In the last 40 years, agriculture has gone through some tremendous changes, and Paul Kassel has been along for the ride helping farmers. Kassel retired in 2021 after 37 years as an Iowa State University Extension agronomist, but these days he's putting his agronomy education to work running his own farm.

Education has always been important to Kassel. He graduated ISU in 1978, and then returned to get his master’s degree, which he earned in 1981. During his graduate school years, Kassel says his claim to fame was being the curriculum adviser for the Farm Operation program at ISU. That program provides farmers the opportunity to spend some time on campus beefing up their farm knowledge.

"I joined Extension in June 1981 as an Extension crop production specialist," Kassel recalls. And he rattles off some well-known ISU names, people who were with him from the beginning during those early years,  including Steve Johnson, a longtime farm management expert at ISU who retired in 2021.

Farm Progress isn’t calling Kassel a name-dropper, but he does note that Wendy Wintersteen was working in Extension in those early years, too. Today of course, Wintersteen is president of ISU, named to that post in 2017.

A break from Extension

In the middle of the 1980s, when the farm crisis hit, the Extension service got a reorganization. "It was kind of dramatic," Kassel recalls. "You had the whole farm crisis and bad grain prices — and along with everything else an Extension reorganization."

During that tumult, Kassel left Extension and went to work at Pioneer Hi-Bred International as a regional sales agronomist, working with farmers mostly in southeast South Dakota. And while he enjoyed those days, and learned quite a bit, the call of Extension beckoned.

"I went to Pioneer in 1986, but returned to Extension in 1989," Kassel says. "It was a great experience at Pioneer; it's a great company. But I just missed Extension."

His return to Extension had Kassel working out of Storm Lake; but as Extension continued to reorganize into the early 1990s, he moved to Spencer, where he farms today.

Originally from Ayrshire, Kassel notes that his father and brother still farm today. But in the early 1990s, when he moved closer to home, he approached his family about joining the family farm. With a grin, he notes he recalls reaching out to his brother about coming back to help farm. "My older brother says, 'Nah, you find a farm over there.'"

Adding employees to a farm can create challenges; perhaps his brother knew that. But Kassel still wanted to farm, and near Spencer, a piece of ground became available. "I was very fortunate to have an opportunity here," Kassel notes. "We bought this acreage and rented the land around it in 1994," he says. "Jim Vollmer was the guy who made that arrangement. We rented his equipment to farm that ground."

Since then he's worked to add more ground, expanding the corn and soybean operation, all the while working as an Extension agronomist.

The drive to Extension

Kassel explains he was pulled to Extension because of the ability to work across a range of topics in agronomy. "You got to do the whole gamut of agronomy — pest management, soils," he notes. While working for a company was a great experience, Kassel likes the independence of Extension.

One driver for Kassel was working in an office. That Pioneer job, though a solid experience, had him working at home. "I prefer going into an office," Kassel says.

Working in Extension, Kassel recalls some highlights. For example, in his area of Iowa they were the first to see extended diapause in corn rootworm. "That actually began in northwest Iowa," Kassel recalls. "We did a whole research study on that in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Then came the soybean aphid thing, and a lot of that was just 'Should I spray or not spray?' And the answer was, probably, you should have sprayed."

But where Kassel got enjoyment from his job was working with research. "The fun part is kind of taking the research and making it applicable," he says. Often research looks good on paper, but in application there can be challenges, he adds.

Kassel notes that sometimes in working with farmers, the message was to move from defensive approaches to offensive tactics. "Sometimes there are things you should be doing to make more money rather than trying not to spend money," he recalls. "People don't expect that kind of advice from Extension."

Engaging technology

In his Extension career, Kassel has seen communication change, where everything is available online. And he's embraced that with his own Twitter handle (@PaulKassel) and uses LinkedIn to stay connected. "When I was in Extension, we did the crop blog, and [now] we just write the article and post it; we're not mailing anything anymore," he says.

That turn to technology continues now that he's farming, using new tools to evaluate crops and practices on the farm. Kassel has a long history of helping farmers make sense of pests from insects to weeds. And while he's stepped away, many farmers in Northwest Iowa are better off for the information he's provided.