I’m pleased to be here with fellow strong advocates for conservation programs. Thank you to each of our witnesses for making time to come up to the Hill and share your expertise with us. And a special shoutout to Ms. Galase for traveling nearly 5,000 miles from Volcano, Hawaii – we appreciate you making the journey to be here today.

Our farmers are the natural caretakers and stewards of our land.

USDA's conservation programs help continue that legacy while diversifying farm income streams and helping farmers’ bottom line. Conservation is essential to keeping our farm and forest lands working for generations to come.

Over the last decade, my state, Minnesota, has received over $875 million from Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) programs to help producers with everything from planting cover crops and pollinator habitat to implementing reduced tillage and manure management.

For example, in my district in Rice County, conservation champions like John and Debbie Becker have enrolled land in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) to protect the county’s only self-sustaining trout stream, and more recently, they've used the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) to fund planting cover crops. And through the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), Mike and Kay Peterson have added critical area plantings of native prairie on highly erodible end rows where erosion occurred year after year.

These programs are popular because they work. Moving forward, there are some significant issues I believe we must address to get more conservation on the ground.

First, I would be remiss not to mention my significant concern with the current Administration's hollowing out of NRCS. In Minnesota alone, we've lost more than 70 dedicated NRCS employees. Without dedicated and qualified staff working from Farmer Service Centers in rural America, these programs cannot succeed. Yet, the president's budget recommends completely zeroing out Conservation Technical Assistance, further jeopardizing our ability to implement extremely popular farm bill conservation programs like EQIP and CSP. This will hurt farmers, not help them.

Second, NRCS programs remain oversubscribed. We've got to protect the remaining Inflation Reduction Act conservation funding by rolling it into the farm bill baseline. And we should do it in a manner that preserves the original intent of the investment and without busting up the farm bill coalition. We must make sure that money stays in the voluntary, incentive-based conservation programs that our farmers rely on. The investments we made in conservation programs through the IRA might be once-in-a-lifetime, and we shouldn’t give up those gains. I am glad the majority has recognized the importance and success of the IRA and joined us in trying to get this across the finish line.

Lastly, it's been too long since we've reauthorized a full, five-year farm bill. There are common sense, bipartisan changes that everyone agrees need to be made. I look forward to working with my colleagues, our witnesses and the broader conservation community to protect and improve the farm bill’s conservation programs.

We have a tremendous opportunity to streamline program delivery, increase incentives for producer participation and preserve farm, ranch and forest lands for current farmers and our children and grandchildren.

Thank you and I yield back.