Living on the Land: Improving
Education for Small-Acreage Farmers
Over the past several decades, agricultural
land use patterns in the West have changed
dramatically. For example, in Nevada, most
ranches were larger than 100 acres in the
early 1900s; today, more than half of the
state's farms are fewer than 10 acres. Increasingly,
those small-acreage landowners seek help
in managing their livestock and natural resources.
To respond, Sue Donaldson, a University
of Nevada water quality education specialist,
used a Sustainable Agriculture Research and
Education (SARE) professional development
grant to develop a wide-reaching curriculum
for agricultural educators focusing on growing
plants and animals on small properties in
environmentally sensitive areas.
“People acquire properties, but they've
never managed 2 1/2 acres with flood irrigation
before,” Donaldson said. “People
leave horses on pasture 365 days a year,
and the grass never has an opportunity to
recover its vigor. They don't understand
how grass grows or how much they're damaging
it.”
The curriculum, dubbed “Living on
the Land: Teaching Small Acreage Owners to
Conserve Their Natural Resources” (co-developed
with extension educators in California, Colorado,
Utah, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana),
covers the basics of goal-setting, soils,
water, vegetation, and animals and answers
such questions as how to maintain healthy
pastures and protect household drinking water.
Initially, the project trained close to
50 educators in 8 western states, including
representatives from extension, the Natural
Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), and
local conservation districts. Since then,
Donaldson has distributed about 900 copies
of the program on CD-ROM across the country.
In Idaho, educators are in their second
year of teaching “Living on the Land” to
a group of eager students.
“No one offers anything similar to
this,” said Kevin Laughlin, an extension
educator who adapted the program to a hands-on
Idaho focus. “They want to be better
stewards of the land, and they have a stewardship
ethic, but they just don't know how.”
After 18 lessons, the first group emerged
with a better understanding of managing natural
resources on their ranches, said Laughlin,
who has seen new fences and pastures springing
up across the seven-county area.
“I have been doing small-acreage programs
since 1981, and this is the first program
where we're seeing the actual outcomes within
a year's time,” he said.
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