WHEATFIELD, Ind. – He’s in for a lot more traveling but a Purdue Extension educator couldn’t feel more at home with his move up the ladder at the agency. Bryan Overstreet is Purdue Extension’s new soil conservation coordinator for northern Indiana.

His final day at the extension office in Jasper County was March 31. Overstreet was an Ag and Natural Resources Educator in the county since 2005 and served as both educator and extension director at the office in Rensselaer the past seven years.

Overstreet said he applied for the soil conservation coordinator job when he discovered the opening because it was a chance to get up close and more personal again with agriculture.

 “I’m excited about my new position.  I’m looking forward to it,” he said.

He grew up helping his father, Walter, raise mostly corn and soybeans on the family’s more than 600-acre farm in Parke County on the west side of the state.

His bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Purdue University are in agronomy.

Overstreet said he will be involved in soil conservation from one side of the state to the other on farms north of Indianapolis. He’ll also serve as a resource for soil and water conservation districts and extension offices in counties in the same region.

As an extension educator, Overstreet worked to provide farmers with answers on matters related to their crops and soil. He also assisted non-farmers with a wide range of things like gardening and lawn care. His other duties included helping with 4-H projects during the fair.

Overstreet said he enjoyed being an extension educator, but he wanted more of a shift toward agriculture before the curtain closes on his long career in the industry.

“This way, I can focus on my passion of conservation, tillage and cover crops and work with farmers across the state,” he said.

Overstreet said his main objective is adding to the growing list of farmers planting cover crops and taking other measures to conserve and replenish the soil.

During visits with farmers, he wants to educate them about things like how no-till farming and planting cover crops such as wheat in normally bare fields during winter reduce erosion.

Overstreet said the plant matter keeps the soil from washing away in storm run-off and depositing fertilizer and chemicals from the previous growing season into the ditches, rivers and streams.

Overstreet said the roots of cover crops while they’re growing, along with decaying plant matter, also return nutrients to the soil.

He said cover crops and no-till farming might seem like new concepts but were practiced in similar ways before commercial fertilizer became the primary source of nitrogen in the fields.

Overstreet said commercial fertilizer provides the crops with plenty of nutrients but not the soil deprived of adequate nutrition from decades of tilling and lack of year-round plant growth.

The benefits of natural fertility include not having to use as much fertilizer and possibly achieving better results at harvest from plants responding better to lower amounts of man-made nutrients.

“We’ve been, basically, beating the crap out of the soil for 80 to 100 years and there’s just not the biology and the life in it that there was 100 years ago,” he said.

Limiting erosion also reduces sediment build up and dredging of waterways.

Originally, his plan was to make a living at the family farm after college, but he went another route because of how difficult the economy was for agriculture during the late 1980s.

He remembered the advice given to him as a child from his grandfather, Clarence, who taught agriculture before starting the family farm in the 1940s. “Grandpa encouraged me to give ag education a try,” he said.

His first job was delivering starter fertilizer at the Jasper County Coop, where he later served as a crop sales specialist for 15-years.

He went on become a forage service technician at a state park and nature center outside Lafayette, where he also performed research related to corn and soybean seeds. Overstreet also served on the Jasper County Planning Commissioner after becoming an extension educator. “I’ve done a lot of things,” he said.

Overstreet said trying to provide answers to questions in a timely manner is one of the things he’s most proud of during his time at the Jasper County extension.

He also spoke highly about helping to establish guidelines for how confined animal feeding operations should operate as good neighbors to surrounding landowners.

“I worked on a couple of ordinances over the years. Hopefully, I left the county in better condition than before I came,” he said.

Overstreet also chuckled about unusual questions people occasionally asked such as whether a permit was needed to keep a bear on their property.

He was once called by a woman to identify a spider she just killed with her shoe.

“You never know what calls you’re going to get when you pick up that phone,” he said.