Podcast: Kansas conservation

    11:52PM Feb 25, 2024

    Speakers:

    Keywords:

    conservation

    kansas

    state

    year

    talked

    landscape

    agriculture

    people

    lands

    program

    issues

    wildlife

    funds

    fund

    soil

    driven

    working

    colorado

    good

    agricultural lands

    From a horse drawn buckboard in the 1850s to an SUV in the 2020s, folks can traverse the state and see the fertile soil and clean water that makes up Kansas. It's essential to quality alive for many Kansans whether you're talking about farming or recreation. But Kansas is among about 15 states that don't have some type of state level funding for conservation, Nebraska and Colorado do in Missouri with its parks, soils and water statewide sales tax. They've been a standard bearer in this area for about 40 years. SEAN MILLER, who works for the capital strategies lobbying group in Topeka is trying to get the conversation started at the Statehouse about opportunities for public investment in conservation in Kansas. He recently spoke to the Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee, and previously spoke to a House committee as sort of carrying water for the Kansans for conservation. And he's with us at the Kansas reflector to walk through the issue. Shawn, thanks for joining us.

    Thanks for having me.

    Yeah, I want to start at the very beginning of this issue. And just have you talk a little bit about what is conservation. I'm

    happy to Tim, I really appreciate the opportunity. As we talk about conservation. This is not a new concept. This comes out of the dust bowl out of the dirty 30s. We had a lot of farming and agricultural practices back then that created some issues for us. And that led to the development of the Natural Resources Conservation Service and our state Conservation Commission. Here in Kansas, they really sought to keep the topsoil on the ground, things have obviously progressed. And so today, as we talk about conservation or sustainability, however you choose to call it, we've chosen conservation in this particular bill. It is really a process of how do we maximize the productivity and the longevity of our agricultural lands, farmlands ranch lands, while also protecting our natural resources, our water resources that are so critical to both agriculture and to our municipal manufacturing and industrial sectors here in Kansas. So without clean water that flows through those farming and ranch lands, we don't have clean water reaching the municipality. So there's a statewide reach here.

    So Kansas does have some conservation activity going on. But largely, it's it's a voluntary thing that's driven by landowners, right?

    That is correct. It's voluntary in nature. We have some great partners, some agricultural, primarily agricultural interests with at state level, the Kansas Department of Agriculture, Division of conservation, but also through our Kansas water office, as you talk about some of our interconnection between soil and water quality. And it's really ranchers, farmers, local communities coming and saying, Hey, we have some issues. We don't have the expertise maybe on how to solve them. So what tools are out there and how can we deal with these issues moving forward?

    Okay, and let's also touch on the benefits of conservation. I remember reading Tim Egan's book, it was the Worst Hard Time was about the dustbowl, and, and really kind of personal tales about how people endured and survived. I mean, it's a lasting image of environmental destruction. But it also what helped bring about the idea of conservation practices that that were introduced on farms across the country, when Kansas dust ends up leaking through the White House is doorframes. You know, there's a problem. So I know keeping topsoil out of the creek is good for everyone good for crop production, good for water quality in the creek, less sediment build up in reservoirs. So So what about the benefits of conservation? And think about it, you know, for rural people and urban?

    Sure, without taking too long. You mentioned it right, you talked about the dirty 30s, the Dust Bowl, I started my presentation last week with a picture of a big dust cloud over Rolla, Kansas in 1935. And that's exactly where the national resource conflict Conservation Service and our state Conservation Commission here in Kansas came out of we had farming practices that were not sustainable. And we had to make some changes in that particular place. So we began there, as we have moved through now, close to a decade century, we have really developed some fantastic practices, as we think about well, is that good for the farmer? Is it good for the state? Is it good for the urban area? The answer, quite frankly, is all of the above. As we look at Johnson County, we look at Lawrence, we look at the city of Manhattan, the water supplies for those places flow through just 1000s and 1000s of acres of agricultural land. And so what happens upstream from those municipalities is really critical for their future water supply. If you live in Overland Park, Kansas, and you turn on the water tap in the morning, you need to know that that water started in Colorado and Nebraska flowed through North central Kansas. And so every practice on the ground before it got to your tab should be really important to you. Yeah,

    I think that would be an alarming reality for some people when they they look in those rivers and see what's left After the 1950s car frame, that might be a little alarming. Alright, so the status quo in Kansas, the State Department of Agriculture has a conservation division. And then there's community resources that could be devoted as us and then in addition to private investment, but imagine, you know, the state and particularly these municipal governments have trouble coming up with the money to invest in conversate conservation. And so what I was thinking of is, if that's true, then there must be federal money that's being left on the table by Kansas that other states are benefiting from the do make investment. And there

    absolutely is most of the practices that we have are locally voluntary, driven by landowners or by local communities. But they, as you said, don't have the property tax base don't have the population to bear the full burden of that to be quite frankly, they also don't get the full benefit of those projects because of the downstream both literally and figuratively things that we've just talked about. But there are significant amounts of dollars through USDA, often what we would call Farm Bill programs, things like the Conservation Reserve Program. Regional Conservation Partnership programs are cpp. We live in an acronym world, I try not to use too many today. And those federal dollars really drive the ability for us to make substantial progress. But they almost all come with a local and or state matching requirement. So I'll talk just a little bit about equip the Environmental Quality Incentive Programs, we had $86 million in applications last year that were made by Kansans that went unfunded because we did not have enough state and local money to match those federal dollars. So those dollars are going somewhere, they're going to end up flowing out of state, maybe they go to Missouri, maybe they go to Colorado, but they are not being put into practice here in Kansas. And we say that is a real downfall. Those are things that couldn't make real positive impacts here in Kansas. And we're simply not able to take advantage of those that's

    on an annual basis to its multiplying year after year after year after year. And if Missouri has had a lot of resources available, this kind of thing for decades, you know, Kansas is way behind in terms of that potential investment. Yeah, okay, so let's talk about what other states are doing in terms of investing in conservation. 35 states have some form of state funding. But here in the Midwest, listening about Missouri, they have a 1/10 of one cent sales tax for their soil, water and state park resources fun. And it's incredibly popular,

    very, very popular. It was put on the ballot originally in the 70s tweaked a little bit in the early 80s. It has to be reappropriated a reapproved every 10 years by the voters. And each of those times that it's been reapproved it on the ballot it's passed with more than two thirds vote. Most recently, it was around around 80%. So it is incredibly popular. We'll talk a little bit about our idea later, but about half of theirs goes to state parks and wildlife issues, about half of theirs goes to soil and water conservation. And it flows into those on the ground projects that Missourians see the benefit of. And we believe that that's proven by the fact that now five times over almost 50 years, they have reapproved that with overwhelming majorities.

    Yeah, statewide, every every county, every county, so you can't find something that people support more than that. That's every county talking

    urban blue counties. Really rural red counties, they approved south in the boot heel. That's exactly right. They've approved it in every single county in recent in the last recent elections. Right.

    And Colorado takes a different approach. They come up with a bout I'd say I think it's about 120 million a year, through the lottery, they

    do through the lottery. Yeah, every state does it a little bit differently. You mentioned 35 states have this program. And when we say have this program, what I mean is a state level dedicated funding source, probably they do it in 35 different ways. Missouri uses that existing sales tax that's on the ballot. Colorado takes some of their lottery money, I think last year was 122 million, but it's always in that $120 million mark and moves it over there. The State of Texas does something really unique as well in that they take an existing portion of their sporting goods, sales tax, so think backpacks, bicycles, fishing equipment, hunting equipment, and they dedicate that to both state parks and conservation, and that's about $330 million a year. So they can really do some some programming with $330 million of state level matching. That's before they draw down any private industry funding that matches or any of that federal money that we talked about earlier that we're leaving on the table. That's incredible.

    Why why do you figure Kansas hasn't jumped on the bandwagon here.

    There's a number of reasons right? Well, first off, I think just sort of in the Midwest, here, we're a little insulated. We like doing things at the state level and having full control of it. And the truth of the matter is, when you bring federal money into it, you do bring some federal requirements into it. So people are always a little bit hesitant to get into that. But this is where I like to point out that all of our programs are completely voluntary. There is not a program that we would sign up through this, that we would come and say, Tim, I know you're not interested in this, but we see what we think is a problem on your ground. And we want to fix that that does not happen. It simply is not there. It is local landowners local communities coming to us with a problem and saying Help us how do we fix it? What programs are out there? And if there's not a program out there, how do we begin to develop a new one. And so we've been a little bit slow to it. But I think it's really time to have some of these conversations. And we don't have to look far we can look right across to our border states for some really good opportunities. So

    you're you're associated, perhaps loosely with a Kansans for conservation. That's a real big coalition, actually, that has has been talking about this issue. And some of the organizations there's agriculture interests Kansas farm bureau, soil Alliance, Kansas rural center, there's commercial interest businesses, General Mills, evergy. There's wildlife groups like Ducks Unlimited, there's nonprofits, like Friends of the cause on there, the Conservation Fund, The Nature Conservancy. So these are groups that have an interest in advancing this issue and trying to build momentum for some sort of state investment. Do you have a sense of what kind of needs these entities have identified would be applicable in Kansas and would be benefit from an investment

    if you ask them individually. And I think there's 37 or 38 groups currently a part of that we're actually meeting with another one this afternoon about joining, they would all have a little bit of individual interest. But what we've tried to do, as we've put together this Kansans for coalition cancer conservation coalition, and as you mentioned, I am working for two of the organizations on there and I'm a personal member of several others, Pheasants Forever backcountry hunters and anglers. What we try to do is coalesce around the things that are on everybody's agenda. And those are maintaining our productive agricultural working lands. That's really important to our local property tax base and our rural communities, keeping them alive and well. Soil Health and water quality issues, that interconnection of agricultural lands and running water in our creeks and rivers, if we can keep that soil and those nutrients, right, the fertilizer on the ground is helpful to the farmer and it is helpful to the downstream communities. Those are really a couple of our quick ones we're also seeing and current days, a lot of invasive species and even native species that have escaped their traditional range. Think of that eastern red cedar and the problems that it's caused for us and fire conditions. If you look back at the Anderson Creek fire a couple of years ago in south central Kansas, a lot of that was driven by just tremendous explosion in the Cedar population down there were 200 years ago, there was no cedars if you were to look back at the landscapes or the drawings, or even the descriptions of the Lewis and Clark journals, they are landscape has changed so much. And the ability to take that back to a more native landscape helps us from a public safety measure on fire danger. It restores the grazing productivity for our cattle. And it really helps keep those agricultural lands productive.

    I think there's a I remember looking at a chunk of land that K state owns part of it then it's there's a private ownership. Next there's a fence line and to the right is open prairie. It's the last is wall, the wall cedar trees,

    the cons of research and people who've driven along i 70. Heading towards Manhattan on the north hand side, you see a really big sign that says kinds of research. They do a lot of rotational grazing, they do a lot of prescribed burning. And as you drive up 177 into Manhattan. If you look on the left side of i 77, you will see that Kanza and then as you get close to town, you will see a wall with cedars that you were just talking about and that really drops the productivity of all of those lands. Right. It's it's you can barely walk through that stuff. It's worse for agriculture. It's worse for wildlife. It's worse for fire danger and humans. You're absolutely right. All right. So

    this coalition has an interest in finding a consistent sustainable funding source for conservation. And to that end, a bill has been introduced in the legislature and it would create the state Conservation Fund and it would be funded through three mechanisms at least to start with. And the funding would be driven to accounts in the department of agriculture in the Department of Wildlife and Parks. So first, the bill would take half of the state's sales tax revenue from sporting goods purchases from the previous year in Kansas and deposit that in these specific funds Do you want to talk about that part?

    Happy to one of the things that we really talked about as we work through this Kansas concert, Kansas for conservation process. And by the way, this is a process that's been going on for years. It's become more formalized in the last four or five years. But these conversations have been happening for more than a decade. It was really critical to us that whatever funding came from this, particularly given our current ending balance at the state that that there were no new taxes, right, we were not going to go out and tax create something new to draw in money for this. So he said, What existing resources are in the state now that have some sort of nexus to this, or quite frankly, we're stealing good ideas from other states have been used successfully in other states. And the existing sales tax on sporting goods is something that's popular in a lot of places. I pointed to Texas's sporting goods sales tax earlier, that's a perfect example. But we said if people are going to be out using landscape for hunting, fishing, biking, recreation, then maybe a portion of the existing sales tax for backpacks for tents for bicycles should go back into this fund. And so that's what we looked at there we looked at to get really nerdy, right, we have these industry codes that we know how much tax we collect from each place. And we can easily carve that out. So we said, let's take a portion of that, let's put it back to these particular issues. And it's really somewhat of a user fee. If you're a backpacker, you want good trails to backpack on. If you're a hunter, you want good places to hunt, it's really pretty that simple. Second, you talked about the lottery dollars to Colorado uses and so we never been hesitant to steal of good ideas. And that's a great place for us as well, we have lottery dollars, we're not trying to take lottery dollars that are flowing into anywhere else, we'd like to take the lottery dollars that are there as the lottery continues to grow and move them into this place. And then there was a third pot of money that was created a couple of years ago that has not been used yet. That was the fund that was created to attract a professional sports franchise to Kansas, it is created about $4 million. So far, I believe, and it has not been touched. And we said hey, maybe maybe we can put that money that somebody gave us. And right.

    So these three pieces, the sales tax revenue on sporting goods purchases, that the estimate that apartment revenues suggested it might be about $18 million a year. And then the the suggestion for a lottery money for the state conservation fund would be about 32. And I think the professional for franchise attraction Fund, which I've always thought was a little weird, has about $4 million in it. So you know, it's about 50 million bucks here. And so this would be divided between the Agriculture Department there would be working lands, funding at Wildlife and Parks or it'd be something for wildlife conservation. And then another category would be a fund related to Kansas outdoors also at Wildlife and Parks. And so this money could probably be used to directly fund projects, but also be used as to help the state draw federal funding.

    Absolutely right. The three funds that you described, if you think about it, it's about half of the Department of Agriculture, we want that to go back to farm lands to ranch lands. About half of it goes to the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks. So when you see those two funds, the Wildlife Conservation Fund, think the wildlife side and the Kansas outdoors fun think the park side, so 50% of it to the Department of Agriculture, and then 25 and 25 into each of those. Katy WP funds that we have created, that could be used to draw down those federal dollars. What we haven't talked a lot about yet is the private industry dollars that are out there. I mentioned ADM a lot in my presentation Archer Daniels Midland, they have essentially a program that says we want to help nutrient reduction, we want to help create better yields in our farmers so that we have a better supply chain, right? We've seen supply chain issues all over the world since COVID. And agriculture is no different. The one that's sort of newer on the landscape out there that people know about because when I say ADM, most rank and file people on the street don't know what that is, but Burger King of all places has a fantastic Grazing Lands Conservation Program, but it requires some local buy in to help improve to remove some of those cedars or maybe some of the invasive trees or weeds that are out there and to provide a better ranching landscape. So but we also have producers we talked about a little earlier that don't like the federal strings, and they say, Hey, we have a real problem here. We're not interested in a federal program. But maybe as our state agencies, look, they identified this particular place as a real problem point and this landowner is willing to do it but maybe not enter into the federal program, then it could be utilized. We could develop state programs that could we have a few state programs that are just fully state funded to deal with those types of issues. We sort of like a private public private partnership. Yeah, absolutely. Public private partnerships is really the way that we're seeing this space grow, right so

    it's sales to Next we have sports wagering, revenue taxes, whatever you want to call it. How do you think the public is going to respond to something like this,

    the public, and then we can point to a little bit of polling when you're ready has responded to it really, really well. When we asked people, and we did a polling a few years ago, when we asked people what do you think about these? We talked to Johnson County, we talked to Sedgwick County, we talked to folks all over the state. Do you think we should have more conservation on the landscape? Do you think we should help protect the health of Kansas family farms and ranches? And do you like and see recreational opportunities and small communities so that the answer overwhelmingly was yes. So we said, okay, then how should we fund it? Foreshadowing here, the ways that we chose to fund it in our bill house, Bill 2541 are the direct results of our polling, and that is we looked at what other states have done, how would you feel about using sporting goods sales tax to go back to this? And the numbers were overwhelming? 80% of the people said, Yes, that would be an appropriate opportunity. Okay, what about lottery funds, other state use lottery funds? Yes. 7775, whatever the number was, percent said yes, lottery funds are an appropriate place to do that. And we asked them at the time about sports gaming revenue, and that was also 60 plus percent positive, I will give you a little asterix there. At the time that we asked that you may say, Well, why sports gaming lower sports game was not legal in the state of Kansas at that time. We just legalized it in the last couple of years. And the polling is about four years old. And so even knowing that we were having these discussions as a legislature, and it wasn't legal yet, still 60 plus percent of the people said if that happens, that that is a source of revenue that we should consider using for these conservation practices.

    And largely, the people that said no to use of betting on sports revenue. They were opposed to that notion. Anyone? That's right. They

    didn't want to see sports betting happen. So all right.

    So let's take what we now know, we've been educated on conservation. We've looked at the proposal, where do you where do you see all this going? You, you know work on a bill this year, or the legislature has a process where they can assign issues to interim joint House and Senate Committees. Maybe you you do an educational process now and come back next year, and maybe you get more traction and so forth. So what what would you see doing working on this going forward, we

    did get to have a hearing in the House committee this year. We had a hearing back in mid January, and before the House Agon Natural Resources Committee overall, I think had a pretty good response. We definitely had some opponents, both stakeholder groups who said we liked the concept. But there's a few things that need to be tweaked in here to some individual landowners who felt like this might force conservation measures on them that they did not want. We're working as best we can to allay those concerns. But as people look at conservation and how that word is used in the national landscape, too often in Kansas, we think about wolves in Colorado, or that's a conservation measure, and we're going to turn things loose on your property. And that at the state landscape is not what we're looking to do at all. I think I've said it no wolves, no, no, we'll guarantee

    that yeah, I can guarantee amendments

    will be funded by this project. And I say that somewhat tongue in cheek, but there's some real concerns out there about you hear landscape changes and uses and Okay, are we going to be forced to adopt something? And the answer to that simply is no, we're looking to try to find funding for people who voluntarily want to change things on their ground. And that's really important for them to be able to have that one thing we haven't talked about maybe enough so far, is if these are such good practices, why doesn't Shawn or Tim the farmer simply do it on their own. And some of them do, at least in small measures. But these are really expensive, really technical projects, usually that require a lot of engineering. And as I pointed out before, the benefits extend far beyond the fence lines of that particular farm. And so we feel like that there is some public input, some public support for this both financially and emotionally and there is public benefit. It communities far outside of the boundaries of that particular farm. So we're looking to try to find a volunteer way to help people do the right things. And that's not all that different. In our tax policy, we incent things that we think are good behaviors, right? We have 501 C three deductions if you're choosing to give to your church or your schools, we have adoption tax credits. So there are public inputs into a lot of things that we consider societal positives, and I don't really see this any different than that. And back to the base of it, if you don't want to do this on your land, you do not have to do this on your land.

    All right, I think we're gonna have to leave it there. I want to thank SEAN MILLER for helping us look at this issue of conservation. It'd be really interesting to see how it pans out going forward.

    Thank you very much