Experience Through Exposure
I’ve been fortunate over the past month to travel on two, very different trips, both of which have provided me insight to policy challenges and useful management practices I can utilize on our own farm and in my advocacy efforts.
The first adventure was ten days in Europe with the Partners in Advocacy Leadership (PAL) program through the American Farm Bureau Federation. For my nine classmates and me, the majority of our time was devoted to an intensive case-study of Brexit, potential effects on agricultural trade, and the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity the United Kingdom has to create new farm policy from scratch. We started our meetings at the new, beautiful US Embassy in London, where we met with USDA staff members if efforts of learning more background of the Brexit referendum and the events leading up to that fateful vote in 2016. We went on to visit with the UK’s Defra, which is similar to our USDA, and learned about their bureaucratic and policy development challenges.
After a broad introduction to the bureaucratic dynamics at play, we then traveled to Warwickshire and me with staff members of the National Farmers Union, which is an organization structured very similarly to the American Farm Bureau Federation. While in the country, we also met with a vertically-integrated family farm, on which two generations of family members work alongside each other in raising their crops, caring for the cattle, grinding and bagging canola straw to retail as bedding, and manufacturing farm implements. The sheer creativity and innovation this family employs to remain a viable farming business is inspiring to say the least! We also visited a produce processing plant where, in spite of still-dormant crops across Europe, they were still packaging onions and radishes sourced from their company farms in Africa.
We went onto Brussels, where we received briefings from policy-makers, lobbyists and researchers working within the European Union structure, and heard a much more critical and skeptical account of the Brexit efforts. One of the policy-makers we visited is the Irish Minister of Agriculture. Given that Ireland is already 102% self-sufficient, one of their main concerns with potential Brexit ramifications is that they become 116% self-sufficient, and in turn have to find a new market for over 230,000 tons of agricultural products that are currently exported to the UK.
While in Belgium, we were fortunate to visit with Bayer researchers and tour one of their Bayer ForwardFarms, on which farmers and staff members work together to implement sustainable management practices and technologies to stay ahead of Europe’s ever-tightening regulations on the uses of chemicals and technology.
While my trip to Europe focused primarily on policy development, the Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation’s Livestock Advisory Committee’s Beef Tour to Oklahoma was a great opportunity for the nearly 50 participants, including my husband and me, to study more aspects of management. One of our more notable tours was of one of the Noble Foundation’s ranches, on which the staff performs research with the goal of making farmers and ranchers more profitable while focusing on soil and herd health. The work we saw at the Noble Foundation was similar to work being done on the Bayer FowardFarm in Belgium, but rather than being driven by increased social skepticism and ever increasing regulations, the Noble Foundation work focused on continuing innovation. One of those innovations we learned of was the Integrity Beef Program, through which a group of farmers and ranchers across multiple states with similar production techniques collaborate for enhanced marketing abilities through verified sales and collaborating on load lots.
While on the trip, we also visited Oklahoma Steel and Wire, Express Ranches, Pfeiffer Angus Ranch, and the Pjesky Stocker Operation. Ryan and Hope Pjesky provided vast insight for both my husband and me, relative to our own stocker cattle and my advocacy efforts as Hope was a member of PAL Class 3. Ryan focuses on mitigating the risk of the cattle market through continued buying and selling. That kind of risk management is a similar approach we’re attempting to implement on our own farm. Oklahoma Steel and Wire is a storybook tale of family determination and creation, as they’re in their third generation and create in-house most of the machines they depend upon. We also took quick tours of Oklahoma State University’s Purebred Research Farm, Feedlot Research Station and Range Cow Research Station, all of which were inspiring to the younger generation of cattlemen interested in careers in the beef industry in a time in which it’s difficult for the younger generation to find their path. We did include some fun stops on this tour, including the Oklahoma City National Stockyards, the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum and the Fort Worth Stockyards.
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While these were two, very different trips, the important thing is, when presented, to take the opportunity to broaden your exposure and hopefully acquire knowledge you can bring back to and implement on your own farm.
Trips like these can give you ideas so you can make changes on and off the farm. So, if you have the opportunity to travel and learn, take it.