Working with CES

Eric Ollila, AgBio Communications

Mary Lou and Pat Guptill speak with Extension educator Adele Harty. Working with CES has helped the Guptills enhance the operation of their family ranch.

The Guptill family finds better methods and

Seven years ago, Quinn cow-calf operators Pat and Mary Lou Guptill were working hard. They were working hard to feed their cattle. They were working hard to calve. They were working hard to hay, to repair and maintain their equipment, to break even.

But no matter how hard they worked, and though they were making a decent living, things weren’t really working. It turns out the Guptills were working hard simply to work hard. “We had to do something differently,” said Pat.

At about the same time, the South Dakota State University Cooperative Extension Service (CES) was also working hard—working hard to do something differently. Beginning with a 1998 directive from the South Dakota state Legislature, CES was in the process of reforming itself. “CES must change in function and structure to meet new and emerging needs and issues,” said a 1999 CES report. “The mission of CES must be accomplished more effectively and more efficiently.”

Making changes to their operation has helped the Guptill family spend more time together. From left, Mary Lou, Josie (14), Troy (15), Tate (17), Paul (10), Tia (8), and Pat.

In the beginning, the Guptills went about doing “something differently” separate from CES. Pat and Mary Lou were intrigued with the idea of becoming “low-cost” producers and letting their livestock work for them, not the other way around. To begin accomplishing that, Pat bought three small-framed bulls; he and Mary Lou wanted cows with smaller frames and larger guts—cows that could survive and thrive primarily on low-quality feed, which is characteristic of vegetation on their south-central South Dakota ranch. “We decided to go to a style of cattle that can take care of themselves,” Pat said.
What the Guptills sought was sustainability—the ability to work with their operation and environment, not against them.

Meanwhile, in implementing a plan known as Extension Vision for the 21st Century, CES was also focused on making its operation more operator-friendly. The primary element of the plan was a reorganization of CES at the county level. “No (educator) can be expected to have the knowledge to respond to every issue, problem, or question, but the system must,” said the 1999 report. Instead of 110 single county agents, or “generalists,” who fielded and answered queries from all agriculture fields, CES would consist of three districts and 14 Field Education Units (FEUs) of educators with specialized skills and knowledge. [There are currently four districts and 13 FEUs.] These FEU educators would have backgrounds and education in livestock/dairy, agronomy/horticulture, family and consumer sciences, youth development/4-H, or farm management/marketing.

Dovetailing with the changes the Guptills and CES were enacting was SARE. SARE, started in 1988, is a federal program that provides funding and outreach to promote agriculture. Roger Gates, SDSU Extension range specialist, said one of SARE’s outreach efforts led directly to a Guptill/CES bond. He said that the conclusion of one multi-year CES training project, which was funded by grants from the North Central SARE, called for teams of educators to work with a single producer, and the Guptills were chosen as one of those producers.

The team the Guptills interacted with included Harty (livestock), the Natural Resources Conservation Service’s Lealand Schoon, and Extension educators Stacy Hadrick (marketing/farm business management), Shawn Burke (ag/youth development/4-H), Sandy Huber (agronomy), Mark Fanning (agronomy), and Valerie Mitchell (livestock). The team met with the Guptills and went over the history of the Guptill operation and the Guptills’ visions and goals. Out of those interactions, the team developed the comprehensive report “‘Gotta Do With What You Got’” that detailed strategies and recommendations that would further enable the Guptills to reach their goal of sustainability.

For the Guptills, sustainability has meant many things. It has meant the ability to allow their cattle to feed and go through calving primarily by themselves. It has meant the development of a creep watering system that was covered by Cattle Business Weekly and a fuel and repair bill that is one-fifth what it was previously. It has meant the use of biological agents to control Canada thistle, the development of a rotational grazing system tailored to their land, and seeking organic certification. And it has meant the opportunity for Pat and Mary Lou to become more educated and aware. “We can go to some of these seminars that we didn’t go to before, and that helps our management,” said Pat. “We spend more time discussing what we want to do and less time sitting on our tractors.”

Pat said that while he and Mary Lou still utilize the report, a major benefit of their interaction with CES has been the contacts and relationships they have been able to develop. “Probably one of the largest things we learned was that there is a network of people out there, a huge network of people, with expertise in whatever aspect we need. Adele (Harty) is a contact. If I want to know anything, I’ll contact Adele, and she’ll either steer me in the right direction or she’ll find the information herself.”

But while such business networking is beneficial, perhaps the greatest benefit of the CES/Guptill relationship has been the effect it has had on the relationships within the Guptill family itself. For example, Mary Lou said the opportunity for she and Pat to take their five children on camping trips instead of staying at their operation every moment has been welcome. “We enjoy doing what we do,” she said. “That working to work has ceased. That part of it has all changed.”

RELATED LINKS

South Dakota Cooperative Extension Service
Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education
Natural Resources Conservation Service
Cattle Business Weekly

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Working with CES