Welcome to Blaine County MSU Extension

Published: 2019
By Julianne Snedigar

Blaine County is located in North Central Montana. The Missouri River is the southern boundary and the Canadian border provides the northern boundary. Agriculture is the backbone of Blaine County, with cattle and wheat as the primary enterprises. Blaine County produces over 5.7 million bushels of wheat each year from 190,000 planted acres. There are 45,000 mother cows in the county supported by an irrigated hay base of over 60,000 acres located along the Milk River, enhanced by irrigation supplied by the Corps of Engineers St. Mary’s diversion project. Population in Blaine County stands at just over 6,700 people with approximately half of these residing on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. Blaine County MSU Extension serves the community through a variety of programming carried out by two full-time Extension Agents, a part time SNAP-Ed paraprofessional and a full-time administrative assistant. Programming is concentrated in the areas of 4-H Youth Development, Agriculture and Family Consumer Sciences. The MSU Extension program is supported through an annual county budget which includes a portion of the agent’s salary along with MSU's direct support of the agent’s salary. MSU also supports the program indirectly and the county benefits with returned services for every dollar invested. This is truly a partnership between MSU and Blaine County that provides citizens access to high quality education and knowledge from the state’s land-grant university system.