National Association of Conservation Districts

2010 President's Address

NACD 2010 Annual Meeting • January 31 - February 3, 2010 • Orlando, FL

Steve Robinson, NACD President
2010 NACD President's Address
February 1, 2009

Good morning. I am so pleased that all of you have taken time to be here.  You all are an incredible representation of our wonderful country. NACD’s 2010 Annual Meeting is off to a great start.

First, allow me to share some of my personal journey with conservation districts. In 1988, I became a district supervisor for the Union Soil and Water Conservation District in Ohio.  At that time, NACD had a great leader—some of you may remember Clarence Durban from Ohio.  Clarence was a visionary and saw the need for NACD to have a stronger presence on Capitol Hill.  He was the driver behind the purchase of our current NACD office. We need to recognize and appreciate the strong leaders that helped us get started in the past and led us to where we are now.

My life has certainly changed since 1988.  Not unlike some of you, back then I had little kids and lots of black hair.  Now I’m a Grandpa and the hair has suffered some kind of erosion! 

Our country has changed and so has the way we farm.  We have made many improvements, but we still have work to do. In 1989, there were 2.14 million farms in the United States, with an average size of 457 acres. Twenty years later, there are about 2.2 million farms, and the average size is 418 acres. During that time, the U.S. population has grown from 247 million to 304 million; that’s almost 25 percent more mouths to feed, and that’s just in the United States! Even more surprising is that the population in urban centers has jumped from 247 million in 1989 to 249 million in 2008. That means that today’s urban population is greater than the total U.S. population when I started.

I cite these numbers because the changes and trends that I’ve seen in my short 20 year journey make the work that we do more important than ever before. And I know that there are people in this room whose journey with conservation districts spans more than three times what mine does.

In 1988, there were 28.8 million acres enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program. In 2008, there were 34.6 million acres enrolled. Today, more than $1.6 billion dollars are committed to conservation on the ground through the top federal conservation programs—namely CSP, EQIP, WHIP and WRP. These programs didn’t even exist in 1988! Non point source funding through EPA’s 319 program was first funded in 1989 and now provides $200 million for conservation projects.

Folks, we’ve come a long way in a short time. While the faces of NACD and the numbers we work with—whether customers, dollars or programs—have changed, many of our natural resource concerns and district services still remain the same.

In my early years, I stayed close to home and the people I worked with were local folks and we worked on local issues. What an honor and privilege it has been to travel to many of your states as I climbed the NACD ladder, learning about the challenges and successes each of you experience as you work to improve the land that we all share.

From the cranberry bogs many of you also saw on the cover of our Resource magazine last fall to the coal mines of Wyoming, I am always amazed how different we all are, yet what we do is the same.

I also have a greater appreciation for partnerships than I did in those early days. When various partners all bring their separate resources, knowledge and expertise to one table, we can accomplish so much more! Our traditional partners are as valuable as ever, and I have enjoyed working with our friends at NRCS, NASCA, NCDEA and the RC&Ds to improve and strengthen the conservation delivery system.

A side path of this journey began when I was chair of NACD’s District Operations Committee. An idea began there, and I have been able to watch it grow into a program that can help every district and state. When you return home, I hope you visit NASCA’s website where you will find the District Official Training Checklist. Thanks to all that helped with this ongoing effort as part of the D.O. Committee, and thanks to NASCA for making it happen.

In addition to our traditional partnerships, I’ve had the privilege of helping relatively new partnerships develop. In the last couple of years, NACD, NRCS, the Forest Service and the National Association of State Foresters have teamed up to form the Joint Forestry Team to improve delivery of forestry and conservation assistance for working forests, farms and ranches. Last fall, I signed the re-charter to extend this partnership into the near future, and this year NACD chairs that Team. I am pleased with this direction.

Last fall we also teamed up with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to plan and carry out a one-day leadership focusing on issues surrounding the Chesapeake Bay. The event was a great success and was heavily supported by districts in the region. I look forward to continuing our efforts on this front and making progress on similar issues that impact conservation districts in other parts of our great nation.

These are just a few examples of how NACD is working with federal and state agencies and other partners to foster a better understanding of conservation districts’ capabilities and their capacity for technical assistance delivery.

In addition to the people we meet along the way, we can also be thankful for the things that we learn. I never imagined I would constantly talk on the phone and monitor my email from the seat of my dozer using this tiny little device that fits in my pocket. But in 1990, there were only 5 million cell phones in use in the U.S. Mine was in a giant bag with a foot-long antennae.  Today there are more than 275 million cell subscribers in America alone. We’ve gone from 15 million household computers to 117 million. The way we communicate is changing, requiring districts to adapt their outreach methods.

Social media outlets have transformed the way associations and businesses reach out to and communicate with their membership and communities. For example, while your district officials may or may not be the type to “tweet” or have their own Facebook page, it likely is a way you can communicate with media or new clientele in your area. NACD continues to explore the best ways to use these outlets. I hope you, too, are embracing technology, and using it to do more with less, to expand your outreach and efficiency, and to reach more customers using fewer dollars.

Just about every journey has a few bumps in the road. Maybe you get lost, maybe your tire goes flat, maybe you get a speeding ticket, or maybe it just takes you longer to get where you’re going than originally planned thanks to that speeding ticket. But isn’t it a great feeling when you get back on the road and are once again headed in the right direction? There have been a few bumps in my NACD journey, some of them recently, but I’m thankful to be back on the road, headed toward success.

Let’s face it, the thing that can make or break a trip are the people that you have with you in your car. I would be remiss to not recognize my “co-pilots” this past year as your NACD President. My fellow officers (Gene, Earl, Jack, John, and Brad) NACD Executive Board members, board members and staff, thank you for trusting me to drive the “NACD bus” so-to-speak, and thank you for providing guidance along the way. I also need to thank my wife Ann and my son Joe as they are the ones that cover at home to allow me to serve you with my travels.

Let’s take just a few minutes to look to the future.

Today there is a focus on regional natural resource issues, and working collaboratively across state lines, with both traditional and non-traditional partnerships to achieve the same goal—the protection of our natural resources. 

Conservation districts will continue to play a key role in all of these efforts to ensure that local priorities are addressed and that the work happens with landowners and land use in mind. We can be leaders in finding the right balance between protection and production.  

As a farmer and a land improvement contractor, I know there is a right way and wrong way to do things. I work with my district, the state and now as a national leader to support programs that continue to provide flexibility in achieving our natural resource goals.

But what lies ahead for all of us? Global Climate Change, Sustainability, Going Green are some of the buzz words today, but where do conservation districts fit in, and what do you want our programs and services to look like in 10 years … or 20 years?   While we are not sure what the often heated discussions on Climate Change will bring in terms of policy and programs, your leadership is working hard to keep conservation districts in the forefront of any new initiatives in the arena of carbon credit trading.  In another area, conservation districts are finally being recognized nationally as green organizations that have the capacity to provide the public with assistance in environmental protection.  This is a whole new sector of the public that we can and are reaching out to.

Technology will continue to advance at a very rapid rate in the future. What new technologies do we need to achieve greater natural resource protection?  Just like no-till crop production was the new technology of the 70s and 80s, we want to seek and embrace new technologies today that will provide the next push for land users to put conservation on the land. We want to continue to assist landowners to protect the environment through conservation planning, reducing fertilizer and pesticide applications in both rural and urban settings, managing stormwater discharges, educating communities, using GIS technology where appropriate, forest management planning—the list goes on.

I am pleased that our new CEO, Jeff Eisenberg is on board with us. His energy, excitement and passion for conservation districts is giving us all an energy boost.  With his leadership, we are quickly staffing up and taking the next steps in laying out our roadmap for the future. Your national board will be navigating its way through a strategic planning process over the next several months.

Together we can envision where we want to go in our next journey, how we want to get there, and what we will see and do along the way.  I encourage each of you to participate in the strategic planning process when you have the opportunity to provide your thoughts in setting goals for your national association.  And I encourage each of you to be thinking about and looking for new ideas of the future that will assist our nations’ food, fiber and fuel producers, as well as our urban centers to embrace conservation and keep our land sustainable for our ever-growing future generations.

We are doing great work across this land. We are working hard to meet your landowners’ various conservation needs—my NACD cap is off to you for all the great things you are accomplishing!

Thank you for joining me this morning. It is my hope that we all leave this conference with something you can take back to your district, and with a strengthened enthusiasm for the work of your national association and a renewed commitment to conservation.

Thank you.