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Success for a Cooperative Extension professional strongly depends on the ability to develop an extension program that addresses issues and priorities relevant to the local community they serve. This requires the professional to understand the community's socio-economic dynamics, knowledge gaps and vision by conducting a needs assessment. A needs assessment is conducted to identify interests and attitudes (McCawley 2009) of a particular group. They can be implemented as formal or informal interviews, surveys, focus groups or working groups. Information acquired from needs assessments is invaluable in helping new extension professionals focus their research and extension programs on real issues. As two new Livestock and Natural Resources Advisors, we are conducting needs assessments with livestock producers in California's Central Valley (Mariposa, Merced, Madera counties) and on California's Central Coast (San Benito, Monterey, Santa Cruz counties). Although we are using different survey methods, we are finding valuable information about the local ecosystems, production systems, past research and extension programs and issues producers need addressed. Preliminary results from both areas indicate that ranchers have a strong interest in issues related to weed management, predator-livestock conflict, livestock health and nutrition, rangeland management and laws and regulations. In the Central Coast, ranchers are also interested in issues related to water quantity and quality, soil health and educating the public about livestock production. In the Central valley producers are also interested in niche marketing of livestock and drought management. These results begin to capture the complexity of issues that producers deal with and that advisors need to address if they want to attract the interest of the producer. Knowing the issues also enable the advisors to anticipate and identify important collaborators needed to effectively address the diverse issues, some of them outside their area of specialization.