USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer Conservation Stewardship and Business Tools (Conservation Measurement Tool/ Toolkit/Program Contracts System) August 2009 USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer

Discussion Topics Conservation Stewardship Plan Toolkit Setup Program Contracts System (ProTracts) Setup Program Workflow with Programs Business Tools Planning in Toolkit Managing Applications in ProTracts Determining Conservation Measurement Tool (CMT) Performance Points

Conservation Stewardship Plan The Conservation Stewardship Plan contains: A record of the participant’s decisions that describe the schedule of additional conservation activities to be installed and adopted to achieve additional conservation performance improvement under the conservation stewardship contract. 3 3

Conservation Stewardship Plan Basis for the plan: Conservation Performance Summary Report form the CMT. Field Verification 4 4

Conservation Stewardship Plan Conservation Stewardship Plan - Individual activities Contract - Conservation Performance Payment Points by land use and supplemental payment only Mary will explain in more detail later 5 5

Conservation Stewardship Plan The Conservation Stewardship Plan will be completed after on-site field verification for approved applications, and Before contract obligation 6 6

Conservation Stewardship Plan Will contain: New Enhancements New practices offered through Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) - to meet additional stewardship thresholds Agreed to practices not offered through CSP I will expand on each one 7 7

Enhancements Planned individually (80 new activity codes) Adjust acres to the planned amount accepted by the applicant Customized narratives if needed Reference the job sheet 8 8

Conservation Practices To Meet Additional Stewardship Thresholds Available for the explicit purpose of encouraging producers to meet additional stewardship thresholds. Originally selected with the applicant in the office. Certified adequate to meet stewardship threshold requirements after field verification Scheduled any year of the contract Report to Progress Reporting System (PRS) 9 9

Other Practices Needed Practices “agreed to” by the applicant not offered through CSP: Are documented in the Conservation Stewardship Plan Will use Code - Progress Reporting System (CTA) Do not duplicate the information in the operator’s farm plan If a producer sign-up for cost share through another program then the practice code will be changed and uploaded to Protracts. Foe example, if a producer agrees to install a structural practice then you will go back to the Stewardship Plan and change the code from CTA to EQIP perhaps. Then you use the practice from Stewardship Plan to upload to Protracts contract application. 10 10

Conservation Stewardship Plan By signing Form NRCS-CPA-1202 - Appendix Conservation Stewardship Plan Conservation Stewardship Contract Conservation performance levels identified on the Conservation Performance Summary Report The participant agrees to the conservation plan as part of the contract and to maintain existing conservation performance levels and achieve additional conservation performance levels. 11 11

Conservation Stewardship Plan Signatures Applicant- Encouraged Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) designated conservationist- required (to certify the technical adequacy of the plan conservation treatment) 12 12

Operation Adjustments Annual contract reviews need to be done early enough in the year to allow for any needed substitutions before payments and potential non compliance. Enhancements may be replaced with similar enhancements as long as the conservation performance estimated by CMT is equal to or better than the conservation performance at enrollment. Re-run the CMT 13 13

Operation Adjustments Conservation Performance Summary Report accepted by the applicant Update Conservation Stewardship Plan An enhancement replacement that results in a decline below the conservation performance level will not be allowed. Follow policy in Title 440-Conservation Programs Manual (CPM) – Part 512, Section 512.55 14 14

Supporting Information Maintained With The Participant’s Plan Conservation Performance Summary Report from CMT (Inventory resource, benchmark data, new activities) Plan map Documentation for transition to organic farming On-farm research and demos or pilot project proposal State supplemental documents Resource Conserving Crop Rotation (RCCR) rotation information (job sheet) Other documentation listed on Title 440 – CPM, Part 512, Section 512.43 15 15

Conservation Stewardship Plan No upload to Protracts One Conservation Stewardship Plan supports all stewardship contracts 16 16

Operation and Maintenance The participant will operate and maintain: Existing activities on the operation to at least meet the level of conservation performance identify at the time of application on the Conservation Performance Summary Report for the contract period. Additional conservation activities installed and adopted over the term of the contract. 17 17

ProTracts Toolkit CMT

Toolkit Set Up Toolkit permissions must be granted to any new users. Suggestion: Turn off prior year security enhancements during the signup prior to doing Refresh Domain Data to load the new enhancements for 2009 from conservation practice standards (CPS) This will have no impact to existing contracts. We will let you know when the enhancements are ready. Optional: Add CSP nonindustrial private forest land (NIPF) to local land uses. No cost list needed for Toolkit.

Stewardship & Security Enhancements in Toolkit

Application and Appendix from ProTracts See Title 440, Part 512, Section 512.20 for policy on applications. Contract numbers will be “81”

New Application Data

Determine Applicant and Land Eligibility Participants will need to meet conservation adjusted gross income (AGI) ($1 mil), have Form AD-1026 on file, meet highly erodible land/ wetland conservation (HEL/WC), and have a land association Eligibility matrix will be posted on ProTracts Home Page soon

Determine Applicant and Land Eligibility Applicants should have farm records on file with the Farm Service Agency (FSA) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2010. Non-traditional applicants may need to be added to Service Center Information Management System (SCIMS) FSA expects to do SCIMS and Farm Records Rollover about September 19 Obligations will occur in FY 2010 and will use FY 2010 eligibility after FSA rollover

Determine Applicant and Land Eligibility Participants with active CSP 2002 contracts are not eligible to participate in CSP 2008 on the same land units. Look at other ProTracts programs and their responses on the Form NRCS-CPA-1200 question 8

Due Diligence on Other Program Participation CPM, Part 508, Section 508.94 - Prohibited Payments A. Prohibited Activities B. Preventing Duplicate Payments (1) A program applicant or participant may not schedule the installation of new enhancements or practices through CSP that are earning financial assistance payments through any other U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) conservation program on the same land at the same time. Program applicants will complete the Conservation Performance Summary Report Duplicate Payments Addendum during the application process.

Farms Operated New button that will determine if the participant is associated with farms in FSA farm records. At least one farm must be returned to set an application to pre-approved and select the application for funding.

Land Description Will select one of the land uses that will be used in Conservation Measurement Tool (CMT) Data must be completed before accessing CMT Before CMT is available please enter estimated acres. CMT will over-write this data

Basic Resource Inventory

Required Data for Linkage to CMT Land ownership and lease information completed Land uses selected on Legal Description tab Fund code selected Application status is eligible

Application Status = Eligible See Title 440 – CPM, Part 512, Section 512.26 and Section 512.22(c) This is not related to FSA eligibility criteria and is set in Manage Applications Do not have to meet “other” criteria to access CMT which include: Stewardship Threshold Control of Land Farm Operator

ProTracts Data to CMT Customer, contract number, address, funding pool name and resource concerns.

Using CMT Last data saved wins. Data can be saved incrementally. Be aware of concurrency issues so only one person running CMT per application at one time. Changing status to pre-approved locks the data and disables link to CMT. Changing status back to eligible requires that CMT be accessed again and data must be submitted back to ProTracts.

Linkage Back From CMT

CMT to ProTracts Data Share Submit will transfer the following to ProTracts: Total eligible acres Total performance points Acres by land use Performance points per land use RCCR acres and start date Data for calculation in ProTracts of the tie-breaker

CMT Data in ProTracts Data will be synched up with CMT submit

Managing the Signup Application Maintenance – Ranking searches for Ranked or Unranked Applications

Managing the Signup Changing application status through selection of funding

Tie-Breaker Cropland acre/total operation acres x cropland conservation performance payment points + pastureland acres/total operation acres x pastureland conservation performance payment points + rangeland acres/ total operation acres x rangeland conservation performance payment points = tie-breaker.

Duplications Revisited The following warning message will appear when setting applications to pre-approved. Applicants with separate operations (Agricultural Lands and/or NIPF) may have separate applications; however, the same acres cannot be duplicated. Warning! This applicant has the following active CSP contracts <contract number>. Land enrolled in the CSP is ineligible for enrollment in the CSP. Verification that this application is on different land units is required prior to setting this application to pre-approved.

Tentative Selection for Funding ProTracts Rules for setting applications to pre-approved: CMT scores present for all applicable land uses Livestock, crop, and organic question answered Minimum one farm associated with participants Tie-breaker present Warning regarding Conservation Security Program participation

Application Costs and Payment Rates Linked data from CMT to generate payment rates for pre-approved applications

Payment Rates Cost per point will be added to ProTracts after the “Payment Discovery Period” Further information will be provided on next steps once the rate is available

Application Costs and Payment Rates Calculate button will allow auto-generation of the contract items and payment rates for printing on Form NRCS-CPA-1155

On-Site Field Verification Verification in the field. Enter date visit was completed. Date will be required to approve an application and will be stored in contract history.

Planning Enhancements in Toolkit Conventional planning in Toolkit

CSP and Toolkit A new CSP Toolkit folder will be required for the applicants Land units should NOT be merged One Stewardship plan should support all Stewardship contracts (ag operation and NIPF) Practices needed to meet stewardship threshold requirements and  not offered through CSP will be planned in the Stewardship Plan as CTA

Planning Enhancements in Toolkit National narratives provided

Plan Maps Basic plan maps with treatment unit boundaries and attribute labels Include program in the local land use data field i.e., CSP - NIPF

Toolkit Plan Plan will be generated with details on enhancements that are available on the CMT Conservation Performance Summary Report Plan is signed by the designated conservationist with voluntary participant signature The plan is incorporated by reference in the CSP appendix

Approving Applications Participant eligibility is validated At least one farm present At least one item in contract Participant payment limitations are validated Field verification is completed

ProTracts Contracting Generate Form NRCS-CPA-1155

ProTracts Contracting See Title 440 CPM, Part 512, Section 512.42 for steps in approving and signing contract documents. Participant will sign Form NRCS-CPA-1202 , Form NRCS-CPA-1155, and the appendix. CSP obligations will go through standard financial management obligation second level review in Fund Manager.

Payment Limitations Enforced in ProTracts Title 440 - CPM – Part 508 - Section 508.95 - Payment Limitations Person or Legal Entity Limitations Regardless of the number of contracts entered into under the program, a person or legal entity may not receive, directly or indirectly, payments that, in the aggregate, exceed: (i) $40,000 during any fiscal year for all conservation stewardship contracts entered into, and $200,000 for all conservation stewardship contracts entered into during any five-year period (2) The above limitations exclude funding arrangements with federally recognized Indian tribes or Alaska Native corporations as described in Title 440, CPM, Part 508, Section 508.95(C).

Obligating Contracts Will store history of the application from the ProTracts and CMT evaluation

Managing and Modifying Contracts

Annual Reminder Letters Send annual practice reminder letters at the beginning of the calendar year.

Contract Reviews Title 440, CPM, Part 508, Section Follow guidance in Title 440 - CPM, Part 512, Section 512.55. Annual reviews will be completed early enough in the year to allow for completion of any necessary corrective actions prior to issuance of the annual payment.

Annual Payments Title 440 – CPM , Part 508, Section 508.90 - Payment Types Annual Payment Supplemental Payment Section 508.93 - Timing of Payments (1) The NRCS will make annual and supplemental payments as soon as practicable after October 1 of each year for activities carried out in the previous year.

Annual Payments

Questions?

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