With the end of the year just around the corner, we wanted to reflect on all that we have to be grateful for in 2015. There’s a lot to celebrate! From promoting conservation to empowering beginning farmers, here is the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition’s list of the Top 15 Highlights of 2015: Conservation and Environment 1. 2015 opened with the first ever Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP) contract renewals. CSP, a program that NSAC has championed, is the only farm bill conservation program to support performance-based advanced conservation systems for working farms. 70 percent of expiring acres were renewed by producers ensuring that more than 17 million acres will continue to be supported through new and ongoing conservation activities. The year also ended on a high note for CSP: the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) postponed the CSP overhaul until 2017, buying more time for stakeholder input and outreach around the changes, and just this week Congress approved an omnibus budget bill that eliminated House-proposed cuts to CSP funding in 2016. 2. National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC) member organizations and supporters submitted hundreds of comments to USDA recommending ways to improve the interim rules to implement 2014 Farm Bill changes to conservation programs, […]