The new Conservation Concerns Tool on the farmers.gov website provides farmers and ranchers a central online location to learn about the different types of conservation concerns that might impact their land. These concerns are divided into six different topic areas:
- Soil: Erosion or quality degradation
- Animals: Inability to meet livestock or wildlife habitat needs
- Air: Quality issues like greenhouse gases or odors
- Water: Excess water, insufficient water or quality issues
- Plants: Reduced health or quality of plants
- Energy: Reduced efficiency for equipment of field operations
“We developed the farmers.gov Conservation Concerns tool using feedback from more than 30 internal and external customers,” said Kevin Norton, Acting Chief for the United States Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.
“We listened to the farmers themselves. Our hope is that this is the beginning of a tool that farmers and ranchers will use to learn more about the resource concerns across their operations and the available resources we have at USDA to help them with their working lands and keep them productive for generations to come.”
The tool is user friendly. It uses plain language and illustrative photos to aid any farmer or rancher with concerns they might have.