 last year and received a little under 1100. As you can see the age of the wetland determination requests are about 75% of the requests are under set. Three months. We do have a few that are that are under that six month of age typically that either is a situation where a field visits required prior to a determination being sent out. Or some other reason business reason for that so we're getting our determinations answered in a fairly timely fashion and it seems that our participants. That's a reasonable expectation is within that few months they can make decisions. There are potential violation workload from the last year so that's that fsa 569. We received 52 potential violations that could be wetlands or highly herbal land. We completed 36 of them of those reviews and we have 22 of them in progress. And as far as our highly herbal land workload. We completed a little over 1800 determinations for highly herbal highly herbal land. We only have 63 outstanding right now. About 1200 of those in the last year were new breakings and about 200 of them were determined highly herbal land. That is all that I have to provide you there are some other additional handouts within within your handout packet that show visually. If you have any questions you can call wetland progress for the last year if you'd like to review those. And if anybody has any questions I'd be happy to try to answer your question. Thanks for the time. Joel does anybody have any questions for Joel. Thank you Joel. All right so next on the agenda this morning we have an opportunity for our partners to come up and tell us what they've been up to for the last quarter. I'd like to give a report this morning to let us see you jumping on the screen here if you want to help us out with this process. Certainly will. Thank you. If you would please go ahead and turn on your camera or raise your hand and we'll recognize you to to speak with the group so I know I had had communications with Cindy Zank with the Soil Health Coalition and she was having some connections issues this morning. So Cindy if you're on great. Otherwise I'll take a minute she had mentioned just a couple reminders that their annual meeting for the Soil Health Coalition will be in January the 24th and 25th and Sioux Falls. So please go to their website and you can see the information and the agenda for their meeting they usually have an outstanding event. And that will be again in Sioux Falls on January 24th and 25th. Another reminder would be the Soil Health Coalition is they have scheduled their Soil Health School for the week of August 28. And that's usually an outstanding event as well. So if you have any producers who are curious or interested in some of the practices and philosophies behind it. That's a wonderful event to attend. I also know that the Grassland Coalition has some grazing schools and Grassland Manager School but I'm not sure the dates have been set yet. So I'll leave that to them to announce. Okay I have a message here that shows that Mark Norton would like to address the group. We have the floor sir. All right good morning everybody. I just wanted to build on the announcement that Owen made that the Big Sioux River watershed CREP is active now. Everything's completed and trainings and we are starting to enroll people in that watershed. It is very similar to the CREP program in the James River watershed. Targeting water quality wildlife habitat and increased public hunting and fishing access on all of those enrolled lands and those are all that access is a requirement to enroll into CREP. And they receive an additional payment from game fishing parks for that access opportunity. And this is part of the continuous CRP sign up so. Participants can enroll all throughout the year. Thank you Mark. I will stand by for a moment for anyone else that has announcements. Oh okay Chris, I see your hand up please have the floor. Yeah thanks. Just let everybody know I'm Chris Ozark South Dakota Department of Ag and Natural Resources. Kind of our 319 implementation coordinator. Just want to let everybody know our annual non point source task force meeting is scheduled for December 6. That'll be in peer. I'm sure we'll have it kind of both options. Right now it looks like we have about four projects that are coming in for funding. Probably looking at the same funding that we received last year which is about. I will pass through about $2 million so. So let everybody let everybody know that so thank you. Thank you Chris. Okay next we have Judge yes up with the gas line coalition. You have the floor sir. Hello how's it going. Grazing school the wall grazing school is probably tentatively planned for that June timeframe. We will be having an East River grazing school also probably the end of July. Our annual bird tour will be probably that's first weekend of June. And then also our annual meetings coming up Thursday December 8 lane phrase. She's a generational transfer transitioning coach. And we're doing that in partnership with the Nebraska grazing lands coalition. She's going to be in North Fork on the 7th. Gonna be in Chamberlain Oklahoma at Cedar Shores on the 8th and then. Farm Bureau was going to be hosting her on that Friday on the 9th. And that's all I have for that. Also, I guess I would mention. Are on our grazing school so producers that take the grazing school. They're also eligible for our grazing school follow up program. And that is not a replacement for NRCS. That's in addition to that they are eligible for that. It's a relatively low cost once they get through the grazing school. And they get 40 hours of consulting with that. So thank you. Any questions? Thank you, judge. And that's really important to remember about those schools too. Because especially as producers are interested in the climate smart funding practices. The schools are great opportunity to just be in the same room with specialists and both extension professionals. And we have producers who are hands on pride and true. And also with NRCS specialist as well. So. I see your camera on Dan, and I also see that Marcus had raised his hand, but since you with the coalition, I'll let you go next. Because it's on the same topic. Thanks, Dan. Yes, thanks for having me. Judge explained very well the kind of our schedules. I would like to talk just a little bit about the strategic plan we're currently doing with the grazing schools and the grazing school follow up ranch consulting program. Just to expand on what judge said. We went through 80 ranches in the CIG over the last four years. So these ranches went. Someone went from the ranch went to the grazing school. And then a consultant went to their ranch and worked with resource producing a resource inventory and a grazing plan. So plus quite a bit more depending on the, you know, the situation. But our strategic planning process is to is to figure out now. How do we move forward after what is it 20 years of grazing schools, 800 participants approximately and 80 ranches that have gone through the consulting program. I think you could we could assume that. Because I don't have a better term, the low hanging fruit, maybe we have the people that have come in through this program now really want it. They are actively involved and. But there's a ton of people out there ranches that could use this program. But aren't either aren't aware of it or are hesitant feeling they're not qualified or don't have the, the, the. Or just don't want it, you know, but what we're moving forward wanting to figure out is how do we bring more people into this. And so the requirement with the consulting program is that they have to go through the grazing school first. And that gets everybody on the same wavelength. What I find as a consultant is that a lot of what is taught at the grazing school ends the day the school is over. For some reason. So we as a consultant, the consultants go to the ranch and start working through the practices, the ideas that were taught at the school. And that that I think is is is where we're starting to look at this is is how do we get more people one, keep people coming to the grazing school and to get them to sign up for the for the consulting program. At Watertown great grazing school out of 16 people to signed up for at the at signed up out of 40 at Chamberlain and to signed up in wall out of 18. So some of these are are agency people and really it's a little bit. They don't quite fit with the consulting. So to be fair, but but what I would like everyone to know is that we're working on this. We would like you to be involved with it with with getting the information out. These this consulting is valuable. People typically what I see is people are a little confused about how do we move forward now we have an equip contract and the next step is put birds together. Now we've got too many cattle for the equip contract water distribution. How do we, how do we water the cattle. Now that we've, you know, we've given the grass more rest, and it just keeps building, you know, and so I would I just I guess you could my request is to keep bringing this up, especially the grazing school and maybe the consulting is the carrot. I'm not quite sure but the grazing school is gets this gets this conversation going and I guess that's that's all I have any questions. Thank you, Dan. Yes. Okay, Marcus will go with you next and then tell you're running will have you on the floor. Yeah, hi. Good morning. Mostly wanted to introduce myself myself go to state forester with Department of Ag and natural resources. Our staff acts as the technical service providers for the service forestry practices that the nrcs approves. Looking forward to continuing our relationships and our partnerships with the nrcs. As we look at this large influx of funding, we also are getting additional funds to implement our forest action plan. Basically, I know I'm also on the board of directors for South Dakota Family Forest Association. Those are the landowners out here in the black Hills and across the state that benefit greatly from from the equip programs and the conservation stewardship programs that you all provide funding for. So, we're looking forward to hopefully having someone from nrcs come and speak at our next board meeting which I believe is going to be early in the spring or or January February kind of talk about expectations for for writing those plans and how that's going to go and impact those landowners and then also looking forward to looking into the new cooperative agreements that that other states are implementing with the nrcs, as opposed to the current cost share funding mechanism that we have in our state. So looking to kind of improve that and seeing how many more funds and how many more projects we can implement through something like a cooperative agreement rather than our current agreements and and yeah, hope we have a time in the future to sit down and chat about those opportunities. Thank you very much. I appreciate the heads up on the events you have coming up and we will be in contact regarding your thoughts for agreements. And since you mentioned it, I want to just point out to everyone on the national website. There is a section for climate smart mitigation activities and there is a PDF on that page. I'll drop the link in the chat. But that one is has a list of the practices that are on that. Current list. And also then I will go over to take your money next. Thank you. Okay, I hope we didn't just get disconnected. You have your hand up, but I don't see you on the. While we're waiting on the next person on the list is not more like. Maybe we'll jump to Matt and come back to Taya. Morning everybody took me a second to get off mute. Nothing much here, other than I was just going to say. For this more for all the partners on if you guys have programs and stuff that you're looking to get pushed and out there, you know, we have our team across the state where one person short of full staff finally, which has been a feat, but. We're out there and we're not mutually exclusive to just USDA programs so. If you guys need help for whatever it is, make sure to reach out to me and the team. We're, we're always there meeting and stuff so gives a shout. One other thing quick, just more for an FYI. In mid February, we are going to be having pheasant fest in Minneapolis this year again. We're going back to face to face. We're going to have it finally again and. Yeah, should be a lot of stuff there for landowners and a lot of interaction where we bring in the landowner help desk back. So if any of you folks have information there to that you want to hand it out, let me know with it being in Minneapolis. There's going to be a lot of producers, especially absentee landowners based on Minneapolis will be there. So it'd be an opportunity to get some information in front of those folks as they come through. And for the first time, we are going to be doing kind of a more of a non operating landowner focus conference on the front end of this. We're going to be doing some outreach in the five state area, trying to get those landowners that are not on the land to come and talk to us and. Little bit more about how their ag land can work for their wildlife side of things too. So just a little bit of a shameless plug there, but. And then back to it and make sure that if you guys have programs that you need pushed reach out to us and staffs there to there to help everybody. Hey, thank you, Matt. So, since you brought up the opportunity at pheasant best, I think one of the most important things we can do is encourage people to go to the farmers.gov website and in the upper right hand corner. If you have a place for subscribe. And with that subscription, anyone can go down to the counter level was it code specific to sign up for announcements for the areas of the nation that they're interested in so if there are people that own land in the state, they could receive announcements for program and funding opportunities specific to the geographic area. So again, that's on farmers.gov, and it's in the upper right hand corner and you can choose whatever state and your preferences desire as far as programs and locations. Hey, I see you're on board. So we'll just turn this over to you now. Thank you. I wanted to, um, to speak. Is it. I'm not hearing you. Oh, no. Anybody have any suggestions? It appears. Yeah. There. We're talking again. Taya, you might have to look. Well, actually, why don't I just share my screen and show you how to do it here. Taya, if you go to more and go to device settings, you might have an issue with what your microphone is. This is showing our owl. It's what it's called. It's just, it's a camera and speaker all combined. Um, but that might be your issue. Taya. That's really the only suggestion we've got. And please note, Taya, that if you have some announcements, we would certainly help. Um, if you continue to have an issue with the microphone. That we'll work with you to get that out to our group as a whole in, and especially in the minutes of the meeting. A minute to check your settings. Is there anyone else that has announcements or updates? Bruce. Hey. Good morning. Bruce toy here with ducks unlimited. Just real, I can be real brief here, but as Krisha mentioned earlier, we've been working on RCPP sign up from last summer. We had 14 applicants and currently working on on contracting for five of those agreements, figuring out the details of the alternative funding arrangement style there. But once we get comfortable with that, hoping to have another sign up here later this winter before the 2023 field season to get the next batch of applicants there. But similar to like an equip style, producers can enroll at any point in time or submit an application. So if they're interested in those, those practices like cover crops and crop rotation and grass establishment grazing infrastructure. I can certainly reach out to our staff and we can start putting those details together. Other than that, we've got several wetland restoration projects going on right now. So we're looking forward to some moisture, but hopefully not too much here over the next couple of weeks so we can keep our construction plans as as they're set to finish the next few weeks. Staff are also working with several cooperators on some grazing infrastructure projects on grasslands and crop lands with with wetlands on both. So lots of good things going on and if anybody has questions on our programs. Feel free to reach out. Thanks for the time today. Hey, just want to step back. Taya, were you able to get your microphone working? Okay, would, would there be any other partners that would have announcements? All right, well, I guess if that is all that I will turn it back to. Got another hand up. Oh, great. Super. Matt, I'll turn the floor to you. Yeah, just really quick. So we have our convention will be coming up. It'll be on November 18th and 19th and Rapid City. So if you're in the area, stop on by. Thank you. I'm glad you could join us today. Anyways, turning it back to you, Tony. Thank you so much Collette. And thank you to all of our partners that gave reports really do appreciate it. We really are focusing on trying to make this as much of a Parker focused event as we can. And again, I'm going to keep reiterating that as we move forward into these next few years, it's a we are going to be leaning a lot on all of you to help us prioritize and find ways that we can invest in South Dakota conservation. So thank you. Thank you for participating today and we'll keep everybody in the loop as we get more information on our additional funding coming in and we're looking forward to to attend some of these meetings that are coming up. So again, thank you for letting us know about those people keep us in the loop. And I'm looking forward to seeing you all over the next few months. So thank you all and I hope you all have a wonderful rest of this year and a great holiday season. So thank you.