i just quit our RCD out of disgust with the board, and NRCS for pushing the organic agenda. after the national soil survey was done, the NRCS needed to maintain employment levels, instead of say, reducing the department by 50%, they found a new mission. plus, with all the soil science majors in the pipeline, how could they maintain that program as well. Our NRCS office, does very little but dole out money for fencing, water piping projects and similar projects but of course imposes restrictions, tracks your property with GPS, logs it in the public record so anti farming lobbyiests can post the freeloaters in the local paper.
So, the original goal was to do a soil survey, now, it's to push the environmental agenda so you can't remove noxious weeds from your own property in watershed areas, and the government won't do it either, without a massive input of capital and personnel, and lifetime benefits for employees. you can't believe the number of people and time it takes to remove arundo from creek banks.
there truly is no government program that can be termed out.
the NRCS constantly has to deal with, and rationalize how to spend money to support existing personnel levels, and in our case, actually increase it. they are usually staffed, in california, by enviro's and for the most part, ranchers and farmers don't like dealing with them as they don't trust them. in our neck of the woods, the ranchers don't like the hobby farmers and large acreage pretend farmers, ie 1-40 acre parcels, as these are responsible for erosion, excess pesticide use, usually off label, weeds, etc. but since the ranchers are the obvious violators of global warming and every other special interest group, they are an easy target.
there, got my grump on for the day!