Hardin County SCD

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ARCF applications are now being accepted year round with projects being funded as funds become available.

Now Accepting Applications

The Hardin County Soil Conservation District (SCD) and Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) Savannah Field Office are working in partnership to help landowners in Hardin County conserve their soil, water, and other natural resources.

With cost-share funding provided by the Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), and other associated partners, Hardin County SCD and NRCS have obligated $1,254,550 in funding that will help to stimulate our County’s economy and conserve our resources here in Hardin County.

Conservation Planning Helps Save Our Soil

By Irene Moore -4/2/20

Planning is an essential component of reaching your goals. Planning is nothing but thinking before the action.

Lessons from the past

The process of planning reminds me of my experience growing up with my nine siblings. My parents raised six girls and four boys in a small house with one bathroom, and we all survived!

My father was a planner, and he was all about dividing up the workload of chores on our small farm operation by identifying, prioritizing, assigning and setting timelines.

He developed a hand-drawn spreadsheet that was action-oriented and time-bound — years before Excel was designed. I did not realize until years later, but those childhood experiences have had an impact on how I deal with projects and situations today working for a soil and water conservation district.

Endurance of conservation planning

Conservation planning has been the root of the efforts to save our nation’s precious soil since the Dust Bowl era some 80 years ago.

Now, more than ever before, American farmers and ranchers face a seemingly impossible task — to feed a rapidly growing global population. This challenge is being met with fewer farmable acres, less freshwater and more pronounced climate change.

In an effort to assist the landowners and operators to meet these challenges, the National Conservation Planning Partnership (NCPP) was formed to emphasize the critical role that conservation planning plays in advancing voluntary conservation efforts on private lands.

NCPP is made up of the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS); the National Association of Conservation Districts (NACD); the National Conservation District Employees Association (NCDEA); the National Association of State Conservation Agencies (NASCA); and the National Association of Resource Conservation and Development Councils (NARC&DC).

NCPP is working together to do the following:

Reinvigorate conservation planning,
Improve the partnership’s capacity to deliver one-on-one conservation planning assistance,
Ensure the delivery of technically sound, science-based assistance, and
Build a workforce of strong conservation planners.

Listening to customers

The NCPP and teams have conducted listening sessions across the United States, hearing from farmers, ranchers, field staff and public and private partners. Nationally, surveys have been distributed, and the returns have been analyzed.

Additional technical training for field staff; improved communications and technical, science-based tools, techniques and processes; and identifying private sector partners who can provide precision agriculture and economic data to producers are but a few of the goals of NCPP.

For more detailed and comprehensive information for farmers, conservation field staff and the general public about the advancement in conservation planning a website has been created. Go to NCPP.info.

Although it has been a long time since I have checked off my action item responsibilities on my father’s hand-sketched spreadsheet, those learned habits have remained with me.

I will end with a message from Matt Tracy, a farmer in Johnston, Rhode Island: “With good conservation planning and the right set of conservation measures in place on our farm, there are direct economic benefits. We’ve seen overall increases in yield and crop health accompanied by overall decreases in expensive inputs like fertilizers and water. Improved pollinator habitat increased honey production. High tunnels have help us to extend our growing season with minimal resource inputs. All of this means the farm is not only more profitable, but it means we can spend this extra income to employ more local people and utilize local services to keep the farm running.”

Nine Step Conservation Planning Process

The Natural Resources Conservation Service uses a nine step planning process whenever it begins a project. The purpose of the steps is to develop and implement plans that protect, conserve, and enhance natural resources within a social and economic perspective.

1 - Identify Problems and Opportunities

Everyone needs a reason to plan. Planning can start with a problem, an opportunity, shared concerns, or a perceived threat. Initial opportunities and problems are first identified based on readily available information provided by the client(s). There may be information available through the County Conservation Districts or through a larger-scale conservation plan. The Little River Salt Marsh Restoration Project is an excellent example of how this process worked on an area-wide scale, with multiple stakeholders and objectives.

Step 1 - Problem Identification

2 - Determine Objectives

During this step, the stakeholders identify their objectives. A conservationist guides the process so that it includes both the stakeholder needs and values and the resource uses and on-site and off-site ecological protection. Objectives may need to be revised and modified as new information is learned later in the inventory and analysis stages. Objectives may not be finalized until Step 4 of the planning process.

3 - Inventory Resources

In this step, appropriate natural resource, economic and social information for the planning area is collected. The information will be used to further define the problems and opportunities. It will also be used throughout the entire process to define alternatives and to evaluate the plan. It is important that as much information as possible can be collected so that the plan will fit both the needs of the landowner and the natural resources. Inventories can range from a farmstead or small watershed all the way up to a complete inventory of resources for a state or the entire nation, such as with the NRCS National Resources Inventory or the Soil Survey Program.

Step 3 - Inventory Resources

4 - Analyze Resource Data

Study the resource data and clearly define existing conditions for all of the natural resources, including limitations and potential for the desired use. This step is crucial to developing plans that will work for a landowner and their land. It also provides a clear understanding of the baseline conditions will help to judge how effective a project is after it has been put into place.

5 - Formulate Alternatives

The purpose of this step is to achieve the goals for the land, by solving all identified problems, taking advantage of opportunities, and meeting the social, economic, and environmental needs of the planning project. With NRCS conservation planning, we often can help landowners formulate alternatives based on cost-sharing programs that help offset the financial expense of implementing conservation practices.

Step 5 - Formulate Alternatives

6 - Evaluate Alternatives

Evaluate the alternatives to determine their effectiveness in addressing the clients problems, opportunities and objectives. Attention must be given to those ecological values protected by law or executive order.

7 - Make Decisions

At this point the landowner chooses which project or plan will work best for their situation. The planner prepares the documentation. In the case of an areawide plan, public review and comment are obtained before a decision is reached.

Step 7 - Make Decisions

8 - Implement the Plan

Technical assistance is provided to help with the installation of adequate and properly-designed conservation practices. At this point in NRCS conservation planning, our conservation engineers step in and make designs based on our technical standards. Also, assistance is given in obtaining permits, land rights, surveys, final designs, and inspections for structural practices.

9 - Evaluate the Plan

Conservation planning is an ongoing process, that continues long after the implementation of a conservation practice. By evaluating the effectiveness of a conservation plan or a practice within a plan, stakeholders can decide whether to continue with other aspects of an overall areawide plan.

How Farmers are Saving the Soil in Tennessee

Tennessee's farmers care for the landscape with no-till farming

By Brittany Stovall

Tennessee farmers have been transforming the landscape for decades with no-till farming methods, helping to restore the state’s soils. In fact, the University of Tennessee’s Research and Education Center at Milan has been a leader in this effort since 1981. The research conducted by UT AgResearch at Milan is known worldwide.

While no-till farming is the norm in Tennessee today, it hasn’t always been the case. “About four decades ago, West Tennessee was ranked as one of the top areas in the U.S. for the highest soil erosion rate,” says Don Tyler, retired professor for the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture. The average soil erosion rate for Tennessee at that time was 40 tons of soil per acre per year.

Unlike tillage, commonly known as plowing, no-till methods leave soils undisturbed, allowing crop residue to remain on the surface, protecting the topsoil from runoff. Seeds are planted in rows in the soil. In contrast, tillage leaves soil “bare” and highly susceptible to erosion.

Some soils across Tennessee are considered fragile, Tyler says, but West Tennessee’s are especially susceptible.

“The soils in West Tennessee are especially erodible because they are very silty soils,” Tyler says. “They are almost like talcum powder – very silty and easily moved by water if they’re exposed and tilled.”

As an example of how easily soil can erode with tilling versus no-till, Tyler says, “We have data that shows in till systems, one storm can result in the loss of more than 10 tons of soil per acre, whereas a no-till system right beside it with the same measurements may result in 1/10 of a ton loss. It’s a huge difference.”Today, Tennessee is a shining example of the no-till success, with up to 90 percent of the state’s farms using no-till practices, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service. This change was possible thanks to the assistance and innovation of the University of Tennessee Extension and UT AgResearch, within the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture, and Tennessee’s row crop farmers who saw the benefits and invested in the technology to make no-till a reality.

Tyler was one of the many team members enlisted to research and help Tennessee adapt its tilling ways that were having a negative impact on the land.

“With no-till, we’ve dramatically reduced the manmade accelerated soil erosion,” Tyler says. “A lot of the soil that we have now in the state would not be here if we did not go no-till. The soil was eroding at such a high rate, and there would be fields today that would have been abandoned if we did not make the change. We have many farmers now who have been completely no-till for 30 years,” he adds.