Extension and NRCS have different mandates.  Extension deals mostly with management and how to help make farms more productive and profitable.  NRCS deals mostly with resource concerns, and uses cost-share for infrastructure projects to help correct them.  However, both extension and NRCS have similar general visions and goals, they just have different mechanisms for getting there.

Extension and NRCS have not historically had close working relationships.  We had heard through agents that they generally characterized their relationships as good, but that they really didn’t do much together at the farm level.  

One particular problem is that NRCS will develop infrastructure but not have time to help with management in terms of how to effectively use this infrastructure.  If extension and NRCS could get involved in projects together, this could cease to be an issue.

Profitable Pastures was a project focused on cattle production with the objective of improving collaboration between extension agents and NRCS personnel, and to foster a real working relationship.  It was made possible through a $79K SARE Professional Development Grant, and spanned both Kentucky and Tennessee.  The topic focus was beef cattle production.

There were two main phases of the project.  The first phase were the Regional Meetings.  These were full-day long sessions that had both a classroom and on-farm components that covered important aspects of beef cattle production that were relevant to both the extension and NRCS mandates: Overstocking, grazing/forage management, reducing hay feeding, winter feeding techniques, and soil ecology.  There was also a special session on extension-NRCS dynamics and relationship.  This got the two groups talking to each other and raised issues that could cause potential conflicts between the two groups.  The on-farm demonstrations brought the classroom sessions to the real-world through application.  

In August 2018 Kentucky three regional meetings were held in Kentucky in Clark, Hardin, and Christian Counties, and were led by Clay Stamm, Matt Adams, and Darrell Simpson/Matt Futrell respectively.  These ANR agents helped organize the meetings and worked with NRCS to set up the field demonstration portion of the workshops.  Greg Halich, Ray Smith, Chris Teutsch, Jeff Lehmkuhler were the instructors for Extension and Adam Jones and Greg Brann were the instructors for NRCS.  In October 2018, four regional meetings were held in Tennessee.  75 NRCS personnel attended these meetings (28 KY, 47 TN), and 116 attended from Extension (44 KY, 72 TN).

The second phase of the project were the joint Demonstration Farms.  The objective here was to use actual farms that were looking for help with extension and NRCS as a testing ground for these two groups.  Instead of meeting separately with the landowners, NRCS and extension met together to work through the goals of the farmer, determine out management and infrastructure improvements that would meet these goals, and work together to achieve them.  Three Demonstration Farms were formed in Kentucky where each farm included multiple extension agents and NRCS personnel from the area.   These Demonstration Farms started in early spring 2019 and are currently ongoing. The three locations with associated county input are as follows:

   Madison County with participation from Estill, Clark, and Garrard Counties

   Marion County with participation from Larue and Anderson Counties

   Campbell County: with participation from Boone and Kenton Counties.

These three Demonstration Farms were led by Brandon Sears, Matt Norfleet (NRCS), and Don Sorrell respectively, with participation from Eric Baker, Clay Stamm, Jay Hettmansperger, Daniel Carpenter, Christan Miracle, Tommy Yankey, Michelle Simon and Dan Allen.

Each of these three groups have taken a slightly different approach as to what the group has focused on.  The process was meant to be flexible in order to accommodate different groups and different geographic areas.  A main intent of these Demonstration Farms is to see how we can foster better group dynamics between NRCS and Extension: to be a sort of proving ground for future direction for these two groups.  As such, we are still learning what works and how to proceed.  But a main take-away message at this point is just getting the two groups together working on the same project at the same time can do wonders for collaboration and working in the same direction for the landowner.  We are at the start of what will hopefully be a long-term improvement in collaboration with NRCS.