Making a conservation plan, according to Rich Joslin, is a lot like what we do in our everyday lives.
“When we got up, we started identifying what we were going to do today – what opportunities we have – and we start determining our objective for the day,” said Joslin, a resource conservationist with the Arkansas state office of USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.” We analyze, is it going to rain today? Do I need an umbrella? Is it cold; do I need a jacket? And we start analyzing that, putting that together, and making decisions.”
Landowners, too, have to make decisions about the conservation practices they want to employ. To help them do that, Joslin guides them with the help of an NRCS document called the “National Planning Procedures Handbook.” He told Ozarks Farm & Neighbors the handbook is “my Bible of conservation planning; that’s my go-to for the conservation planning process.”
He stressed that adoption of a plan is strictly voluntary, unless a producer wants to apply for a program that offers financial assistance or cost-sharing. It’s not a prerequisite for the technical assistance NRCS offers farmers and ranchers.
“What we try to do is work with the landowners to start development of a conservation plan, and that is the basis for deciding what is needed in the future,” he said.
The NRCS has a nine step approach to conservation planning, condensed into three phases.
Step 1 is identifying the problems and opportunities that may be on someone’s farm.
Step 2 is determining the objectives. “Every landowner may have different objectives,” Joslin said. “One main objective is to make income, but there may be a landowner that knows they have an erosion problem, or if it’s a poultry producer, they know they have poultry litter to deal with. If it’s someone in the cattle business, they know they need more forage, or it may be someone who has a primary concern for wildlife.”
Step 3 is inventoried resources; the conservationist goes onto the farm or ranch to calculate soil loss and calculate the volume and quality of forages versus the number of cattle. It can also include finances available for inputs, and equipment needed compared to what’s on hand. All those data are totalled up in Step 4 to “determine where the concerns are, where the resources are that may be in jeopardy, and how we can start pulling all of that information to start Step 5, formulating alternatives,” he said.
Those could start small – a couple of items at a time that can be accomplished – or a whole system approach called a Resource Management System or RMS plan that would address all the resource concerns at once. Joslin said they normally start in the middle of that after Step 6, evaluating the alternatives with the landowner. Decision-making is Step 7; implementation is Step 8, and evaluation of what’s being accomplished is Step 9.
“You don’t have to start at Step 1 and end at Step 9,” Joslin added. “Once you start implementing things, you can reevaluate at any time and continue to build.”
These are not just subjective decisions. The calculations in Step 3 determine how close the farm is to T or tolerance, the point at which soil is replenished as fast as it’s lost to erosion. If soil loss is greater than T, the producer could reverse the trend by adopting practices like reduced tillage or planting a cover crop outside of the growing season.
“We use a tool called RUSLE-2, for revised universal soil loss equation,” Joslin explained. “And we have assessments for determining the pasture condition score; with this checklist we determine the number of species there, how much cover is there, how many cattle may be grazing there, how many days of rest the landowner is giving that forage.”
The University of Missouri Extension has a website (http://www.communitycommons.org/groups/agsite/) where farmers can produce an assessment of the physical, environmental and cultural characteristics of their land.
To create your own report, enter a location by city, county or zip code, navigate to your site’s location, outline your site, and generate and explore your report. Extension suggests the producer can use it to explore new production alternatives, or to inform decisions on land purchases, lending and real estate appraisals.
