The Confusion Continues

I’m telling ya’. If producers ran their operations like some of the folks in our government, we’d all starve. You folks know by now that I’m not mean spirited, but I’m also not shy about bringing up stuff that seems goofy. Several weeks ago, I did a story on the USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Division where they sent out this press release about a Conservation Stewardship Program. You couldn’t understand a word of it and I called up one of their people and asked him to explain what it meant. He was a good guy, we had a laugh and he explained. Again, a snippet from the conversation: “Let’s say a guy for the last 3 years has been doing no-till. OK. Here’s about this program and says Wait a minute, I’ve been doing that, maybe I’m eligible. He is. And what we’re doing is looking at it a couple of different ways. We have existing stewardship, you’re going to get credit for those things that you’ve been implementing and if there’s additional things that you want to do, you’re going to get credit for that too.

 Understood, we ran the story and I just got a personal e-mail from the person at the NRCS and here’s what it said: We aren't getting a whole lot of producers signing up for our program. Could you interview us again? Well I called up the PR person that wrote the e-mail and the original press release which caused all the confusion and told her my feelings about the way these things were written…too formal…too legal…too little information. That story tomorrow.