“Conservation compliance” has a very specific meaning in federal law and farm agency rules. It refers to the rules requiring farmers to “install and maintain conservation systems.” If farmers don't comply with these rules, they may lose all of their federal farm payments. These funds often include large sums in commodity, disaster, and conservation payments. Conservation compliance is not a payment program; it is only meant to be a service provided to encourage farmers and ranchers to keep their land "green."
Goal of Conservation Compliance
The goal of conservation compliance is to reduce soil erosion by monitoring farmlands (called “tracts”). The definitions used to decide what land is to be reviewed for “compliance” are often hotly debated. There's a large amount of eligible farm land: more than 4.5 million acres of agricultural land is eligible for Conservation Compliance study. The key terms in defining Conservation Compliance are: Highly Erodible Land Claims (HELC) and Wetland designations (WL).
Who Defines and Monitors Conservation Compliance
There are two federal departments, both in the United States Department of Agriculture, that are responsible for enforcing and defining conservation compliance: the National Resource Conservation Service (NCRS), and the Farm Service Agency (FSA). The NCRS approves conservation plans submitted by farmers. The NCRS has state and local field offices, which serve local farmers and ranchers. In short, the NCRS handles the USDA's conservation programs. The FSA, which handles the USDA's commodity programs, gives its data to the NCRS. Only croplands receiving FSA commodity payments are subject to NCRS conservation compliance selection, although the same land is sometimes selected under separate state selection rules.
Conservation compliance involves using a sort of lottery to see who gets monitored for following the rules. Accepting FSA commodity payments makes the farm lands subject to being selected by the NCRS for review. The NCRS annual goal is to survey at least 1% of all eligible land holdings, and of this total, the NCRS estimates 60% of its reviews are of HELCs. State field offices of both agencies are also involved in deciding what tracts get monitored. If property is no longer eligible for aid (if it is no longer farmland or is sold), then additional proprieties may be added to a review schedule.