As the future leaders of American agriculture and the beef industry, we need to not only know the facts but understand the thought process of our consumers.  I am looking to buy a new flat screen TV.  Over the weekend I went to Best Buy to gaze at the selections of options for my view pleasure.  For an hour I stood in front of a wall of 42 to 67 inch TV’s lost in all the colors and surround sound.  For you see, I don’t care how the TV was made, how it was shipped or the environmental impact of the plastic used in the cover.  I don’t need to know how to build the TV or know how to put all the wires and circuit boards together.  All I care about is which TV fits my living room, has the best picture and sound I can afford and which TV has the best quality.  When the sales man came over to ask if I had questions, he didn’t talk about the manufacturing process of the TV or how the TV was shipped.  He instead focused on my needs and desires and matched them with what I would like.  Sure he threw out some terminology about pixels and hertzs but in the end all I wanted to know which TV was the best to watch Mizzou beat Kansas later this year.  The Best Buy sales intrinsically had respect because of his tie to the industry and knowledge of the process even though he was probably just a college kid trying to make enough money to buy a pizza and beer on Friday night.

 The lesson for us is that we have to know our product, agriculture as a whole, but be able to explain it to the consumer in terminology they understand and care about.  The average American house wife doesn’t care about weaning weights or EPDs.  What she wants to know is that our product is safe, nutritious and doesn’t break her family’s budget.  We still need to be good stewards of the environment and aware of public concerns but when the dust settles, Americans are just trying to feed their families safely and as economically efficient as they can.  Today and tomorrow’s leaders must have the skills to carry this message to the world and explain it in a short plain message.

Young Producers need to build their skills by cultivating and expanding their ideas of what the agricultural industry is and how this affects the rural landscape.  The qualities and characteristics that tomorrow’s leaders need are:  comprehensive view, network development and global perspective.

Growing up on a cattle farm in south central Missouri, I can tell you about anything that happens to a calf from cow to plate.  I have raised calves, weaned cattle, fed cattle and even slaughtered cattle.  I know the cattle industry.  However, when I was growing up corn was something you bought at the feed store in brown fifty-pound bags that was always way over priced to earn any money feeding cattle.  See, I knew the cattle industry but had no idea about the other industries in agriculture and how they related to the cattle industry.  Being specialized in an industry is a good thing, it creates efficiency and expertise but the leaders that will defend and promote our industry into the future have to have a comprehensive understanding of the industry as a whole.  Tomorrow’s leader has to have an understanding of the entire complex of agriculture and how each segment relates to the others. 

With the development of the comprehensive understanding, the skill that will make this knowledge useful is being able to build and maintain a network of agricultural experts and insiders.   It has been said many times, it is not what you know but who you know.  This is very true for our industry.  With only two percent of the American work force in production agriculture and only a few more percents directly involved in the industry, we only represents a small segment of the American landscape.  The leaders of tomorrow have to be able to bring experts and insiders from various segments together to advance the cause of agriculture.  The leader of tomorrow must have a support network that they can reference to when the need arises. 

Finally, even though a leader may have the comprehensive understand of Agriculture and have a network of relationships, their effectiveness isn’t truly realized with out the third leg of the agricultural leader stool.  Today’s agriculture is global in nature.  When it rains in Brazil and beans drop in price at a northwest Iowa grain elevator-- agriculture is global.  When a pig in central Mexico develops the flu and Asian countries ban United States pork, we live in a new era of global agriculture.  Technology has brought about tremendous advancements in agriculture but it has shrunk the world where trade is no longer defined by natural barriers and a rice farmer in Vietnam is just as affected by issues as a Missouri boot hill rice farmer.  Tomorrow’s agricultural leaders must have a global prospective.  It is a matter of necessarily that they understand the web of global trade and how opinions, practices and policies of foreign countries influence the farmer in Missouri.  Young Producers need to explore any opportunity to see agriculture out side the sea to shinning sea.  Not only to see other counties production practices but to understand the thought process of our customers over seas and how they view American agriculture.        

As Young Producers, we have the opportunity to carry the banner of American agriculture and the beef industry into the next generation.  Right now is when we should be developing the skills necessary to be the effective leader of tomorrow.   Our industry will call upon us…will you be ready?