TY - JOUR T1 - Conservation targeting: Success or failure? JF - Journal of Soil and Water Conservation SP - 70 LP - 76 VL - 41 IS - 2 AU - James Nielson Y1 - 1986/03/01 UR - http://www.jswconline.org/content/41/2/70.abstract N2 - IN 1981 the U.S. Department of Agriculture launched a national program to target conservation efforts in critical resource areas. This targeting approach grew out of the realization that many natural resource problems are concentrated in limited geographic areas. USDA's previous conservation efforts were spread widely and uniformly throughout the nation's agricultural areas. USDA officials envisioned targeting as a way to increase the effectiveness of federal expenditures for conservation. Targeting emerged as a central thrust in the national conservation plan, an outgrowth of the Soil and Water Resources Conservation Act of 1977. Support for targeting was not universal in 1981, nor is it now. But USDA launched targeting with broad support from the executive and legislative branches of the federal government and from a large majority of the people who responded to the proposal in the RCA planning process. Under targeting, USDA allocates additional Soil Conservation Service technical assistance and Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service cost-sharing funds to multicounty areas with critical resource problems. With this increased technical assistance and cost-sharing, USDA hopes to encourage those farmers with the most serious soil erosion problems to apply conservation practices. The national conservation plan called for … ER -