Editor’s note: This is the second installment of a series, “Getting Grounded,” that examines the nation's conservation delivery system and the mounting challenges facing farmers in getting the help and advice they need to select, plan and implement practices that can improve water and air quality, reduce water usage, increase wildlife habitat, make farms more climate-resilient, and cut greenhouse gas emissions
Riley Blankenship sits in a Natural Resources Conservation Service field office three days a week, advising farmers on how they can reduce soil erosion and agricultural runoff and helping them draft the conservation plans they need to participate in federal programs.
But Blankenship isn’t an NRCS employee. Not formally, at least.
He works for the Cape Atlantic Conservation District, a local governmental unit tasked with preserving the soils and waters of a two-county region in southern New Jersey. An agreement his employer crafted with NRCS allows him to help fulfill the federal agency’s mission, with a few caveats.
Thousands of partnership workers like Blankenship are critical to NRCS’s strategy to meet the surge in demand for conservation planning and design work created by $19.5 billion infusion into conservation programs through the Inflation Reduction Act. While an internal hiring push has so far upped the agency's workforce to 11,709 full-time staff, rolling out the additional IRA funds will also require the use of these partner-hosted specialists.
The dual allegiances of partnership employees — who work for NRCS as well as their organizations — have sometimes raised concerns with farmers. But it can work the other way, too. Partnership employees have in some cases helped the agency make inroads with producers who hadn't sought out conservation assistance previously.
NRCS, which has been using the partnership model for at least 15 years, enters into cost-share agreements with an organization – say, Pheasants Forever, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Management or a local conservation district like Cape Atlantic. That organization provides staff who sit in NRCS offices and do much of the same work as the agency’s own employees.
“They look like an NRCS employee, they act like an NRCS employee, but they’re actually hired through this partner entity,” Associate NRCS Chief Louis Aspey told Agri-Pulse.
Louis Aspey, NRCS
Based on data provided to Agri-Pulse through a Freedom of Information Act request, NRCS currently averages approximately 5,000 partner employees per year, with employment terms varying by agreement. Generally, partnership staff serve three to five years and are funded through a 50-50 split between the partner and the agency, Aspey said.
With the IRA dollars, the agency predicted another 3,000 partnership staff would be needed to help producers implement the climate-smart activities being funded, such as planting cover crops, adopting and following nutrient management plans, or installing advanced irrigation systems, according to a 2023 slide presentation obtained by Agri-Pulse.
A number of organizations have inked such agreements. Virginia Tech. The National Wild Turkey Federation. The South Dakota Soil Health Coalition. The Iowa Department of Agriculture. The Trust for Tomorrow, a Southern environmental non-profit.
And agricultural cooperatives, ag retailers, state natural resource agencies and farmland preservation groups have all urged the agency to expand its use of these agreements to get more conservation assistance on the ground to farmers.
“We have diverse partners that are clamoring for the opportunity to do this and that’s been a significant advantage with IRA as well,” Aspey said.
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Much of Blankenship’s time is spent traversing farms across three New Jersey counties. Some of these are get-to-know-you visits, which afford him an opportunity to meet with new farmers, learn about the crops they grow and take a first-hand look at erosion, compaction or other problems they might be worried about. He also stops by the farms of producers he’s previously worked with to inspect whether they’ve successfully planted cover crops, set up hoop tunnels or integrated other types of practices into their operations and can be certified to receive conservation program payments.
When he’s in the office, he’ll design maps to guide the installation of conservation practices. Or he’ll work up contracts that lay out producers’ plans for undergoing certain conservation activities under the Environmental Quality Incentives or Conservation Stewardship programs, which the farmers can sign after going over the documents with him.
"I feel like the position is a nice mix of office and field work, which I really do appreciate," Blankenship said.
Blankenship must also balance duties to his other employer, though there are benefits to wearing both hats. If he’s visiting a farm in his capacity as a conservation district employee, Blankenship may be able to offer producers more specific, tailored advice on what to do than most NRCS employees, who must follow strict agency rules in their public interactions.
“It gives him a little gray area that he can wiggle into and do more for farmers,” said Cape Atlantic Conservation District manager Michael Kent.
Partnership staff common at conservation districts, NGOs
Staff-sharing agreements are common among the thousands of conservation districts across the U.S., which share a history with NRCS and have similar duties, just on a more local scale. Such arrangements are becoming increasingly more important for both these districts and NRCS amid tightening competition for a limited pool of qualified candidates.
The National Association of Conservation Districts, for example, has for the past seven years offered a program funding new partnership staff at conservation districts across the country to help struggling NRCS offices manage their workloads. Between 200 and 300 full-time conservation district employees have been supported each year through the program, with their locations agreed to by each state’s NRCS conservationist, conservation district association and natural resources agency.
Since its inception, the program has helped hire 1,500 full- and part-time specialists authorized to help NRCS with conservation technical assistance, conservation planning, and EQIP- and CSP-related work, said NACD CEO Jeremy Peters.
“It doesn’t fully address the hiring needs that exist at USDA, but it provides some very critical support in high-priority, high-workload areas,” Peters said.
Non-governmental entities, too, are helping to fill NRCS’s ever-shifting staffing needs. Ducks Unlimited, for example, helps fund about 50 partnership employees nationwide who focus on grazing or wetland restoration projects. The people hired for these positions generally have four-year college degrees in a conservation-related major, but must also go through an NRCS training regimen before working with producers, said Chris McLeland, the organization’s director of agricultural programs.
Partnership staff can help answer producers’ questions and ensure they have the proper paperwork on hand when walking into an NRCS field office to apply for a program, McLeland said. They’re restricted to providing only technical assistance; NRCS staff must handle all administrative and financial work associated with conservation programs.
Still, partnership employees’ conservation know-how makes them well suited to advise producers interested in carrying out conservation work but uncertain about how to start, McLeland added. Their ability to handle some of the producer-facing aspects of conservation assistance helps reduce burdens for NRCS staff, who are often overwhelmed with back-end paperwork, he said.
“The magic happens in these types of partnerships when landowners are passionate about an idea that they have, and they just want to see it to fruition, and we can be a resource to help them get there,” McLeland said. “That’s our goal. That’s what we’re trying to do every day.”
Partnership staffing agreements not a panacea for all
Not all staff-sharing arrangements have been well-liked within states, however. Nine North Dakota farm and commodity groups in 2014 demanded Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack “rescind” NRCS’s agreements with Ducks Unlimited, which at the time was locked in a feud with them over a state-level ballot measure that would have diverted money from an oil extraction tax to put into a land conservation fund.
While it was the ballot measure that eventually gave rise to the letter, tensions between farmers and waterfowl advocates had long been brewing across a landscape dotted with prairie potholes. North Dakota producers risk losing access to farm program benefits if caught destroying protected wetlands under a law known as "Swampbuster." Ducks Unlimited and other wildlife groups had always supported the law, since its purpose is to protect waterfowl habitat.
As a result, North Dakota farmers were distrustful of those groups' relationships with NRCS, which is tasked with enforcing Swampbuster.
These frictions were on clear display in the letter as the farm groups argued allowing Ducks Unlimited employees to serve as NRCS’s “boots on the ground” is “unfair to every farmer, and the entire agriculture industry, in our state.”
Dan WogslandAllowing an advocacy organization to contract with a federal agency, they wrote, was a “direct conflict of interest that has the potential for abuse.” Not only was it against producers' interests to give a political organization access to their information, but it also threatened their ability to receive “unbiased” advice, they argued.
“NGOs have an internal bias and unfortunately, those biases don’t necessarily translate to giving farmers, ranchers, agricultural people the best advice as to how to best engage in practices that are available to them,” said former North Dakota Grain Growers Association Executive Director Dan Wogsland, who helped spearhead the letter.
Vilsack, in response, said that the people who fill these partnership positions are required to adhere to the same ethics and data privacy protocols as the agency’s own staff and play no part in the agency’s enforcement of Swampbuster. Their conservation planning work is done under NRCS supervision and is subject to spot checking and quality assurance reviews, he noted in a letter.
“DU partner staff has been in place for many years with no concerns being expressed by those assisted or identified by NRCS supervisors,” Vilsack wrote. Further down, he added: “I believe that partnerships with a diverse group of voices can be beneficial to the long-term sustainability of natural resources and agriculture.”
McLeland stressed that farm bill conservation programs are voluntary and producers are ultimately the ones “in the driver's seat.” “This is not a situation where Ducks Unlimited is ever going to dictate what someone should or shouldn’t do,” he said.
Amid North Dakota farmers’ criticisms, a new idea emerged. Former NRCS State Conservationist Mary Podoll announced in 2015 what was intended to be a compromise between the clashing factions: Only the North Dakota Association of Conservation Districts, which was generally well-regarded by farmers, would be allowed to supply partnership staff within the state, though other groups could chip in funding to support these positions.
This system is still in place today. The North Dakota Association of Conservation Districts currently hosts eight “farm bill specialists” who help producers across the state with resource concerns. “I really think it has been a positive movement forward,” NDACD executive director Rhonda Kelsch said.
Earning farmers’ trust is never easy. However, that’s a challenge not only faced by partnership employees, but also NRCS itself. In some cases, leaning on a nongovernmental organization for staffing help can actually create inroads in communities wary of the federal government, said Missouri cattle producer Charlie Besher.
Charlie BesherAs one example, he pointed to the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association, which is supporting four grazing specialists in the state. Cattle producers, he said, may be more confident in conservation advice given by a group that they’re already familiar with and understands their challenges and operations.
“You can reach out to them,” Besher said. “You’ve got a direct connection with them. They’re not sitting behind a computer filing paperwork. They’ve got time to come out in the field and visit.”
Partnership staff can serve important roles in areas where NRCS staffing is limited, particularly for specialized projects. But Iowa farmer Meredith Nunnikhoven warned that the growing presence of third-party organizations has made it “messy” for producers to determine where they should go for help with certain programs.
Overreliance by NRCS on shared staff can lead to shortages when agreements expire or if these employees leave, even for temporary periods of time, Nunnikhoven added. When she needed assistance on a project to plant 15 acres of trees on her farm, she looked to a Savannah Institute specialist for help. But Nunnikhoven says the specialist went on a two-month maternity leave and her local conservationist doesn’t have any experience in agroforestry.
Now Nunnikhoven does not know whether NRCS will assign someone to help her finish her contract, if she’ll have to wait until the specialist returns, or if she will need to drop the project altogether.
“Here I am on hold again,” Nunnikhoven said. “The money’s sitting out there somewhere, billions and billions of dollars set aside to be put into agroforestry and I can’t get my hands on it.”
Retirees helping to fill gaps in NRCS staffing
NRCS isn’t only looking to outside organizations to meet its staffing needs, but also late-career and retirement-aged workers. Through the Agriculture Conservation Experienced Services program, the agency brings workers aged 55 years or older into its offices to carry out tasks its employees are too busy to do.
The ACES program first began as a 2005 agency pilot. It was formally codified through the 2008 farm bill, in which Congress gave NRCS the authority to draw help from retirement-aged workers so long as they don’t displace the agency’s full-time workforce.
ACES employees are similar to partnership staff in the sense that they are not directly employed by NRCS, but by a nonprofit called National Experienced Workforce (NEW) Solutions. They serve short terms, often just a year, and “can work as much or as little as they want,” said Aspey, the associate NRCS chief.
Often, ACES enrollees are retired NRCS staff looking to continue using their conservation skills in a limited, part-time capacity. Aspey has even watched some leave their full-time agency jobs on a Friday only to walk back into the office the following Monday ready to work through the program. “I’ve seen this so many times,” he said with a chuckle.
Cito Vanegas There are currently 525 ACEs enrollees working in NRCS offices across 45 states, said NEW Solutions CEO Cito Vanegas. They work around 20 hours per week in a “support-type” role, since statute requires their work to complement, not take the place of, tasks done by NRCS employees.
Engineer Larry Caldwell retired in 2009 from his 41-year career at the NRCS only to spend the 10 years that followed working part-time for the Oklahoma Conservation Committee. Then, in 2019, he “really did try to retire,” but found himself coming back to work for NRCS as an ACES employee two years later. “I haven’t handled retirement well,” he laughed.
Parts of his weeks are now devoted to digitizing schematics for 12,000 U.S. dams and putting them into a database that allows dam safety officials to better monitor their condition. He also helps craft emergency action plans for older, high-hazard dams, which evaluate the potential loss-of-life risks that could arise should one fail.
It’s important work. But it’s also work that doesn’t always get prioritized at labor-strapped NRCS offices, especially when “you’re up to your neck in getting EQIP contracts out and getting funds obligated,” Caldwell said. Dams can and do fail. And as thousands across the country continue to age, he’s glad he’s around to help prepare communities ahead of time.
“We’ve had a few dams fail and cause a mess, but we haven’t had any dams fail that caused any flood or appreciable property damage,” Caldwell said. “But I keep telling people that we can’t continue to be that lucky.”
Steve Kelley, who served 28 years as a district conservationist in Clinton County, Oklahoma, formally retired from his NRCS job in 2018 with the goal of farming full time. Looking for a way to make a little extra income on the side, he enrolled in the ACES program and now spends his Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays discussing conservation program offerings with producers, mapping the county’s soils or helping walk newer employees through tasks they’re unfamiliar with.
Occasionally, Kelley will spend a breezy, 70-degree day at the office wondering why he isn’t out fishing instead. But he’s become good friends with his coworkers, likes visiting with producers in the community and is comfortable with the work. And while the pay isn’t much, “it’s better than driving a tractor."
“I like doing it,” he said of the job. “It’s a little extra income and a chance to help others.”
Next week: With hundreds of new NRCS employees coming onboard, agency officials must now grapple with how to effectively train up and keep on a generation of younger workers while simultaneously rolling out billions of new farm conservation dollars.
