What beautiful weather we have been getting her in NE KS. It's painful having to sit in an office with such beautiful weather outside. Just a little while longer than I'll be outside all the time!
One of the things my parents have both been very good at through the years is showing us girls how important it is to be involved in organizations that support the agricultural industry. They've both been involved on several boards from the time that we were very young.
All 3 of us remain active in several different organization, but one common organization is Farm Bureau. My parents have been on the board since I can remember. They have now retired from the board, but their daughters still remain actively involved. My oldest sister, Kristen, and I applied and were accepted into the first Leadership Kansas Farm Bureau class. There are 10 women (not planned to have just women, just the way it turned out) from across the state of Kansas. We will have 6 sessions, 5 in Kansas with the closing one in Washington D.C. The class wrap-up and "graduation" will occur at the Annual Farm Bureau Meeting in December in Manhattan.
Our first session of Leadership KFB was in Manhattan at the end of January. We started with an overview of what the class was going to entail and some goals we wanted to garner from the class. Jill, our KFB staff who is in charge of the class, lined up some speakers to go over several topics. My favorite being, the NBAF presenter. NBAF stands for the National Bio-Agridefense Facility which is coming to the Little Apple. At some point, I will do a blog about that presentation. We also had the opportunity to tour the brand new KDA (Kansas Department of Agriculture) building and the Wheat Innovation Center. There was a quick stop at Call Hall for world famous ice cream for those that had never had the delicious K-State dairy made ice cream.
This class, thanks to Jill, is giving us the unique opportunity to meet with people we may ultimately never have got the chance to have a sit down conversation with. The first being, Secretary Jackie McClaskey. Jill scheduled a dinner with her, so not only do we have the opportunity to chat with her for a minute, we get an entire evening to pick her mind about what it going on in the world of Agriculture.
The second class meeting was held the beginning of March in Topeka. With not a lot of guessing I'm sure you can figure out this class was focused primarily on legislative issues. Again, we had the unique opportunity of not just chatting with Governor Brownback, but actually being allowed back to the "inner chambers". When asked how he deals with criticism, he responded that he prays a lot. Whether you agree with him or not on the issues, that's a noble answer. We must remember that he is a human being too, and yes he chose to run for the office and yes you may not agree with him, but that doesn't give us the right to be outright cruel to him. It comes down to the Golden Rule, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." That's the best way to get results anyway.
As a class, I think we all agreed that Ms. Allie Devine was our favorite part of the weekend. Again, we got to have most of the morning with her. Allie has a resume a mile long including, but definitely not limited to former Secretary of Agriculture. She gave us a brief overview of what was going on in the agriculture industry including, but not limited to, Senate Bill 178 which thank goodness is not going to pass, education update, income tax and sin tax. For those that don't know, Senate Bill 178 was trying to change the way that ag land is taxed. Allie is great with numbers. She said, I hope I got this wrote down correctly and didn't misunderstand anything, 12-14% of income goes to taxes in production agriculture. 2-4% of commercial income goes to taxes. The whole debate about this was that ag land wasn't paying it's "fair share" of prices. Well, these numbers obviously prove differently.
But it wasn't these issues and Allie's knowledge about these issues that really struck me (believe me, she knows her stuff so her knowledge is VERY impressive) it was what she said in the last five minutes we had with her that will stick with me for a long time. As I said, this is the first class of the kind for Kansas Farm Bureau so we're all being guinea pigs of sorts. She commended us on our commitment to this class and for trying something that nobody else had done yet. She encouraged us to become more involved with organizations in our communities that most of us normally wouldn't, such as school boards, city/county commissioners, local non-ag industry groups, etc. One of our class members said something about being involved in so many things already to which Allie replied, it's amazing what can happen when somebody will just give a damn, isn't it. Don't get complacent about just being involved in the same organizations or shy away from "political spots" such as commissioners or school board members just because that's the way it's always been done. When you give a damn and be the change you want to see in the world, it's amazing what can happen. How true that statement is. It struck me that I'm involved in the things I am because my parents did it or because I was in the organization in school so now I'm in the alumni chapter, but how often have I actively sought out being on another sort of board or started something new in my community to help solve a problem?
Allie's closing was even if you don't get involved in those different activities, just give a damn about the things you are involved in. Don't just do what has always been done because that's the way it's always been done. Think of new ways or new ideas. Whatever you're doing in your life, just give a damn about it.
So that's the way I will close this week. As we get into a very busy time of year for the farming community with planting coming on and all the preparations for that which must be done, remember to give a damn about what you're doing and why you are doing it. I encourage you if you're doing it because it's always been done that way to reflect on that to see if it is in fact the best way to do it. But ultimately like Allie said, you have to be do something in life, you may as well enjoy it and give a damn about it!
Have a great week!
