Teamwork and Trust Tackle Erosion

Soils in many Marshall County farm fields stayed in place through this year’s heavy rains because of the efforts of an unlikely team of farmers, contractors and a USDA-NRCS employee named Melinda Tague.

Tague is a soil conservation technician who has been in Marshall County since 1992, designing conservation practices such as grassed waterways or terraces to meet farmers’ resource concerns. She also works closely with contractors to ensure the practices are built efficiently and to design specifications.

Dana Holland, district conservationist for NRCS and Tague’s supervisor, said “There many resource challenges in Marshall County. Melinda helps farmers meet those concerns. They trust her.”

When a Marshall County farmer contacts the NRCS office, either Tague or Holland will work with the individual to address his or her conservation issues.

“If the solution includes building a practice on the land, we give them a design and help them get available financial assistance,” said Tague. “The farmer is in charge. We work for the landowner. The farmer hires the contractor and our three person project team is complete. We will have a preconstruction meeting. NRCS acts as a consultant to the contractor and offer advice because we want to take care of the farmer’s problem.”

Tague says she also works to take care of contractor problems like downtime.

“Downtime on a project is not good,” said Brian Hoover, owner of Hoover Drainage Company of LeGrand. “If we have expensive machinery on-site, we need our questions answered right away. We have to keep moving.”

Hoover’s company builds ponds, tiling and drainage projects, waterways and terraces. Tague provides many of the practice designs Hoover’s company uses during construction.   

Construction designs can be as complete as possible, notes Tague, but questions can always arise--and often at inconvenient times.

“An important part of teamwork is being available to help each other,” said Tague. “I’d rather contractors call me on a Sunday than have a mess on Monday. If I can talk to a contractor for 10 minutes and get him on the right track, it is less cost to the landowner, less trouble for us, and the contractor has a better chance of making money.”

Holland says Tague likes to work with contractors throughout the year, even when they aren’t moving earth. Every winter Tague hosts a contractors’ meeting to explain new NRCS specifications, Iowa One Call and Iowa Department of Transportation regulations.

Tague also trains contractors on NRCS’ checkout policy. “That means,” she said, “all contractors know what will be examined for NRCS payment approval. We want no surprises. We want the landowner to get what he needs, NRCS to get what we need and we want the contractor to build the practice in the most efficient way possible.”

Contractors showed their pleasure with Tague earlier this year at their group’s annual meeting. The Iowa Chapter of the Land Improvement Contractors of America (LICA) named her the 2007 Conservationist of the Year.

“I love the LICA award,” said Tague, “but rewards I like best are seeing conservation practices working on the land.”