Conservation: Overhead or value added?

Excerpt

Recently, I was flying back to Des Moines from Washington D.C. after spending several days working to improve the conservation provisions of the U.S. farm bill that was about to be debated on the floor of the U.S. Senate. On my mind was a conversation—argument really—that I had had with two influential people regarding the stature of technical services in conservation programs.

The issue, of course, boiled down to money. How much of the substantial sums of new money being set aside for conservation programs should be invested in technical services-research, assessment, analysis, education, and technical assistance?

The conversation hadn't gone well. I found myself stuck in an all-too-familiar rut: Talking but not communicating, marshalling the facts but not telling the right story, working hard but just not getting through.

On the airplane that evening, it occurred to me that the lack of communication was rooted in our fundamentally different views of what technical services are all about. The colleagues I had talked with basically see conservation planning and all that it entails as overhead. The research, assessment, analysis, education, and technical assistance that undergird conservation planning …