Natural Resources Conservation Service Provides Free, Voluntary Assistance to Agricultural Producers

July 21, 2009
by NRCS State Conservationist Bruce Petersen

In January, I became the state conservationist for the Natural Resources Conservation Service in Nevada. These first few months have flown by. I’ve had a chance to meet many of you as I’ve worked my way around the state, and I look forward to meeting many more of you.

One of the things I’m hearing consistently is that you don’t understand NRCS and Farm Bill programs. I’d like to help change that by writing monthly messages to help explain our agency, Farm Bill programs, our partnerships, and many more topics that I hope will give you a better understanding of what we do.

Since this is my first message, I’d like to start off by giving you a general overview of our agency. The NRCS is an agency of the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Our primary responsibility is helping private landowners protect and conserve natural resources.

Here in Nevada, we have 9 field offices located throughout the state in addition to our State Office that is located in Reno. We have about 70 full time employees and, during this summer, about 12 student employees. I have a strong commitment to helping students apply their studies in the real world. We also have 3 coordinators who assist local resource and conservation development councils. I will cover their accomplishments in a future article.

Each of our field offices is run by a district conservationist. Some offices have additional staff, such as range conservationists, soil scientists, and engineering technicians, who help agricultural producers solve natural resource problems. Conservation technical assistance is the mainframe of our agency. We work with landowners to identify resource issues and solve them on a voluntary basis. For example, if your irrigation system needs improvement, you can call your NRCS field office and invite the district conservationist out to your property. He or she will evaluate your system and make suggestions on how it can be improved. They will also look at your crop productivity, potential for erosion, and other factors that may be affecting your bottom line and causing resource problems, and help identify ways to correct them. This assistance is free and totally voluntary.

However, if problems are identified and you’d like financial assistance to help cover the costs of installing the conservation practice, that’s where Farm Bill programs come in. I’ll cover that in the next edition.

Please feel free to contact your local NRCS office at any time with a request for assistance, resource concern or question. We can be found on the Web at www.nv.nrcs.usda.gov, or in the phone book under US Government. I can be reached at (775) 857-8500. Call me if you want to talk.