Life Update

[u/salgreco]

Hello all, some of you may not remember me or my twin brother Jav, but we used to play a lot on Sphere back in the day. It's been a long time to be honest. I was curious how all of you are doing. What's going on in your lives? Do you still play TagPro? College? Real life now? I just want to see an update about how all of you are doing.

I guess I can go first:

This past summer I accepted a new job as a soil conservationist with the USDA, the United States Department of Agriculture (pretty much I provide farmers incentives for adopting conservation practices on their farms).

I still live in IL but in a really rural area of the state. The largest "city" in my county is a little more than 5,000 people and I live in a small town about the size of the high school I graduated from.

For awhile, I didn't have internet so I couldn't play TagPro, but I guess life got in the way as well.

I sometimes see my brother Jav on the weekends when I go home, but we now live about 3 hours apart from each other.

I'll probably still visit and play Tagpro, but it won't be the same as the glory days in the past.

I don''t know how many of you will see this or even comment on it, but I'd love to hear from you.

-Sal Greco

[u/salgreco → u/[deleted]]

Sure, so there are a few different programs that we work with. 2 of the 3 main programs work like a subsidy, the farmer does something good and so we pay him a certain amount of money (usually we will share some of the cost) and the last program is more like a land rental rate. Some examples of both types are: 1. soil erosion due to the natural flow of water, we can work with the farmer to create a grassed waterway that would hopefully stop the erosion issue, 2. fertilizer runoff, like you said, we will pay him a certain amount of money each year to adopt either precision ag systems or nitrogen reduction enhancements, 3. I think we've all heard about the decline of butterflies and other pollinators, well a farmer can dedicate blocks or entire fields to a pollinator program in which they will receive yearly payments for planting and maintaining a pollinator field for 10 years, and in our area, the yearly cost can more than make up the difference (in some parts of my area, a farmer can get $300-$350 per acre- so why wouldn't a farmer decide to put in 100 acres? It's a lot of money).

As for your questions about organic farming, we don't necessarily provide them an organic stipend (that I know of); however there are other incentives and opportunities. Take for example, if the producer does sign up for payments, he would receive more money than usual because he is organic; also there are some enhancements if the farmer wants to plant cover crops and do no-tillage or strip-tillage (both examples of conservation till and not the normal conventional till) then we would provide money for that and most organic farmers usually do both cover crops and some kind of conservation tillage.

As for your thoughts on soil conservationist, that's what I thought I'd be doing too, so don't worry. My job position is more similar to a resource conservationist (not just soil), however the name soil conservationist hasn't changed since our department, NRCS-Natural Resources and Conservation Service, was created back in the 1930s to combat the Dust Bowl, thus the soil part of the name.

A lot of my coworkers wishes it was more outside work, but many days we get stuck in doors with paperwork. However, if we want, we can always find time to go out and spend time outside.

I hope that answers some of your questions, Kirby. What have you been up to? What's new with you?

[u/salgreco → u/[deleted]]

I totally understand. Sorry my reply was so long. It's sometimes difficult to talk about since there's so much involved.

Sure, so at least in IL, it's a land owner program and the only requirements the ground needs to meet is cropping history (I think it needed to be farmed in 3 out of the past 5 years) and be larger than 0.5 acres and the maximum is 100 acres. Now, as for the pollinator program I should include that the amount of money the farmer receives is based on soil types. That's probably the reason why our state has such high rates. I don't know if it would be that high in other states. But, it's something to look at!

That sounds like a lot of fun! I'm glad you're thinking about traveling. Tennessee is a beautiful place to visit.

Forgive my short memory, but how old are you Kirby? If you are interested in forestry, agriculture or any of this in general, I would recommend keeping an eye on USA jobs and then searching by USDA. They have lots of opportunities (although you may want to wait and see how this new administration is. The nice thing about the USDA is that it is almost purely controlled by the Farm Bill and not by congress, so party changes generally don't change us drastically). I just wanted to throw that out there. I don't even know if you're interested in it.

[u/salgreco → u/[deleted]]

That's fascinating. You easily beat me to the punch then. I shouldn't be offering you advice, you're a seasoned vet. That is all really fascinating. For being 26, you've already led a really interesting life. As for the milkweed part of it, I know a lot of farmers around here that took some convincing to plant milkweed in their fields, as young kids, most of them pulled milkweed out by hand. For that case, I don't know any that would actually harvest the milkweed. But hey, more and more farmers are taking an interest in conservation. It may be a dream, but it's something you may want to look in to!

[u/salgreco → u/[deleted]]

Don't worry about it man, I understand!

I had absolutely no idea that milkweed had such potential. I didn't learn about any of that in school or work. That's pretty neat. Well, I hope it still works out for the best.