Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns returned to Lincoln Tuesday to praise conservation accomplishments over the past decade.

Having done that, he left the podium and a follow-up press conference without predicting action by Congress on drought relief before the November election.

“We’re going to have to see what the combines tell us as we head into the fall harvest,” Johanns told reporters attending a national conservation summit.

U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, supporter of a $4 billion Senate proposal, and Gov. Dave Heineman joined Johanns at an event attended by more than 200 conservation officials and advocates at The Cornhusker Marriott.

Much of the agenda attention for the gathering that continues through Thursday was on Nebraska becoming the first state last year to partner with the federal government in paying farmers to stop irrigating.

Johanns was quick to pick up on the conservation theme. He said the 36 million acres enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) and the Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP) on 425,000 farms offer a way “to leave American farm and ranch land in better shape than we found it.”

By moving that land out of crop production and into long-term vegetative cover, Johanns said, the United States is saving 450 million tons of topsoil every year from erosion.

He also cited statistics for 1997-2003 that show the country is now gaining more wetlands than it is losing. And he handed out the results of a study that concluded there is a 22 percent gain in the population of ring-necked pheasants for every 4 percent gain in CRP acres in areas of pheasant habitat.

He described Nebraska’s efforts to withdraw 100,000 acres from irrigation in 22 counties along the Platte, North Platte and Republican rivers as “among the new wave of CREP agreements that target reduced water consumption.”

Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas are now embarked on the same water-saving mission with federal officials — and with an emphasis on cooperation, rather than conflict.

“I do not share the belief in management by mandate as the best option.”

On other subjects covered at the press conference, Johanns sounded pleased with the way Japanese consumers are responding to the re-opening of Japanese ports to U.S. beef.

That’s despite polls that suggest continuing consumer caution toward the possibility of buying a product contaminated with mad-cow disease.

“The poll I pay attention to is beef going off the shelf,” he said, “and it’s going off the shelf very quickly.”

He didn’t sound quite as decisive when asked about drought relief or about the chance of Congress crafting a drought response that would be limited to farmers who had suffered the most severe crop and grazing damage.

“Parts of the corn belt have a heck of a crop,” he said. “It could be the third largest crop in history.”

He noted that 70 percent of Nebraska corn thrived under irrigation even as unirrigated fields wilted. “Therein lies the challenge. How do we do this in a way that really meets the needs of people?”

Hagel predicted “rather intense conversations” about drought relief in the Senate before it takes an election break Sept. 28. “It will be high on the agenda and it should be.”

Earlier Tuesday, a deputy administrator for farm programs in the department Johanns heads also highlighted efforts to protect “real tangible resources” with CREP.

John Johnson said USDA has gotten involved in 37 such projects in 29 states since 1997. He called the Nebraska river project “new territory” and an example of a cooperative approach to protecting a water resource that is “increasingly valuable and controversial.”

Reach Art Hovey at 523-4949 or atahovey@alltel.net.