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The Soil Conservation Service (SCS), predecessor to the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), was created on April
27, 1935, by Public Law 46 (Seventy-fourth Congress), which declared that soil erosion was a menace to the national welfare
and authorized broad powers to the new agency to attack the problem. (As part of the Department of Agriculture Reorganization
Act of 1994, the name was changed to the Natural Resources Conservation Service on 20 October 1994.) The enactment testified
to a continuing federal commitment to soil conservation and was the culmination of the efforts of the agency's first chief,
Hugh Hammond Bennett. A North Carolina native, Bennett joined the Bureau of Soils in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)
in 1903, shortly after graduating from the University of North Carolina. About four years earlier, the bureau had begun making
soil surveys to assist agricultural development. Usually mapped on a county basis, the maps and descriptions of the properties
of the soil would help make farmers aware of the potentials and limitations of particular soils.
HERITAGE AND
PHILOSOPHY
Work on farmlands growing commodities is only one part of the agency's work. Through the sixty years
of experience, the agency developed numerous scientifically-based tools and standards in agronomy, forestry, engineering,
economics, wildlife biology and other disciplines that local NRCS field office conservationists use in helping landowners
plan and install conservation practices.
Also, historical experience created a philosophy that the service still
follows: Assess the resources on the land, the conservation problems and opportunities. Draw on various sciences and disciplines
and integrate all their contributions into a plan for the whole property. Work closely with land users so that the plans for
conservation mesh with their objectives. Through implementing conservation on individual projects, contribute to the overall
quality of life in the watershed or region.
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