AFBF YF&R Leardership Conference

Last week Holly and I had the opportunity to attend the Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers (YF&R) Leadership Conference in Sacramento. Attending the conference was just over 800 YF&R from all over the country, We had a group of ten from Utah. The conference allowed us to meet people from all over the country with similar interests and concerns as we have. This was the third time we have been able to attend the national conference, and have had a great experience each time.

Part of the conference is the National Collegiate Discussion Meet. Each state is allowed to bring two competitors, the winner gets a $3500 scholarship. This was the first year that Utah sent anyone to the contest, we were very excited, as we had worked hard to make this happen. Mike Hughes won our state competition at USU, and traveled with us to the conference. We felt Mike was very qualified to compete, but not having been involved with this contest before we were a little unsure what to expect. As it turned out, Mike did very well. He has a natural ability to speak in front of people, articulate his ideas, and do it with a smile. The audience couldn't help but love him. In the end he was in the final four, I thought he won, but the judges chose another winner, Mike must have been second. He still won $1000 scholarship, not bad.

Several of the presenters seemed to adress the idea of speaking up for Agriculture and telling our story. There was a lot of talk about Proposition 2 in California which effectively outlaws
gestation crates for hogs, veal crates, and battery cages (for egg production). Farm Bureau spent millions of dollars to fight this but was unsuccessful. The thinking is that we were too late getting organized and not very effective telling our story. We simply recited statistics and science. The proponents used emotion, and they were very successful. To combat this in the future we need to be telling our story before we are attacked and put on the defensive. Several ideas were discussed on how to tell our story; there is much to do. I decided to start this blog to talk about my experiences on my family farm, and my thoughts on how a variety of issues will effect not only our farm, but every family that is involved with agriculture.