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Tom Allen sits at his desk during his first week of work as a Hill County MSU Extension Agent this morning in Havre.
The newest Hill County Extension Agent is no stranger to the work he will be doing.
"When there was an opening here I just thought, it would be a nice fit in going back and doing extension again. I'm not getting any younger," Hill County Extension Agriculture Agent/4-H Agent Tom Allen said, laughing.
The Ag/4-H position has been empty since March of this year. Allen started Monday and his duties, which will include working with farmers and ranchers, producers in the agriculture and natural resources fields, as well as sharing 4-H youth development responsibilities.
Allen said his duties also will include making sure the producers, farmers and ranchers receive information and assistance. He added that he will be able to provide more direct contact between the extension office and producers in Hill County because producers can come with to him with disease questions, crop rotation questions and more.
His job also includes partnering with Family & Consumer Sciences Extension Agent/4-H Agent Jasmine Carbajal in the 4-H program.
For the past seven years, Allen had been working at the Northern Agricultural Research Center at Fort Assiniboine, where he was the farm operations manager for which his duties included mainly farming.
His background is heavily focused in the agricultural arena.
"I've always been in agriculture my whole life," Allen said.
He said, growing up, his family had a family farm in the area between Big Sandy and Box Elder.
In 1988, he attended the College of Agriculture at Montana State University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in agriculture education extension.
After earning his bachelor's degree, he worked for Gregg Carlson at NARC for 12 years, then went on to working in private industry for a couple years, before returning to MSU to pursue a master's degree. He graduated in 2005 with a master's in plant sciences.
"I've been with Montana State in one form or another since 1988," he said.
He said at MSU, President Waded Cruzado calls the university a land grant university with three legs. First, there is the teaching component, which Allen went through getting his degree and graduating, second, there is the research leg, which he completed through his work with experiment station, and thirdly is the outreach section, which is under extension.
He added that he has done all three.
Allen had also been a county agent before in both Chester in Liberty County and Fort Benton in Chouteau County and said he enjoyed it.
"The function of extension is basically to take the research that Montana State University generates and get it out to the producers, the public and the people of Montana," Allen said.
He said he is looking forward to being an extension agent again.
"I don't know what else I would do if I wasn't working in agriculture," he said.
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