New Mexico NRCS History

NRCS Marks 70 Years of Service: 1935-2005 The Soil Conservation Service (SCS), predecessor to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), was created on April 27, 1935, by Public Law 46 which declared that soil erosion was a menace to the national welfare and authorized broad powers to the new agency to attack the problem.  The enactment was the culmination of the efforts of the agency’s first chief, Hugh Hammond Bennett.

Hugh Hammond Bennett

Bennett came to believe, as a result of his soil survey work with the Bureau of Soil in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, that soil erosion was taking such a toll on farmland that, if left unchecked, it would impair the nation’s ability to produce food.  He argued persuasively that soil conservation was based on a variety of management and vegetative measures such as contouring, strip cropping, crop rotations, pasture improvement and management, reforesting of land not suited to cropland, wildlife enhancement, and use of land according to its potential.

Early Years in New Mexico

After enactment of Public Law 46, the Southwest Regional Office of the Soil Conservation Service was opened in Albuquerque on July 30, 1935.  The region included Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah.  Its work on private land, prior to the establishment of soil conservation districts, was done through demonstration projects.  The Soil Conservation Districts Act of 1937 embodied President Woodrow Wilson’s ideas of a standard state soil conservation district law, giving state legislatures a standard law which they could enact creating these new units of local government that could bring a local voice to conservation of private land.

On November 2, 1953, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson announced his reorganization of USDA placing SCS state conservationists under the supervision of the SCS administrator, creating a state structure, and moving away from the regional organization.

Cost Sharing Introduced

The novel feature of the Great Plains Conservation Program from 1956 - 1981 was its provision of the government’s cost sharing of conservation measures with farmers and ranchers under contract.  It was another step in local, state, and federal efforts to deal with drought, dust storms, and the resulting agricultural instability on the Great Plains.

The Food Security Act of 1985, more commonly called the 1985 Farm Bill, linked farmers’ eligibility for USDA program to conservation performance.  The 1996 and 2002 Farm Bills that provide financial assistance for conservation improvements have followed.  This financial assistance is in addition to technical assistance which has been the hallmark of SCS/NRCS since its inception.

NRCS Emerges

As part of the Department of Agriculture Reorganization Act of 1994, the name of the agency was changed to the Natural Resources Conservation Service to reflect its broader mission of concern for all natural resources, not just soil.