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Health & Fitness

Removing Our Blinders

By the time you read this blog post, the “Polar Vortex” will be long gone and we’ll be readying ourselves for spring —or so I hope—and I’ll be on an educational seminar in Russia and Poland. Not what you were expecting in the Illinois Farm Families blog, I’m sure. Let me explain.  

I’m a member of the Illinois Agricultural Leadership Program. It’s a comprehensive exercise in leadership and networking, encompassing 60 days in two years, including a national agriculture policy seminar in Washington DC and international perspectives seminar somewhere abroad. The Class of 2014 is the first to go to Russia.

Why IALP? Farmers are not immune to tunnel vision. On our farm, it would be very easy to focus strictly on what I see outside my machine shed window and make my decisions without regard to the broader world. And it’s easy to convince yourself you’re right when you don’t have exposure to different views. That’s one reason I enrolled into IALP.  And it’s one of the main reasons I’m typing this blog post as well.

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I try to make a point to “take my blinders” off and prevent tunnel vision. I like to call December to early March “meeting season.” While the cycles in agriculture—even for non-livestock farms—never stop, this time of year tends to have plenty of work that isn’t weather limiting and thus allows for meetings with other peers. This is where you need to go to be challenged about your farm and what you can be doing differently.

But most of these meetings are to the same demographic—that is, they’re designed for farmers. You don’t get challenged on the BIG issues facing agriculture today. That’s where Illinois Farm Families comes into play: connecting with consumers. If you’re reading this post, I can safely assume you don’t care about the debate farmers might have on the optimal planting population of soybeans or effective management practices for corn rootworm pests. But you probably do care deeply about food safety, GMOs, environmental stewardship, and pesticide usage on the farm. We as farmers tend to overlook these issues because, frankly, we practice what we preach and tend to assume that you—the consumer—should just inherently trust us. If we feed our families this food, drink the water coming from our own field drains, and live right next to where we farm (pesticides and all), then what’s the worry?  Farmers care about the same issues that consumers care about—but we have not done a good job engaging in dialogue with consumers. Illinois Farm Families is changing that. I have nothing to fear in being challenged about why I plant GMOs, apply pesticide, and how I apply environmental stewardship; but I cannot go on farming with my blinders on and not engaging in dialogue with consumers. 

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As you read this, I’m stretching my perspective and likely having my blinders ripped off.  Russia has a unique history, immense natural resource base, and diverse culture. Poland, being part of the European Union and hosting one of the larger farm populations, has a completely different perspective. Ukraine was on our itinerary until recently, and they have a very different, very strong agriculture-driven economy. What are these eastern European countries views on farm production? GMOs? Food safety? Environmental stewardship? Regulations? I hope to speak with a few farmers during this seminar, but also visit local farmers markets and retail stores—it’s important for me to see the market from an international consumer’s viewpoint too. Otherwise, how will I understand why a consumer 10 zones and 4,000 miles away chooses to buy my product or NOT buy my product? My corn and soybeans don’t arrive to market in a vacuum; I need to understand the external factors that drive the supply and demand dynamics affecting my farm. It takes perspective to grow and succeed.

And that’s what I hope this blog is doing—helping us both remove our blinders. I look forward to the dialogue with you.

Andrew Bowman
Oneida, Illinois

Andrew is a fifth generation Illinois farmer. He and his wife have one son, and farm with Andrew’s parents, in addition to serving farmers through insurance and consulting enterprises.

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