The Value of a Passion for Agriculture

Yesterday I had the privilege of speaking at the Harrisburg High School FFA’s annual banquet.

I asked on facebook what I should talk about, I got a variety of answers  so I tried to touch on all of it.

Nine years ago I walked the halls of this high school.  Since then I have worked as a cheese maker, milk truck driver, pasteurizer, lobbyists’ intern, Farm Credit banker and now farmer.  I graduated from Washington State University in 2008 with two degrees one in General Agriculture and one in Agricultural Economics & Management. I am currently president of Oregon Women for Agriculture and an AgChat Foundation Board member.

All of that wouldn’t be possible without agriculture and following what I am passionate about.

I love talking about agriculture and issues facing farmers and ranchers. I love using social media.  I often use social media to talk about farming.

In 2009 I joined twitter to participate in a weekly twitter conversation about agriculture called #Agchat.  Little did I know what a few tweets would turn into.  I started a blog in February 2011 to expand on my tweets and facebook posts.  In August 2011 I attended my first AgChat Foundation AgVocacy 2.0 conference.

The mission of the AgChat Foundation is to “Empower farmers and ranchers through social media.” The conferences offer training to better your social media skills and use them to engage others about farming, ranching and where their food comes from.  In December of 2011 they asked me to be on their board.

I now chair the #agchat & #Foodchat conversations on twitter. #Agchat happens every Tuesday from 5 pm to 7 pm except every 3^rd Tuesday when #FoodChat takes place.   In June, I am going to New York City on behalf of the AgChat Foundation to another type of social media conference to discuss knowing your farmer through the twitter chats.

It is amazing where following your passion will lead you.  I encourage you to do just that.  Find your passion and live it.

If you are passionate about agriculture then there are limitless possibilities of where that could lead you.  Ag offers variety of opportunities and options.

Currently 1 in 8 jobs in Oregon are tied to agriculture.  While not everyone can be a farmer and not everyone can be an ag banker.  If you want to pursue a career in agriculture it’s more than possible.   Look at the variety of jobs I had in the past 9 years, they all involved agriculture of some type.

My freshman year of college I was not quite sure the direction I wanted to go in.   A mentor told me to get a degree in Agriculture because a politic science degree was a dime a dozen.  And it was true.  I graduated right when a recession was happening.  My friends who didn’t have experience or a degree in agriculture had trouble finding jobs.  While the majority of us “ag kids” had jobs lined up.

Bottom line is that the experience you are getting being involved in FFA and ultimately agriculture is priceless to the success of your future.

Lessons in Trolling

“Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the differance”
― Mark Twain

I have been guilty of the above quote once or twice.   This weekend was a prime example of that.

Often times I browse the Anti-GMO facebook pages to keep up to date on any activities they may be up to.  A majority or all of the time I do not agree with what they have to say.  But it’s important to know where they are coming from and how they are approaching the topic of biotechnology.

Here’s what happened.

I saw this:

I thought, “Two can play this game.”  I commented on their post with the link below as an example of correlation does not mean causation.

They appeared to take offense to me…personally.

I woke up Sunday morning to this:

Their facebook post about me was actually quite long.  It contained several facts about my life, what organizations I was involved with and a recent tweet I had retweeted.  Of course it was information anyone could have gathered by a simple google search.  All the same, I feel like they were trying to discredit and attack me.

My bogus “Organic food causes Autism” link had rubbed someone the wrong way.  I thought I was being humorous & facetious.  However, I was inadvertently being counterproductive to any possibility of a reasonable discussion.

Simply put, I was acting like a troll. From that point on anything that I said of substance was mute.

My first exchange with this page should not have been one of  sarcasm and satire.

Truth be told I should have never made contact at all.  Often times groups and pages like these are the fringe, the 5% of people who passionately believe in their cause and no amount of evidence will sway them.  If I choose to interact with these pages or groups again I will keep responses tempered in facts and experiences, not one of frivolous rhetoric.

Lesson learned.

Related Articles: 

• How to Starve A Troll (DailyPost)

Blog Overhaul — In progress

I admire people who go above and beyond to help others be successful.   It truly takes a special type of person.

Judi Graff is one of these types of people. She loves to help people like me figure out how to make their blog better.

During the month of March a few of us joined what I like to call a “Blog Boot Camp”.  Like most boot camps (usually fitness oriented) my participation dwindled at the end.  However unlike my workout routine,  I will still work at blog improvement using the tips I learned and continue to reference the secret “Blog Overhaul” Facebook group.

Through her suggestions and instructions I have revamped my “About” page, added a “Contact” page and cleaned up my side bar.  I will continue to work on how the blog appears to a readers’ eye along with making behind the scenes adjustments to draw additional traffic.

I have learned blogging doesn’t have to be hard, you just have to know what you’re doing.  :)

People like Judi Graff help make blogging easier.  Thanks Judi for all you do!

Read more about the Blog Overhaul and blogs & bloggers involved on Janice Person’s blog:  “How Do You Make Your Blog Better? Time, Effort & Shared Expertise”

Adult Conversations

 

“It’s time for us to have an adult conversation with folks in rural America,” Vilsack [U.S. Secretary of Agriculture] said in a speech at a forum sponsored by the Farm Journal.

I would love to have some “adult conversations” with Secretary Vilsack, Secretary Solis, Lisa Jackson and President Obama. Come on over. We, rural America, are talking, some might even say we are talking very loudly. However, the majority of us feel like no one is listening.

Secretary Solis, I would love to know why the Department of Labor has not responded to the Oregon Congressional Delegation. They asked the DOL over 6 months ago about their underhanded tactics & lack of due process in the Oregon Hot Goods Case. Congressman Walden has even made a plea on the House floor. Secretary Solis, we are adults and we deserve answers.

Lisa Jackson, where to begin, you have so many issues and regulations to oversee. You control one the largest agencies in the United States government, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Currently the definition of point & non-point pollution is up for discussion in the Supreme Court and the EPA. The current definition and Best Management Practices are sufficient enough. I know you have a lot of pressure on you to expand the reach of the Clean Water Act to waterways beyond navigable and into our farm ditches. Lisa, we’re willing to talk to you about these issues, please come see us, we can also talk about pesticides!

President Obama, I think you need to be at these discussions as well because you are the Commander-in-Chief. You appointed these guys, we need you on the side of America’s farmers & ranchers, the heart of rural America. Also while you here, a nice discussion about the future of the federal estate tax would be great. There’s only about 98% of all farms, that are 100% family farms that the death tax will affect.

Back to you, Secretary Vilsack, I thought you were the spokesperson for rural America and Agriculture. During this same speech you referred to rural America as “becoming less and less relevant.” You also

…criticized farmers who have embraced wedge issues such as regulation, citing the uproar over the idea that the Environmental Protection Agency was going to start regulating farm dust after the Obama administration said repeatedly it had no so such intention.

In his Washington speech, he also cited criticism of a proposed Labor Department regulation, later dropped, that was intended to keep younger children away from the most dangerous farm jobs, and criticism of egg producers for dealing with the Humane Society on increasing the space that hens have in their coops. Livestock producers fearing they will be the next target of animal rights advocates have tried to undo that agreement.

Secretary, these are issues we are facing on a daily basis on our farms and ranches and we need your support not your criticism. You really confuse me because just 4 months ago you were praising rural America and being the heart of this country. I agree we need to do our part of telling our story, but having an advocate high up on the chain would not hurt us either.

Rural America, the farmers and ranchers, who provide food on your table want to have real, adult conversations. Washington D.C. we promise to continue to do our best to tell our stories if you quit making decisions that affect and insult us without consulting us.

We would really appreciate an adult conversation.

***UPDATE: USDA Virtual Office Hours, join Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack this Monday, December 17 at 3:30 p.m. EDT for a live Twitter chat on the important role of rural America to the national and global economy, increasing agricultural opportunities in U.S. communities, and the importance of passing a five-year Farm Bill.

Related articles

• USDA Chief: Rural America Is Becoming Less Relevant (businessinsider.com)
• Is Rural America Less Relevant? (http://gilmerdairy.blogspot.com/)

Practice what you Preach

It’s hard to do, practicing what you preach.

A couple weeks ago I started attempting to make appointments with United States Representatives & Senators for when I was in Washington D.C. for American AgriWomen‘s (AAW) Annual Fly in.  I admit, I didn’t try very hard to make appointments with those who don’t hold the same political views as me.  However, I did make the effort to stop by their office and say hi.  During these visits we learned that Senator Merkley had coffee with constituents at 9 am every Thursday, which happened to be the next day. Senator Merkley is what one would consider liberal or far left and some may consider me conservative or more right leaning.

When I woke in the morning my idealistic “I am going to change the world” attitude was not quite as “gung-ho” as the day before.  I toiled with the idea of not going. I mean, really they are not going to agree with me so what’s the point, right?  Right. No, wrong!!  How hypocritical of me to be a part of multiple organizations that encourage folks to tell their story and go beyond the choir and I am not expecting the same out of myself? Hmmm…

Needless to say, I showed up.

One of AAW’s key issues was the Federal Estate Tax, at the end of this year the current rate will expire and return to  55% tax and a $1 Million dollar exemption level.   I am one of the chief petitioners for End Oregon’s Death Tax and also feel very passionately about reforming the Federal Death Tax as well, mind you these are two different taxes.   AAW asks for complete elimination or at least an exemption and tax rate that is reasonable. While in DC, I spoke with Senator Wyden‘s aide, Congressman Defazio‘s aide and Congressman Walden about this issue.

I try to not let politicians intimidate me. I have always told myself politicians are just people and should be talked to like people. (Insert jokes here) That’s also what I say when I encourage others to contact their representatives in government.

At Senator Merkley’s office I spoke with the finance advisor, the chief of staff and Senator Merkley himself about the estate tax issue. They all agreed that something needed to be done about it but didn’t agree that elimination was the answer.   According to them, the founding fathers intended for their to be an estate tax.  Oddly enough history shows that any estate tax since the beginning of being a nation has been repealed and the current one has been in flux for the past 90 years. (Side note, the best thing I have learned when someone tries to trip you up with a comment like the founding fathers one, just stick to what you know and continue telling your story.)

All three were very sincere and concerned about my family farm and small business. They wanted to work to find a solution as they agreed current exemption was not enough.  Also they were really glad that I was not “Big Ag”  and was continuing on my family’s legacy because not many had that opportunity.  That was very interesting considering 98% of farms in the United States are family owned & operated.

I did learn from the Senator’s natural resource aide there is that they are trying to get a “goose amendment” in the farm bill.  In the recent years the geese have become a real problem in area for farmers. It’ll be interesting to see what it all entails.  The geese virtually wipe out crops, read about here in my friend Brenda’s blog post.

While the staff was pleasant, courteous and somewhat knowledgeable, I couldn’t help but observe that it appeared that a lot of them weren’t from Oregon.  In fact the natural resource aide was from rural Maryland and received a Master in Forestry from Yale.  I realize the east coast has trees as well but there are very distinct differences.  Just some food for thought.

While I slightly dragged my feet on meeting with the Senator, it was definitely worth it.  I started a conversation with possible further discussion about the death tax and I learned about the goose farm bill amendment.  Is he going to support total elimination of the federal death tax? Probably not.  Will he remember me? Maybe not this time ,but probably by the 3rd or 4th time. Will he think of me as a family farmer? Yes. Will I continue to meet with people who do not hold my same views? Absolutely.

“It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.”  -Eleanor Roosevelt

Telling my story to Senator Merkley

How Twitter Changed my Life

I joined twitter March 21st of 2009.  I have tweeted 12,500+ times since then or roughly about 11 times a day.

I don’t remember what my first tweet was nor do I remember when I sent it, I think it was somewhere in mid ’09 to beginning of ’10.  I do remember when I started becoming really active. A friend, who blogged & was very active in the Young Washington Cattleman’s, encouraged me to become more active and start participating in this thing called #AgChat.  She explained this was a hashtag or topic used to discuss all things agriculture & they have a weekly chat on Tuesday’s from 5pm to 7pm PST.

According to a data dude I know, I started using the “#agchat” on tweets relating to agriculture in March of ’10.  This makes sense as I attended Syngenta’s Leadership At Its Best through American AgriWomen in April of 2010 and had my first “tweetup” with Michele Payn-Knoper (@mpaynknoper) & Cari Rincker (@CariRincker).  Of course we didn’t call it a tweetup and it was my first experience meeting the strangers I followed.  It was at this event in North Carolina I learned social media from Michele. I am fairly certain after this event my obsession…er…I mean…my interest in social media skyrocketed.

Over the next year I tweeted like a maniac. I would share things about agriculture, particupate in #agchat’s, and talk about every day things as well. There were numerous conversations with people from around the country discussing various topics.  I was gaining followers and finding other neat & exciting people to follow.  Many times I wanted to elaborate more than 140 characters on a subject or not bore my facebook friends with long posts so I started contemplating a blog.

In February ’11 I took that step. Thanks to Jeff Fowle (@JeffFowle), a social media friend I had never met, we came up with the title Oregon Green! Now I just needed to figure out what I wanted to write about.  Then I saw an article about how today’s women weren’t involved in “Big Ag”.  As a woman who agriculture is part of my being, I responded with my first blog post, “Women in ‘Big Ag’”.

I continued to build relationships & friendships through twitter. Having serious & silly conversations with folks.  In August ’11, I was fortunate enough to attend AgVocacy 2.0 presented by the AgChat Foundation. This is where my people or tweeps who I called friends actually became friends. I would attempt to name them all but afraid I would leave someone out but you all know who you are!

Since attending AgVocacy 2.0, my life has been a social media blur. In December ’11 I was asked to join the AgChat Foundation board, moderated #AgChat’s and have had several more “tweet-ups”.

Most recently I road-tripped down to Califonia to meet two social media friends, Megan Brown (@megraeb) & Jenny Dewey (@jenlynndewey).  The authenticity of the people I meet via twitter never ceases to astound me and Megan & Jenny were no exceptions to that.  I hope this next year bring many more “tweeps”  in real life. 

The social media social network I have created for myself in the last 3 years blows my mind.  My world has become much smaller that’s for sure.  Twitter & social media have advanced my professional opportunities, gave me a chance to spread the word of Oregon Agriculture and most importantly tell my story.

A Legacy of AgVocacy

I wrote this post a little less than a year ago.  Today, Feb. 19th, 2013, my great grandma passed away.  What a great life she had. 

Forty-three years ago, in 1969, a group of unstoppable women formed Oregon Women for Agriculture (OWA), one of them being my Great-Grandma Charity. As she describes it, she received a phone call from Mary Holzapfel saying women were coming to her house to discuss what they could do to fight & educate the people who wished to end field burning. A practice that is vital to producing quality grass seed. The women realized they had to do it because the men were to busy in the fields that time of year to do much.

As they organized no one was stepping up to be president so my great-grandma did. My great-grandma Charity is one of the best women I know. She is 96 years old and still remembers, in detail, going over the Santiam Pass in a wagon in the early 1920′s at seven years old so her dad could farm the land we still farm. One of the original rocking rural women!

On Saturday, my grandparents drove my Great Grandma nearly two hours to come see me installed as president of Oregon Women for Agriculture. I was so excited to see her there, so were her friends and so was she! Women of all ages still actively participate in OWA.

During my installation my mom surprised me and caught me off guard. She presented me with my Great-grandma Charity’s past president pin. I shed some tears, not an easy thing for me to do.

Past & Present

Great-grandma Charity & me!

I believe I have the same passion that group of women shared back in 1969 when founding Oregon Women for Agriculture: we need communicate our story of today’s agriculture so that we can protect our livelihood!

Verbally Punch the Bully

When I was in 5th grade there was a bully who pulled my hair every day in the line after recess. Since the administrators weren’t doing anything about it my dad told me I needed to handle it myself. He said, “Marie, next time she pulls your hair turn around and slug her.” So the next time she pulled my hair I turned around, hit her and called her a word that means female dog. The unfortunate part was that I did it in front of a duty teacher so I got a half day of detention and I wasn’t supposed to say naughty words so I got my mouth washed out with soap. But she never bullied me again. Problem solved.

I thought by the time I was 26 I would be done dealing with bullies, that was one of the perks of being an adult. But I was terribly wrong. In fact the bullies are worse now because it’s frowned upon to punch them.   They spread misconceptions lacking sound science through main stream media and then use ill-formed policy based in fear to get their way.

Just last week Chipotle broadcasted their inaccurate perception of a modern-day “conventional” hog farm during the Grammy’s. Then the same week McDonald’s gave into pressure from the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) to quit purchasing pork products from farms that use gestation crates.

Bullying is happening in Oregon.  Thirty-five miles away from my home a group of anti-chemical zealots are attacking small woodland owners over their right to use chemicals on their trees.  They are making malicious claims that they are being poisoned to the verge of sickness by Atrazine & 2, 4D.   When results of urine analysis came back it was determined that there was no Atrazine in their system & the levels of 2, 4D were NO higher than the average US citizen, which are insignificant in the terms of toxicity. Of course any chemical is lethal at high doses including Sodium Chloride aka salt.

I recently read an op-ed  about the Chipotle ad by one of my favorite agvocates & writers Blake Hurst then read an another blog piece criticizing him. He responded with “And I am damn tired of being treated like public enemy number one in the New York Times.”

Amen Blake. I am tired of being bullied by a handful organizations who lack sound scientific theories and want to use precautionary principles to create policy & regulations.

There’s one way to stop it. With EVERY farmer, rancher & forester telling their story as much as possible.  I don’t care if you use tweet it, facebook it, blog it, email it, pen write it or speak it, just please tell your story and why you do what you do every day.

Like it or not there are people who want to eradicate us but we can end the bullying with verbal punches full of science based logic, reasoning and common sense.

Using North Dakota Honey in Portlandia

I just returned from a very exhausting but very fulfilling, blessed week.  I started off the week in Nashville hanging out with people I aspire to be like and finished of the week with a best friend’s wedding! Life does not get much more awesome than that!

I was in Nashville to attend the AgVocacy 2.0 conference put on by the Agchat Foundation. The general purpose of the foundation and conference was to help the attendees communicate our farming, ranching or forestry story more effectively through social media.  A continual theme and conversation topic was how to do we go beyond the choir.  All the attendees do an amazing job interacting with each other, in fact I know I left with a couple more best friends.  But how do we truly breach our comfort zone get to the audience that we don’t have a lot in common with?

My friend Katie Pinke (Blog, Twitter) was a presenter on Basic Blogging and she absolutely rocks at going beyond the choir. Well she just plain rocks in general too!  After her presentation she rewarded people with North Dakota honey for asking questions and then told us to blog about the honey.  I could easily write about all the crops in Oregon that require bees for pollination and hence there are many crop/flavors/varieties of honey in Oregon, but I thought I would take the honey to a deeper meaning.

I believe Ben Franklin once said, “Tart words make no friends; a spoonful of honey will catch more flies than a gallon of vinegar.”  If we want to effectively reach our targeted audience we must make friends or acquaintances and then the conversation will come easier.

I by no means am an expert at this, however lately I have been thinking about scenarios in my head and how I would address a subject if it came up.  I also knew I would most likely have a few engaging conversation opportunities come up at the end of the week since my friend was getting married in Portlandia. (Watch this clip if you have not seen it, very accurate portrayal.)

While I had a few great conversations about farming, ag, natural resources and social media at the end of the week one moment stuck out in particular.

While I was getting my hair done Friday morning the hairdresser and I through normal conversations started talking about life. We talked about jobs and that I worked in agriculture; she thought that was neat.  She told me was reading up on the wolf controversy in NE Oregon and she understood both sides and thought there could be a solution in the middle.  I didn’t say much, she seemed to be open-minded.  I ask her why she moved from the East Coast to Portland and she explains it’s because they fell in love with how progressive it is. I bite my tongue because well that could be a can of worms.  She needed a pen to write something down so I grab one out of my purse.  It’s a Monsanto pen. I strategically hand it to her. She comes back 5 mins later and asks if I work for Monsanto in a kind of fearful expression.  I say, “No but I know people who do and I toured their facility in St. Louis last year.” She says, “That just kind of scares me all the weird stuff they do that’s not natural.” I say, “Oh I think it’s neat. They are just helping plants along to where they would get to eventually.  It’s just basic genetics and breeding.”  She says, “Oh, ok interesting.” End of conversation.

While I have no idea if I changed her mind I can at least hope that I unlocked something in her that makes her think differently on GMOs now.  Maybe that’s the first step to going beyond the choir by planting simple seeds of truth.

Diversely Unified “AgVocates”

I just returned from the American AgriWomen (AAW) Mid-Year meeting in Phoenix, AZ.  We spent two full days listening to speakers and developing our policy positions to take them back to Washington D.C. for our annual Fly-In.  This was my first Mid-Year meeting but not my first AAW event.  Every time I am with these amazing ladies I am inspired keep on advocating for agriculture.  Being surrounded with people of like mind and the same goals re-affirms the actions I’m taking to “AgVocate.”  

However, probably what I enjoy the most at AAW events is the diversity of agriculture that is brought together.  I’ll be honest, I know very little about corn and soybeans but what I do know about is seed crops.  That’s probably why I am AAW’s seed crops chair.  So gathering with these ladies makes for a great exchange of knowledge and issues facing agriculture in the different regions of the country.  We can learn and develop ideas together!

Women in Timber (WIT), an affiliate of AAW, had a large presence at the meeting.  WIT is an organization that serves a similar purpose and mission as AAW so it only makes sense that we team together and for the first time WIT and AAW will be in DC together for Fly-In.  For multiple reasons I am personally so excited to see WIT and AAW working together.

1) I love the timber industry.  I have spent some time working with people in forestry.  From my experience they are well-rounded when it comes to the impact of natural resource policy and legislation.  They are aware that just because a piece of legislation or policy doesn’t specify their product or industry that can easily change and be detrimental to ALL natural resources.  A perfect example of this was during the 2009 Oregon Legislative session and field burning hearings were going on.  While the purpose of the bill was to eliminate grass field burning and only specified certain counties, the timber industry testified on the farmers behalf. Knowing all well that they could extend the reach of the bill and easily slip something in that could pertain to slash burning.

2) We can learn from the timber industry.   It’s my opinion that we, that natural resource community, got behind the environmental movement because we didn’t feel the need to tell our story.  Foresters, farmers and ranchers felt the food on their table, the clothes on their back and the roof over their head told our story for us.  This lesson can easily be seen from the economic devastation that the spotted owl did to the timber industry.  I’m not saying they didn’t work to fight the “green agenda” when the spotted owl issue arose but at that point the “Green” PR campaign was far ahead.  However, we are aware of this now and any time we forget why we’re “AgVocating” it’s easy to look back and see where not telling our story got us.

3) It is VITAL we stick together.  I know we all have our separate challenges in our relative industries, but if we are not unified we are more likely to be “picked” off one by one.  Our end goal is the same, to keep our natural resource industries vital and relevant in the United States.  They are our livelihoods and the green agenda is set out to destroy that.

I am already looking forward to the next time I can get together with the women of WIT and AAW.  I know we will be able to accomplish amazing things together, as we already do great things!