Photo: Wyoming Sagebrush and Pronghorn Antelope. © 2017 Delena Norris-Tull
Interviews NRCS, Laramie County Field Office, Cheyenne, Wyoming:
Jim Cochran, District Manager (now retired), and Jim Pike, District Conservationist, May 7, 2018
Interviewed by Dr. Delena Norris-Tull, in person
Reviewed and approved by Jim Cochran Oct. 23, 2020. Reviewed and approved by Jim Pike, Oct. 25, 2020. They are now both retired.
The Natural Resource Conservation Service is a Federal Agency within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). It previously was called the Soil Conservation Service (SCS).
The NRCS does not manage any public lands. Rather the agency provides support directly to private landowners (mainly ranchers and farmers) to assist them in improving the quality of their lands.
On my way back south between Montana and Texas, I contacted the Field Office in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
When I called the NRCS Field Office, I was connected with Jim Pike. I explained my project to him. I was in Rock Springs at the time and offered to do a phone interview, but said I would be in Cheyenne in the afternoon and could meet with him in person. He immediately said come on over to the office in Cheyenne so we could meet face-to-face. I said I would arrive around noon, and asked if I should wait till after lunch. He said, no, just come on over whenever I arrive and he would be waiting for me. When I told him where I live, he said he had lived in Dillon, Montana, and worked for a logging mill in Dillon in the 1980s. He also had worked in the underground Copper mine in Butte in the 1990s. As with all my interviews to date, I was once again astounded by the warm welcome I received from State and Federal Agency personnel. Everyone I have spoken with so far has been interested in the project and seems to feel it is worthwhile.
I arrived at the office about 12:30, and Jim immediately took me over to meet Jim Cochran, the District Manager, who has worked for the Laramie County Conservation District since 1990. Jim Pike has worked for the NRCS since 2003.
For the next hour and a half the two Jims answered my questions readily and gave me their perspective on the relationship between policy and practice within the Federal Agencies, and the relationship between Federal and State and local Agencies.
Jim Pike: We have had an explosion of toadflax in our county. Missoula had problems with toadflax and they had some success with a biological control.
With our work coordinating with the Farm Service Agency on CRP, we have both noticed that on unmanaged lands, such as undeveloped subdivisions, CRP, roadsides and railroad lands, there are lots of weeds present.
Cheatgrass has just recently been placed on the noxious weed list in their county. The County Weed and Pest District provides local landowners education on weed management practices and cost share for herbicides.
We will provide funds for native plant seed if asked by the landowners. However, landowners are often reluctant to use native plants because they take longer to establish. On state-owned lands we must use native seed. Landowners prefer non-native grasses because they establish faster and are more suited to haying during years of normal or above normal precipitation.
Native legume seeds are very expensive, we use them occasionally in CRP plantings. On cropland we use a mix of natives and non-natives that seems to be working well.
Jim Cochran: The landowners get a few more points on their CRP contracts if they use natives.
Jim Pike: It is challenging to have success with native seed when the cropland has been degraded to such a low level of organic matter. It has been my observation that you need about 3% organic matter in the soil for the soil to be productive. This is not something that we have research on, but it’s been my observation. Most farmed soils in Laramie County are now at about 1% organic matter due to excessive tillage for nearly a century. Organic farms in the county continue to plow, chisel and disk as the only means of weed control which continues to oxidize the carbon stored in the soil organic matter.
There is enough native seed available. There are more companies producing seed, but it is still too expensive. In mining reclamation projects, they can afford the expensive seed, but there is not as much money available for restoring agricultural land.
Jim Cochran: We’re seeing more homeowners who want native lawns, using buffalo grass and blue gramma. About ten years ago, the County Conservation Districts put an emphasis on re-seeding degraded lands.
Jim Pike: “I’ve been doing a mix of about 30% sainfoin [a non-native perennial legume that is excellent for nitrogen fixation and does not cause bloat in livestock]; 30% intermediate and pubescent wheatgrass [non-native grasses]; some Western and thickspike wheatgrass [native grasses]; orchardgrass [non-native]; and 10 to 15% slender wheatgrass [native grass]. Slender establishes quickly.
The research says that planting natives with non-natives is not a good idea because the non-natives will out-compete the natives. But I’m having good success with this mix of natives and non-natives.
Here’s the technique I use on cheatgrass. I have the landowner plow it under to bury the seed, and then plant millet over it. They can hay the millet, leaving 4-5 inches of stubble. By year two, they can plant their crop over the millet stubble. They may have to use RoundUp once or twice but I discourage its use.
Historically, lands on a CRP project were planted in wheat. But wheat has too much auto-toxicity. It’s allelopathic. Millet, oats, and barley are not allelopathic.
Jim Cochran: When CRP contracts first started, the money was administered by the Farm Service Agency, but the NRCS monitored the land. Under the CRP contracts, the landowner was responsible for controlling the weeds. NRCS would note weed issues and would report them to the County Weed and Pest Office. But the county offices thought it was the responsibility of FSA to enforce the CRP contract. The Farm Service Agency would not enforce the contracts. Everyone was trying to maintain good relationships with the landowners. When Jim Pike arrived, he saw the problem, and he started sending letters to the landowners, reminding them of their responsibility to control their weeds.
Jim Pike: The Farm Bill includes statements about the importance of controlling weeds, but it’s the landowners’ responsibility to do it, so often it just doesn’t happen. FSA and NRCS employees are reluctant to enforce the Farm Bill requirements to control weeds on base acres due to the culture within USDA. Both NRCS and FSA have become landowner advocates rather than Farm Bill administrators and conservationists. Employees of these agencies live in farm communities and want to be accepted by the local farm/ranch population. In many cases the agricultural community is the reference group for USDA employees.
Depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer (the main source of water for a massive area of the West, from Nebraska to West Texas) is a major problem here that keeps us busy. Before the Farm Bill was re-authorized in 2014, there was a program, AWEP [Agricultural Water Enhancement Program], that provided some funds for surface and ground water conservation. We were able to use those funds on a project to pay people to give up their water rights to conserve the aquifer. We were able to reduce the annual water consumption in Laramie County by 1,000,000,000 gallons. But the AWEP program is now gone. [As of 2014, AWEP has been suspended.]
If you scored all the agencies responsible to manage weeds, Federal, State and County, we would probably all get Ds.
NRCS is not authorized to make pesticide recommendations. The County Weed and Pest agency is supposed to educate the landowners on management and pesticide practices.
Jim Cochran: When Jim arrived, he took the initiative to go out on the land and examine the properties and then write letters to the landowners, reminding them of their responsibilities.
Jim Pike: The NRCS wants to have a good relationship with the landowners so we are reluctant to push them.
Jim Cochran: Wyoming and Montana agencies are more reluctant to push the landowners than they used to be, because of the new concerns about herbicides.
Jim Pike: We were bolder when we had less information about the chemicals we were using. Now we’re more reluctant to push landowners to control their weeds. Now it’s hard to find a well without atrazine. Atrazine was used a lot in this area in the 1970s.
[Comment from Delena: This indicates that we don’t yet have good solutions as alternatives to using chemicals].
Jim Pike commented that he served in the Vietnam War, and thought nothing at the time about being drenched in Agent Orange. That early experience with the country’s lack of concern with the potential toxicity of chemicals causes him to be much more aware of the possibility that we are poisoning our environment and ourselves even more, in the current use of herbicides and pesticides to manage weeds and pests.
Jim commented that a number of veterans of World War II received free land from the federal government in 100-acre parcels in the West. In reading accounts from these veterans, he noted that they seemed to have no weed problems for a long time. That was when the land still had a decent organic layer. As that layer wasted away, weeds began invading.
Delena: So the weeds are doing their job. When we degrade the land, they rush in to restore the soil.
Jim Pike: A weed is just a plant out of place. Plants we call weeds are able to grow rapidly protecting the soil from extensive disturbance such as tillage, overgrazing, flooding or fire.
Jim Cochran: The BLM (administered by the US Department of the Interior) and the US Forest Service (administered by the USDA) both have a policy about grazing that has backfired and caused an increase in cheatgrass. Cheatgrass, a winter annual grass, is one of the most palatable forages from April to June. But the Federal Agencies don’t allow grazing until June through September. If not grazed in the spring, cheatgrass flourishes in the summer, when it becomes unpalatable. It becomes palatable again in October, but by then the grazing leases are finished for the year. Thus, this out-moded Federal grazing policy has been instrumental in causing the spread of cheatgrass.
Jim Pike: Cheatgrass was recently placed on the weed list for Laramie County. The weeds are winning. Herbicide resistance is now facilitating the expansion of weeds.
Jim Cochran: We try to do our best to plan but then maybe the weather pattern changes and ruins our plans. For 20 years we cut down Russian olives, but we had no plans to replant something else in their place. Now they’ve come back. When leafy spurge became a problem in Montana, they put more herbicide on the land than the land was worth.
Jim Pike: In the inter-mountain region, from Texas to Canada, most dryland wheat farming is not economically feasible without government subsidies. So we are keeping the wheat farms in operation artificially. If we could gradually phase out or reduce the subsidies, while assisting a return to livestock production, I believe the farmers would have a chance to become financially independent. Some federal subsidies or land leases may still be needed.
If we use the funds to revegetate with native seeds, we can eventually restore the land, create a carbon sink, to get carbon back in the soil, and go back to livestock grazing.
Jim Cochran: The City of Cheyenne figured out they could graze goats to combat leafy spurge. The citizens love this program. Children love to watch the goats around town. The city engineering department runs this program. The NRCS agents noticed that the goats were not being grazed long enough to be effective. They asked the engineers to insist that the goat owner graze longer. Engineers were hesitant to take that action.
Jim Pike: The NRCS has had a lot of money since 2002, which has almost overshadowed what should have been locally led conservation efforts. We end up spending a lot of money in Wyoming on center-pivot irrigation rather than conservation.
President George Bush declared the “golden age of conservation.” But that was just a way to send money to their political base. It was not focused on conservation. Under the current administration, the USDA is not going to be gutted because that would harm the political base. But no one is taking a hard look at what we are doing and how the money is being spent.
For all the money we’re spending, we’re not getting anything.
Jim Cochran: Will Rogers said, “The best thing about government is that you don’t get what you pay for.”
Jim Pike: In 2008, we were told that the NRCS was going to reorganize. But due to budget cuts in previous administrations, we had lost many agents, and that comprised the institutional memory for the Agency. There was not enough institutional memory to carry out an effective reorganization. We implemented new policies that had already proven to be failures in the past.
Jim Cochran: For example, organic farmers today are contributing to the loss of soil. They are using farming practices that were proven failures fifty years ago. Because they do not use herbicides or pesticides, they are tilling the soil rather than using no-till practices that protect the soil. This is a huge step backwards for soil conservation.
Jim Pike: Organic wheat producers in this county are using old CRP land because it did not have herbicides in it. But they are breaking out the sod, causing soil loss. Unfortunately you still have to use herbicides when you use no-till farming.
Delena: As I drove down from Montana, I noticed thousands of acres of potato farm land that look completely barren. Why aren’t the potato farmers using a cover crop to conserve the soil over the winter?
Jim Cochran: Potatoes, sugar beets and other root crops tend to leave very little residue. There is a lot of soil lost in these farms. Unfortunately, the growing season is so short that there’s not enough time to use a cover crop. This causes the loss of tons of soil every year. Maybe winter wheat could be farmed as a cover crop.
Jim Pike: I have heard that half of the topsoil that was here before the pilgrims arrived is now gone.
When we had small farms and ranches, we had less problems with weeds and less problems with soil loss. Now that we have gone to large-scale farming, soil loss is causing farms to fail faster. Lost soil leads to increased weed problems.
Delena: Herbicide resistance is a fascinating relatively new problem. What if these plants that seem to survive against all odds are the hope for our future? With global climate change, maybe we should be looking at some of these plants as the survivors that will keep us going in the future. Many plants we now consider weeds were brought here because of their agricultural value, as foods for humans, forage for livestock, or as medicines, or paper pulp. When we cause the land to become barren, these so-called weeds rush to repopulate the land, to preserve and regenerate the soil.
Link to other Wyoming Interviews:
Interviews NRCS, Laramie County Field Office, Cheyenne, Wyoming:
Jim Cochran, District Manager (now retired), and Jim Pike, District Conservationist, May 7, 2018
Interviewed by Dr. Delena Norris-Tull, in person
Reviewed and approved by Jim Cochran Oct. 23, 2020. Reviewed and approved by Jim Pike, Oct. 25, 2020. They are now both retired.
The Natural Resource Conservation Service is a Federal Agency within the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). It previously was called the Soil Conservation Service (SCS).
The NRCS does not manage any public lands. Rather the agency provides support directly to private landowners (mainly ranchers and farmers) to assist them in improving the quality of their lands.
On my way back south between Montana and Texas, I contacted the Field Office in Cheyenne, Wyoming.
When I called the NRCS Field Office, I was connected with Jim Pike. I explained my project to him. I was in Rock Springs at the time and offered to do a phone interview, but said I would be in Cheyenne in the afternoon and could meet with him in person. He immediately said come on over to the office in Cheyenne so we could meet face-to-face. I said I would arrive around noon, and asked if I should wait till after lunch. He said, no, just come on over whenever I arrive and he would be waiting for me. When I told him where I live, he said he had lived in Dillon, Montana, and worked for a logging mill in Dillon in the 1980s. He also had worked in the underground Copper mine in Butte in the 1990s. As with all my interviews to date, I was once again astounded by the warm welcome I received from State and Federal Agency personnel. Everyone I have spoken with so far has been interested in the project and seems to feel it is worthwhile.
I arrived at the office about 12:30, and Jim immediately took me over to meet Jim Cochran, the District Manager, who has worked for the Laramie County Conservation District since 1990. Jim Pike has worked for the NRCS since 2003.
For the next hour and a half the two Jims answered my questions readily and gave me their perspective on the relationship between policy and practice within the Federal Agencies, and the relationship between Federal and State and local Agencies.
Jim Pike: We have had an explosion of toadflax in our county. Missoula had problems with toadflax and they had some success with a biological control.
With our work coordinating with the Farm Service Agency on CRP, we have both noticed that on unmanaged lands, such as undeveloped subdivisions, CRP, roadsides and railroad lands, there are lots of weeds present.
Cheatgrass has just recently been placed on the noxious weed list in their county. The County Weed and Pest District provides local landowners education on weed management practices and cost share for herbicides.
We will provide funds for native plant seed if asked by the landowners. However, landowners are often reluctant to use native plants because they take longer to establish. On state-owned lands we must use native seed. Landowners prefer non-native grasses because they establish faster and are more suited to haying during years of normal or above normal precipitation.
Native legume seeds are very expensive, we use them occasionally in CRP plantings. On cropland we use a mix of natives and non-natives that seems to be working well.
Jim Cochran: The landowners get a few more points on their CRP contracts if they use natives.
Jim Pike: It is challenging to have success with native seed when the cropland has been degraded to such a low level of organic matter. It has been my observation that you need about 3% organic matter in the soil for the soil to be productive. This is not something that we have research on, but it’s been my observation. Most farmed soils in Laramie County are now at about 1% organic matter due to excessive tillage for nearly a century. Organic farms in the county continue to plow, chisel and disk as the only means of weed control which continues to oxidize the carbon stored in the soil organic matter.
There is enough native seed available. There are more companies producing seed, but it is still too expensive. In mining reclamation projects, they can afford the expensive seed, but there is not as much money available for restoring agricultural land.
Jim Cochran: We’re seeing more homeowners who want native lawns, using buffalo grass and blue gramma. About ten years ago, the County Conservation Districts put an emphasis on re-seeding degraded lands.
Jim Pike: “I’ve been doing a mix of about 30% sainfoin [a non-native perennial legume that is excellent for nitrogen fixation and does not cause bloat in livestock]; 30% intermediate and pubescent wheatgrass [non-native grasses]; some Western and thickspike wheatgrass [native grasses]; orchardgrass [non-native]; and 10 to 15% slender wheatgrass [native grass]. Slender establishes quickly.
The research says that planting natives with non-natives is not a good idea because the non-natives will out-compete the natives. But I’m having good success with this mix of natives and non-natives.
Here’s the technique I use on cheatgrass. I have the landowner plow it under to bury the seed, and then plant millet over it. They can hay the millet, leaving 4-5 inches of stubble. By year two, they can plant their crop over the millet stubble. They may have to use RoundUp once or twice but I discourage its use.
Historically, lands on a CRP project were planted in wheat. But wheat has too much auto-toxicity. It’s allelopathic. Millet, oats, and barley are not allelopathic.
Jim Cochran: When CRP contracts first started, the money was administered by the Farm Service Agency, but the NRCS monitored the land. Under the CRP contracts, the landowner was responsible for controlling the weeds. NRCS would note weed issues and would report them to the County Weed and Pest Office. But the county offices thought it was the responsibility of FSA to enforce the CRP contract. The Farm Service Agency would not enforce the contracts. Everyone was trying to maintain good relationships with the landowners. When Jim Pike arrived, he saw the problem, and he started sending letters to the landowners, reminding them of their responsibility to control their weeds.
Jim Pike: The Farm Bill includes statements about the importance of controlling weeds, but it’s the landowners’ responsibility to do it, so often it just doesn’t happen. FSA and NRCS employees are reluctant to enforce the Farm Bill requirements to control weeds on base acres due to the culture within USDA. Both NRCS and FSA have become landowner advocates rather than Farm Bill administrators and conservationists. Employees of these agencies live in farm communities and want to be accepted by the local farm/ranch population. In many cases the agricultural community is the reference group for USDA employees.
Depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer (the main source of water for a massive area of the West, from Nebraska to West Texas) is a major problem here that keeps us busy. Before the Farm Bill was re-authorized in 2014, there was a program, AWEP [Agricultural Water Enhancement Program], that provided some funds for surface and ground water conservation. We were able to use those funds on a project to pay people to give up their water rights to conserve the aquifer. We were able to reduce the annual water consumption in Laramie County by 1,000,000,000 gallons. But the AWEP program is now gone. [As of 2014, AWEP has been suspended.]
If you scored all the agencies responsible to manage weeds, Federal, State and County, we would probably all get Ds.
NRCS is not authorized to make pesticide recommendations. The County Weed and Pest agency is supposed to educate the landowners on management and pesticide practices.
Jim Cochran: When Jim arrived, he took the initiative to go out on the land and examine the properties and then write letters to the landowners, reminding them of their responsibilities.
Jim Pike: The NRCS wants to have a good relationship with the landowners so we are reluctant to push them.
Jim Cochran: Wyoming and Montana agencies are more reluctant to push the landowners than they used to be, because of the new concerns about herbicides.
Jim Pike: We were bolder when we had less information about the chemicals we were using. Now we’re more reluctant to push landowners to control their weeds. Now it’s hard to find a well without atrazine. Atrazine was used a lot in this area in the 1970s.
[Comment from Delena: This indicates that we don’t yet have good solutions as alternatives to using chemicals].
Jim Pike commented that he served in the Vietnam War, and thought nothing at the time about being drenched in Agent Orange. That early experience with the country’s lack of concern with the potential toxicity of chemicals causes him to be much more aware of the possibility that we are poisoning our environment and ourselves even more, in the current use of herbicides and pesticides to manage weeds and pests.
Jim commented that a number of veterans of World War II received free land from the federal government in 100-acre parcels in the West. In reading accounts from these veterans, he noted that they seemed to have no weed problems for a long time. That was when the land still had a decent organic layer. As that layer wasted away, weeds began invading.
Delena: So the weeds are doing their job. When we degrade the land, they rush in to restore the soil.
Jim Pike: A weed is just a plant out of place. Plants we call weeds are able to grow rapidly protecting the soil from extensive disturbance such as tillage, overgrazing, flooding or fire.
Jim Cochran: The BLM (administered by the US Department of the Interior) and the US Forest Service (administered by the USDA) both have a policy about grazing that has backfired and caused an increase in cheatgrass. Cheatgrass, a winter annual grass, is one of the most palatable forages from April to June. But the Federal Agencies don’t allow grazing until June through September. If not grazed in the spring, cheatgrass flourishes in the summer, when it becomes unpalatable. It becomes palatable again in October, but by then the grazing leases are finished for the year. Thus, this out-moded Federal grazing policy has been instrumental in causing the spread of cheatgrass.
Jim Pike: Cheatgrass was recently placed on the weed list for Laramie County. The weeds are winning. Herbicide resistance is now facilitating the expansion of weeds.
Jim Cochran: We try to do our best to plan but then maybe the weather pattern changes and ruins our plans. For 20 years we cut down Russian olives, but we had no plans to replant something else in their place. Now they’ve come back. When leafy spurge became a problem in Montana, they put more herbicide on the land than the land was worth.
Jim Pike: In the inter-mountain region, from Texas to Canada, most dryland wheat farming is not economically feasible without government subsidies. So we are keeping the wheat farms in operation artificially. If we could gradually phase out or reduce the subsidies, while assisting a return to livestock production, I believe the farmers would have a chance to become financially independent. Some federal subsidies or land leases may still be needed.
If we use the funds to revegetate with native seeds, we can eventually restore the land, create a carbon sink, to get carbon back in the soil, and go back to livestock grazing.
Jim Cochran: The City of Cheyenne figured out they could graze goats to combat leafy spurge. The citizens love this program. Children love to watch the goats around town. The city engineering department runs this program. The NRCS agents noticed that the goats were not being grazed long enough to be effective. They asked the engineers to insist that the goat owner graze longer. Engineers were hesitant to take that action.
Jim Pike: The NRCS has had a lot of money since 2002, which has almost overshadowed what should have been locally led conservation efforts. We end up spending a lot of money in Wyoming on center-pivot irrigation rather than conservation.
President George Bush declared the “golden age of conservation.” But that was just a way to send money to their political base. It was not focused on conservation. Under the current administration, the USDA is not going to be gutted because that would harm the political base. But no one is taking a hard look at what we are doing and how the money is being spent.
For all the money we’re spending, we’re not getting anything.
Jim Cochran: Will Rogers said, “The best thing about government is that you don’t get what you pay for.”
Jim Pike: In 2008, we were told that the NRCS was going to reorganize. But due to budget cuts in previous administrations, we had lost many agents, and that comprised the institutional memory for the Agency. There was not enough institutional memory to carry out an effective reorganization. We implemented new policies that had already proven to be failures in the past.
Jim Cochran: For example, organic farmers today are contributing to the loss of soil. They are using farming practices that were proven failures fifty years ago. Because they do not use herbicides or pesticides, they are tilling the soil rather than using no-till practices that protect the soil. This is a huge step backwards for soil conservation.
Jim Pike: Organic wheat producers in this county are using old CRP land because it did not have herbicides in it. But they are breaking out the sod, causing soil loss. Unfortunately you still have to use herbicides when you use no-till farming.
Delena: As I drove down from Montana, I noticed thousands of acres of potato farm land that look completely barren. Why aren’t the potato farmers using a cover crop to conserve the soil over the winter?
Jim Cochran: Potatoes, sugar beets and other root crops tend to leave very little residue. There is a lot of soil lost in these farms. Unfortunately, the growing season is so short that there’s not enough time to use a cover crop. This causes the loss of tons of soil every year. Maybe winter wheat could be farmed as a cover crop.
Jim Pike: I have heard that half of the topsoil that was here before the pilgrims arrived is now gone.
When we had small farms and ranches, we had less problems with weeds and less problems with soil loss. Now that we have gone to large-scale farming, soil loss is causing farms to fail faster. Lost soil leads to increased weed problems.
Delena: Herbicide resistance is a fascinating relatively new problem. What if these plants that seem to survive against all odds are the hope for our future? With global climate change, maybe we should be looking at some of these plants as the survivors that will keep us going in the future. Many plants we now consider weeds were brought here because of their agricultural value, as foods for humans, forage for livestock, or as medicines, or paper pulp. When we cause the land to become barren, these so-called weeds rush to repopulate the land, to preserve and regenerate the soil.
Link to other Wyoming Interviews: