From Heads and Hearts to Executives and Engagement

I’m in my first year as a Cloverbud leader for my daughter’s 4-H Club. Of course, she’s a legacy. From the moment I showed my first calf, Browndale HR Kimmie-Red, as a kindergartener, I was hooked. I spent my life as a 4-H’er, and its teachings shore up my work today. I am proud to watch her engage with concepts like sustainability and food systems. That’s my career, and thanks to 4-H, we can spend time engaging multiple generations with wide-ranging conversations on our food systems and the essential role agriculture continues to play in our lives.

While my daughter was excited to learn about pollinators and plants at one of our last gatherings, I’m excited about the forward-thinking speakers I learned from at the recent Women in Agribusiness Summit. Beyond inspiration, being in a room with a successful and vastly diverse group of women in agriculture was an opportunity to look deeply at the culture shift in agriculture and the overall transformation of women in business. We heard from driven women who run large companies, address diversity in their daily roles and mentor the next generation of women in ag.

Throughout the three-day summit I was invigorated, enlightened and optimistic about the diverse business opportunities in agriculture. And as proof of the size of the ag universe, I went from Cloverbuds to Women in Ag to World Dairy Expo in barely two weeks’ time.

Every day, my work in agriculture allows me to combat the disconnection that consumers have with agriculture today. Specifically, by working in sustainability and issues management, I can help frame agriculture’s vulnerabilities into opportunities.

That disconnect was also a thesis at Women in Ag. Beth Ford, group executive vice president and chief operating officer at Land O’Lakes, provided a riveting keynote that included the stat that only 3 percent of college grads say they have or would consider a career in agriculture. To call this disheartening is an understatement. If we are ever to combat the misconceptions in agriculture and the idea that our career options are not diverse and engaging, we need to reach urban communities and tout the noble and important work we do.

Jack A. Bobo, senior vice president and chief communications officer at Intrexon, also provided insight on the number of people who go hungry every day. Every four seconds, someone dies from hunger. That is 9 million lives per year. For us in the agriculture industry, affecting this statistic should be why we get up in the morning. We are tasked with keeping a growing population alive under constantly limiting constraints as water and viable nutrients become rationed commodities. Our global population relies on our passion and innovation. How do we collectively express to the other 97 percent of college grads that the hardest, most strategic, most essential job you’ll ever have is likely in agriculture?

Companies need the same spirit of refreshment that this week in ag has given me. From teaching the next generation to learning from women who have successfully catapulted agribusiness into its next phase, I’ve learned that agriculture remains simultaneously a community event and a global necessity. How can we inspire agricultural businesses to ask themselves how they can disrupt “it’s always been done that way” and engage and inspire in new ways? From dairy management to crop protection to sustainability and issues management, and even my daughter’s pollinators, the opportunities are vast. The 4-H pledge should remind us that the importance of agriculture’s mission is truly “for my club, my community, my country and my world,” and rising to that sustainability challenge is one of the best jobs we could ever have.