Editor’s note: This is the third 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
There was a time when Minnesota farmer Shawn Feikema would go into his local Natural Resources Conservation Service office and see a crew that had worked there for years. In his mind, it was a generation of folks who stuck around.
That all changed in the last 10 years. Five to seven people have taken jobs at the Luverne field office only to leave again to pursue other opportunities, Feikema said. Each fresh-faced recruit seems to arrive with limited knowledge of the region’s conservation landscape and struggles to offer answers when Feikema calls with questions.
By the time these employees build up enough knowledge to answer his questions, they’re gone, Feikema said, and the cycle repeats: He asks for guidance only to be met with unclear, or at best delayed, answers.
“It’s to the point where you’ve just got to figure out how to make it work because there’s just not enough people that are knowledgeable and are going to stick around that you can depend on,” Feikema said. “I don’t know, though, that it’s anybody’s fault. It’s just the nature of the beast that we live in.”
NRCS has long battled to keep its offices staffed in the face of the incessant turnover that plagues federal employers like itself. It’s made major gains over the past few years, bringing on hundreds of new specialists to help farmers sign up for programs that pay them to adopt new farming techniques. These employees also draw up schematics for irrigation pipelines, water retention ponds or other conservation-based land-improvement projects. The agency now employs 11,709 full-time staff, a level it hasn’t seen in over a decade, and is aiming to eventually reach 14,000.
While new hires are a welcome sight at labor-strapped local offices, knowledge limitations and an increasing agency workload can challenge their ability to respond to producers’ requests for assistance. Agency officials must now grapple with how to effectively train – and retain – this generation of younger employees while simultaneously rolling out billions of new farm conservation dollars.
“I think with any new position coming along, you’re going to have some level of growing pains,” Associate NRCS Chief Lois Aspey told Agri-Pulse. “The job isn’t anything like being in college.”
Forging relationships with farmers can be challenging for new hires
It’s not necessarily that incoming NRCS staff aren’t knowledgeable. Aspey described the quality of candidates the agency has been seeing as “exceptional.” Though it depends on the position, most new recruits arrive having completed college-level coursework in natural resources, soil science, forestry, agricultural education, engineering and other relevant subjects. Some also come with prior work experience in conservation-related fields. They’re “book smart,” he observed.
But candidates are increasingly also coming from non-farm backgrounds and as a result, face a tougher learning curve when it comes to interacting with producers. It’s a trend noticed by not only Aspey, but several other former agency leaders and conservation experts interviewed by Agri-Pulse.
Associate NRCS Chief Louis Aspey“Where we need assistance is a lot of these folks did not grow up on a farm,” Aspey said. “They don’t understand or perhaps aren’t familiar with walking the land with a landowner. They understand the science, but not the practical application.”
Of 1,715 conservation professionals — including 887 NRCS employees — surveyed by the Soil and Water Conservation Society in 2021, 84% said they had some or a lot of training in soil science. Seventy-nine percent said the same of environmental science, 74% of water resources management and agronomy, 63% of agricultural engineering and 47% of livestock management.
It’s in subjects related to understanding farmers’ attitudes and behavior that conservation professionals reported gaps. Seventy-four percent said they had little to no training in rural sociology, while 76% said the same of psychology.
“A lot of the relationship-building skills are not taught,” observed Soil and Water Conservation Society CEO Clare Lindahl, who helps to organize training programs aimed at helping conservation practitioners develop the skills they need to forge deeper relationships with farmers.
Stepping into communities with diverse agricultural practices or resource concerns can be particularly daunting for new employees. A cattle rancher might walk through the door looking for waste management advice only to be followed by a wheat grower looking to transition to organic farming.
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“It’s darn tough,” Bruce Knight, who served as NRCS chief during the George W. Bush administration, said of working in a local office. “You’ve got to be an expert in everything.”
Lindahl said a more recent SWCS survey, which was taken this year and will be released later this fall, found 77% of conservation practitioners said there was a “high or medium need for improved training on programs and practices and increased capacity for new employee onboarding and training for their local office to facilitate work with farmers and landowners to plan and implement conservation practices.” A total of 1,864 individuals were surveyed, of which 905 were NRCS employees.
Seventy-three percent of conservation professionals surveyed did indicate receiving support from their organizations to attend conferences, while 67% agreed they were given the necessary approval to pursue professional development. Sixty-one percent said they were given adequate on-the-job time for professional development.
Additionally, 58% percent agreed their organizations gave them sufficient training in the tools needed to perform their jobs well, while 55% said their organizations offered adequate guidance for pursuing their professional development.
New employees subject to training, though help with specialized knowledge can be challenging
NRCS employees are subject to a “robust” training regimen that requires a combination of online coursework and on-the-job skill development, said Tom Christensen, a former associate chief for operations at NRCS and deputy chief operating officer for business services at USDA’s Farm Production and Conservation Business Center. It might take four to five years for a newly hired soil conservationist to become proficient at the job, though “exceptional” employees may be able to do so more quickly, he added.
When Pennsylvania vegetable farmer Lindsey Shapiro first walked a field containing a mix of cover crops and weeds with her new local conservationist, Sam, she could tell he was having trouble distinguishing between them. “He definitely came across as being pretty green,” she laughed.
Lindsey ShapiroSam was honest about his inexperience, particularly with vegetable farming. When Shapiro asked questions he couldn’t answer, he’d be upfront in telling her he’d have to look into them. But he proved true to his word, persistently tracking down each piece of information she wanted. He still visits her farm every few months and calls her often to discuss paperwork or potential projects. It’s a luxury Shapiro knows other small-scale farmers may not have.
“We’re very lucky to have a conservationist working with us that has that eagerness to learn and a doggedness when it comes to finding answers, because I could imagine a different person just not understanding our operation and not caring that they didn’t understand our operation,” she said.
Kansas dairy farmer Jason Schmidt wasn’t so lucky. After he secured a contract through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program for a dairy lagoon, miscommunications with an inexperienced employee led Schmidt to believe he would be able to get more money upfront to pay contractors for portions of the project than he did.
Schmidt thought he’d be able to secure around $55,000 in advance for most of a waste transfer line and access road, except for the top 100 feet, which could not be completed until the lagoon was installed. He expected to receive just over $1,000 in advance for the top 100 feet.
Despite his expectations, Schmidt only ended up getting around $15,000 at that point, forcing him to carry $45,000 worth of debt on this portion of the project for the next year amid confusion over when he could begin accessing NRCS funds — and for what.
“She just didn’t understand what I could get paid on and what I couldn’t,” he said of the employee, adding that similar miscommunications happened “over and over” throughout the process.
Training new hires used to just be a matter of putting them in an office with a full staff of seasoned employees, who could take them around to meet local farmers or walk them through different practice standards, said former Associate NRCS Chief Kevin Norton.“You just connect everybody up and they grow into the position,” he told Agri-Pulse. “That was effective.”
But conditions in local offices have changed over the years. Amid a steady rise in funding for payment-based conservation programs, office staff are increasingly doling out more money to producers. For each funded project, they must compile page after page of paperwork: applications, program contracts, conservation plans, project schematics and environmental assessments.
It’s often up to longtime veterans, increasingly fewer in number at the agency, to help guide newer recruits, but heavy workloads can make that challenging. In a public comment submitted to the agency in 2022, Oklahoma-based NRCS resource engineer Travis Godeaux pointed out that while new hires would increase the agency’s capacity over the long term, training needs “may even hinder implementation of program work in the short term.”
“That’s a huge workload,” Christensen said of the influx of IRA funding. “So the same people that are doing that workload at the field level are also being asked to train these new employees, many of whom don’t have an agricultural background anymore. I think it’s a huge challenge to do that.”
For their first six months on the job, soil conservationists are expected to complete a “basic skills and abilities assessment” as well as a series of introductory training sessions. By month six, they should be able to identify common agricultural crops, plants and land uses, understand differences in farming operations, land management systems, and types of equipment, and make some sense of soil survey data for their area, according to a guidance sheet obtained by Agri-Pulse through a Freedom of Information Act request.
One year in, soil conservationists should know what programs NRCS offers, understand the agency’s nine-step conservation planning process and identify natural resource issues and offer planning options. They also should have prepared basic conservation plans for at least 10 landowners, according to the guidance sheet.
Kevin NortonSoil conservationists should not only be able to perform routine duties with “only limited supervision or assistance” at 18 months, but also be proficient in identifying farmers’ resource concerns and completing National Environmental Policy Act evaluations. They should also have earned “job approval authority” certifying them to work on a number of commonly used practices.
When they reach their second year at NRCS, soil conservationists are expected to largely function independently, work with limited direction from supervisors and have job approval authority for 70% of the practices that fall under their areas of responsibility, according to the guidance sheet.
Employee development expectations for range management specialists, natural resources specialists and soil conservation technicians somewhat resemble those for soil conservationists, but with slightly different requirements based on the types of work being performed.
Still, as newer employees work to grasp new competencies, the paperwork on their desks can pile up. Workload burdens may limit the amount of time they are able to devote to training.
“The pressure to get an employee to a high level of performance is as great now as it’s ever been in the agency,” Norton said. “There’s just not a lot of time for a person to assimilate, learn and grow.”
Amid these limitations, farmers may face trouble finding an employee qualified to help them with a niche, lesser-known practice. For example, when Iowa farmer Beth Hoffman first went into her local NRCS office looking for help transitioning to organic production, she said all she left with was a recommendation that she go to a farmer the next county over for advice on how to do so.
“Here’s a couple of new, beginning farmers showing up at the NRCS office, asking about organics, wanting to do something different … and there’s no guidance, no help, no advice,” said Hoffman. “Isn’t that just a waste of our taxpayer resources when we have these offices here that could be helping to educate farmers who walk in the door?”
Idaho Dairymen’s Association CEO Rick Naerebout told Agri-Pulse that there used to be one specialist in his state who worked specifically on comprehensive nutrient management plans, which can span hundreds of pages and take months to complete. But that person left earlier this year, leaving eight dairy producers questioning how soon they will be able to secure these documents, which they need to move forward with their conservation projects. The work has now been shifted to other NRCS staff.
“It very much feels like we’re potentially at a competitive disadvantage to our counterparts in other parts of the country,” Naerebout said, though he added that he wouldn’t be surprised if similar situations existed in other states.
Meredith Nunnikhoven, an Iowa farmer who grows both flowers and nut trees, said there’s little understanding in her state about either crop. “It makes me really upset, but the knowledge gap is real,” she said.
Another area often unfamiliar to local employees is animal nutrition, though the agency’s feed management standard is rarely — if ever — used, said Leah Wilkinson, vice president of public policy and education at the American Feed Industry Association.
Knowledge gaps don’t necessarily exist everywhere. Neither do new hires. Wyoming rancher Eamon O’Toole, for instance, bragged about his longtime local conservationist, who he said has helped producers in his area implement millions of dollars worth of projects and “actually gives a dang.”
Efforts aim to fill knowledge, connection gaps
In places where training challenges do exist, NRCS officials have rolled out a series of efforts to provide employees with more resources to help them learn their jobs or form deeper relationships with local farmers.
The Agriculture Conservation Experienced Services Program, for example, helps bring institutional knowledge back into local offices by allowing retirement-aged workers, often former NRCS employees, to work for the agency in ancillary roles. Larry Caldwell, one ACES enrollee, says he’ll get two to three emails per week from young employees asking for dam management advice.
Some state offices also offer new employees a chance to participate in the Conservation Agricultural Mentoring Program, which partners them with a conservation-minded producer who they spend time with over the course of 12 to 18 months. Through the Arizona version of CAMP, 10 employees make regular visits to their producer partner’s farm, where they walk the fields, discuss the region’s conservation issues and generally just get to know each other better, said Arizona Farm Bureau director of strategic communications Julie Murphree.
This is Nancy Caywood’s third year serving as a farmer mentor. The Arizona alfalfa and cotton grower has guided NRCS employees through her irrigation-dependent fields, which she leveled so they would drain more uniformly. She’s also brought them to see Coolidge Dam, the Central Arizona Project and the San Carlos canal — all structures essential to her ability to source water.
It’s a helpful relationship, she said. The NRCS employees pick up a few things from her. She learns some from them. But, more importantly, it helps them to forge stronger bonds with the community. Maybe just strong enough, she muses, that they’ll decide to stick around.
Next week: The educational gaps that challenge USDA's efforts to recruit and deploy the new generation of conservationists.
