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Federal Register / Vol. 86, No. 10 / Friday, January 15, 2021 / Rules and Regulations
Cost Benefit Analysis RCPP is a voluntary collaborative program that provides financial and technical assistance to partner organizations to help agricultural producers plan and implement conservation activities to address natural resource concerns on private or Tribal agricultural, nonindustrial private forest and certain associated lands. RCPP was first authorized by Congress in the 2014 Farm Bill. To date, 375 projects have been selected across the U.S. and Puerto Rico leveraging $1
billion in NRCS technical and financial assistance with approximately $1.3
billion in partner contributions.
Under the 2014 Farm Bill, conservation activities were undertaken through partnership agreements between NRCS and a lead partner and contracts or agreements with eligible landowners, entities, and individuals under one or more covered programs EQIP, CSP, ACEP, HFRP, and Pub. L.
83566. EQIP, CSP, and ACEP each contributed seven percent of their annual funding toward RCPP
partnership projects. In addition, the 2014 Farm Bill provided $100 million annually in direct RCPP mandatory funding.
The 2018 Farm Bill reauthorized RCPP with significant changes to how RCPP is funded. Specifically, the contributions from covered programs are eliminated as a funding source and covered program contracts are replaced with RCPP contracts and programmatic partnership agreements.
The 2018 Farm Bill repeals the seven percent reserved resources from the covered programs, provides $300
million in annual mandatory CCC
funding, and establishes RCPP
standalone contracts. Federal transfers under the 2014 Farm Bill totaled slightly more than $1 billion for FY2014
through 2018, or $200 million on an annual basis. The $300 million in mandatory annual funding increases RCPP funding by approximately $100
million annually, taking into account the past contribution of the covered programs for fiscal years 2014 through 2018.
The 2018 Farm Bill also changed the funding pool structure by streamlining from three pools to two pools and providing 50 percent of funds to a CCA pool and 50 percent of funds to a state and multi-state pool. It also allows project renewals and creates new programmatic authorities and expectations for the administration of agreements with partners. In addition, application and renewal processes are simplified to encourage participation by
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both producers and project partners. To ensure that only the most successful of projects qualify for renewal on a noncompetitive basis, NRCS has identified in this rule that a partner has met or exceeded the objectives of the original project in order to be considered for renewal.
Estimates of costs, benefits, and transfers of RCPP on an annual basis are reported in Table 1. Given a 3 percent discount rate, the projected annualized real cost to producers of accessing RCPP
is $204,258 and the projected annualized real transfers are $289
million. Conservation benefits from RCPP are difficult to quantify at a national scale but have been described by studies at an individual project or watershed or local scale as it relates the different types of conservation practices implemented.

TABLE 1RCPP ANNUAL ESTIMATED
COSTS, BENEFITS AND TRANSFERS a Category
Annual estimate
Costs b
Benefits
Transfers

$204,258.
Qualitative.
$289,000,000.

a All estimates are discounted at 3 percent to 2019 $ except for the participant access cost, which is nominal.
b Imputed cost of applicant time to gain access to RCPP.

Most of this rules impact consists of transfer payments from the Federal Government to producers or to partners for the benefit of producers. The conservation benefits of RCPP financial and technical assistance funding delivered to date have been directly comparable to that provided by covered programs EQIP, CSP, ACEP, etc., and similar benefits are expected from RCPP
funding under the 2018 Farm Bill.
Additionally, conservation benefits of partner contributions and collaboration in RCPP projects are expected to magnify the benefits of RCPP funding over each projects life, offsetting initial delays in obligation and implementation. NRCS will discuss methods to quantify the incremental benefits obtained from RCPP with lead partners, but due to the 5-year life of a typical RCPP project, only limited data are available at this time to support this conclusion. Therefore, NRCS and partners may use various mechanisms such as modeling to predict long-term outcomes. Despite these data limitations, RCPP is expected to positively affect natural resource concernsthrough both the $300
million in funding provided annually by Congress and by the leverage of partner contributions.

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Clarity of the Regulation Executive Order 12866, as supplemented by Executive Order 13563, requires each agency to write all rules in plain language. In addition to the substantive comments NRCS
received on the interim rule, NRCS
invited public comments on how to make the rule easier to understand.
NRCS has incorporated these recommendations for improvement where appropriate. NRCS responses to public comment are described in more detail above.
Regulatory Flexibility Act The Regulatory Flexibility Act 5
U.S.C. 601612, as amended by the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 SBREFA, generally requires an agency to prepare a regulatory analysis of any rule whenever an agency is required by APA
or any other law to publish a proposed rule, unless the agency certifies that the rule will not have a significant economic impact on a substantial number of small entities. This rule is not subject to the Regulatory Flexibility Act because no law requires that a proposed rule be published for this rulemaking initiative.
Environmental Review The environmental impacts of this rule have been considered in a manner consistent with the provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act NEPA, 42 U.S.C. 43214347, the regulations of the Council on Environmental Quality 40 CFR parts 15001508, and the NRCS regulations for compliance with NEPA 7 CFR part 650. The 2018 Farm Bill requires minor changes to NRCS conservation programs, and there are no changes to the basic structure of the programs. The analysis has determined that there will not be a significant impact to the human environment and as a result, an environmental impact statement EIS is not required to be prepared 40
CFR1501.5 and 1501.6. While OMB has designated this rule as economically significant under Executive Order 12866, . . . economic or social effects are not intended by themselves to require preparation of an environmental impact statement 40 CFR 1502.16b, when not interrelated to natural or physical environmental effects. The Environmental Assessment EA and Finding of No Significant Impact FONSI were available for review and comment for 30 days from the date of publication of this interim rule in the Federal Register. NRCS considered this input and determined that there was not
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