Grant intended to help ranchers and farmers
In the past month, Utah State University Extension has benefited financially in two big ways. One of these financial benefits can be attributed to a new faculty member who previously taught at the University of Nevada-Reno (UNR).
Dillon Feuz, USU professor of applied economics, said one of the school’s chief marketing agencies received a grant of more than $300,000, while raking in even more money initially intended for UNR, due to a transfer that took a professor Reno to Logan.
Last semester, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) awarded a $315,535 grant to Risk Management Education (RME) Programs for Utah Producers. The grant will provide risk management education for beginning and established agricultural producers as well as Native American producers throughout Utah.
The grant was awarded to USU for the fourth consecutive year. Feuz said its purpose is to improve risk management among farmers and ranchers.
In the meantime, a collapse of the UNR college of agriculture, a result of the school’s finanical crisis and resulting faculty shake-up, led to an additional $247,461 attributed to Logan’s university.
Kynda Curtis was part of the shake-up. As Curtis was convincing USDA to provide the sizable grant to UNR, she also applied for her current USU position, extension specialist and associate professor for the department of applied economics. She said she applied because her UNR job was in jeopardy due to UNR’s need to cut back faculty because they were closing several of their colleges, including two-fifths of the college of agriculture.. UNR’s student newspaper said a state financial crisis resulted in $11 million taken from UNR for the 2009-10 school year, a projected 75-person faculty cutback by fall of this year.
“Had (Nevada’s financial crisis) not been occurring, they might have been more upset (with USU receiving UNR’s grant),” said Curtis, who also said in the past two school years, the school has only received approximately 30 percent of what the state usually provides on an annual basis.
“Basically, (UNR) is restructuring the college of agriculture at this point,” Curtis said.
Ruby Ward, a USU associate professor for applied economics and extension specialist, said that Curtis did her best to leave Nevada in good hands, whether or not she was going to be leaving.
“Kynda didn’t want to just leave Nevada in the air,” Ward said. “Knowing she was leaving, she applied for Utah State, but did it with programming in Nevada in mind.”
Ward also recognized that there was no one waiting in the wings to take Curtis’ position and apply for the nearly quarter-million dollar grant.
“Even if (UNR) wasn’t getting rid of her position, she was the only one with that position in working with (UNR) extension who was seeking the grant,” she said. “Someone else could’ve applied for it, but they didn’t have someone like Kynda. So someone else could’ve stepped in and tried, but there’s a learning curve.”
The purpose of both grants are to financially support programming workshops throughout the state that instruct farmers and ranchers in their businesses, including insurance management.
“There are so many benefits that we can do through programming,” said Sara Drollette, USU Extension educator. “There are a lot of workshops and presentations that USU Extension provides. The focus of the grant is to help ag producers.”
Although she now works in Logan, neither Curtis nor Feuz said they wouldn’t rule out seeking grants and holding workshops out-of-state.
“For us, most of the time we should be in Utah,” Feuz said. “But most of us are on nine-month contracts, so we can justify spending time in other states. The way we’re working it, it doesn’t create extra work because we’re creating programs in Utah, but are often presenting them in Nevada anyway. The presentation is just a smaller portion (of the marketing niche).”
The programming visits educate producers on fundamental budgeting and accounting work, tax issues, education on crop damage, livestock insurance and the producers’ position in the stock market. They also provide training on better ways to market commodities and products in the agriculture industry. The workshops reach multiple producers from across the state.
Curtis often provided programs for Native Americans while employed by UNR due to Nevada’s numerous reservations. She said she will continue to do so at Utah State. She said there are unique aspects of holding workshops with Native Americans, while the particular niche also relates to traditional programming.
“Sometimes Native Americans have different levels of education,” she said. “So, a lot of times we have to cover more basics. But the agricultural products they use are similar.”
The workshops are aimed to reach audiences from high school students who may be part of Future Farmers of America to the experienced farmers and ranchers who have been in the industry for a half-century.
– rhett.wilkinson@aggiemail.usu.edu