Communicating with Agencies on Water & Nutrient Management

Rick Koelsch

How well are we communicating our natural resource education opportunities to agencies and organizations addressing water, soil and nutrient issues? Two recent meetings in which I have participated suggest that Extension may be missing some important opportunities.

A recent meeting with Nebraska NRCS State Conservationist Craig Derickson and District Conservationists suggested that professional development of NRCS field staff is a critical need around several issue areas including irrigation, nutrient management, and soils and soil health. Tight NRCS travel budgets has created difficult challenges for NRCS to meet the professional development needs of their field staff.  They were hungry to learn about existing on-line courses through UNL Extension and eXtension as well as planned producer and advisor targeted workshops. The discussion suggested considerable inconsistency in their awareness of workshops that had occurred this past winter and complete lack of knowledge of our on-line course offerings.

This week Katie Pekarek and I met with the NRD managers and shared a two-page summary of nine water related extension initiatives and highlighted in our oral presentation the Brule Water Resources laboratory and its August field day, the Ag Water Management Network (and the value of the Extension/NRD partnership), and the partnership between Extension and Monsanto’s Water Education Center.  In conversations with individual NRD managers I learned that many of the initiatives we shared were new news to the NRD managers.

So how do we better communicate our Extension educational opportunities with NRCS, NRDs, NDEQ, Department of Agriculture and other organizations?  Here are a couple of thoughts for your consideration.  I would welcome additional suggestions you may have:

·         For programs that address natural resource topics in your county or region, have you connected with regional NRD(s), NRCS, or NDEQ offices as possible partners, co-sponsors, or promoters?  These organizations may be able to help us connect with potential clientele as well as offer to their own staffs these educational experiences as a professional development opportunity.

·         Have you met and established a working relationship with the Information/Education Specialist or Public Relations Director for NRDs in your region.  This is an important point of contact within NRDs with which Extension needs to have a strong relationship.

·         Do we need to have a means of collectively gathering all Extension programs on selected topic areas (e.g. ag water use, nutrient management, soil management, water quality, urban/suburban water issues) and sharing with these agencies?  This was the request that was made of UNL Extension by the State and District Conservationists for NRCS. Suggestions as to how we might implement this are welcome.  Volunteers who might serve as a point person for gathering professional development opportunities around one of the topic areas would be most welcome.

 

Please give some thought as to how we might better engage our natural resource related agencies and organization in sharing of our educational program plans and opportunities.