In her 21 years working with Nebraska Extension, Jennifer Brhel has learned a lot from her failures and successes, her colleagues and Nebraska farmers.
“The biggest thing that I've learned in my extension career is that we are in the people business,” Brhel said. “Everything that we do revolves around relationships. And so these people that I serve, a lot of them I would call friends. And it’s just a really beautiful thing because we get to work with a lot of good people in agriculture.”
Brhel is a crop and water systems extension educator for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln who serves Fillmore, Seward and York counties. She has spent 21 years with Nebraska Extension, responsible for diagnosing issues, providing reassurance and helping farmers design and implement on-farm research, a topic she says she is passionate about.
“I grew up on a small farm north of Norfolk, Nebraska in Hoskins,” Brhel said. “That's where I learned to love the farm, the outdoors and working with farmers.”
That love prevailed throughout her life, leading her to earn her bachelor’s in agronomy and crop protection and her master’s in plant pathology from Nebraska. Brhel said she always thought she would become a crop consultant, but after several internships, she knew what she was looking for in a job and began searching for the perfect fit.
“I spoke with my graduate advisor and I said I don't want to sell things and I really like research, but I need to be around people more,” Brhel said. “I need to be around farmers.”
Her graduate advisor suggested she pursue a career in extension, a field Brhel did not know she could pursue professionally. Throughout her master’s program, she took opportunities to speak at field days and work in a diagnostic lab to prepare for a career where every day is different.
“I let the calls dictate my schedule,” Brhel said. “There’s been times I’ve served 10 counties at a time and it’s a lot, but often I’ll get calls when I’m in that county already which is really cool. That’s just how it’s worked for 21 years, honestly.”
But not everything in Brhel’s job is spontaneous. Scheduled checks on on-farm research fields and data collection are a huge part of her day-to-day responsibilities. On-farm research is a type of research that farmers conduct with the help of extension educators and specialists.
“As extension educators and specialists, we walk alongside them and help them design a study in their own field using their own equipment,” Brhel said.
It’s a way for farmers to get answers to their questions and apply the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture’s current research to their fields, while also helping the department collect data that will continue to serve farmers.
As one of the few extension educators in her region with an agronomy background, Brhel is overwhelmed at times with the number of calls she gets, but one of the benefits of working in extension is that she and her colleagues are constantly learning and expanding their skillsets to better serve the agriculture community.
“None of us have all the answers, but we can rely on each other,” Brhel said.
Brhel is an Extension Educator Affiliate in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture. This is a new program to strengthen connections between extension educators and department faculty in research, teaching and extension activities.
