Day 7: Who Will Lead Agriculture into the Future?

As I write this, I am in the Sheraton Hotel and Convention Center in Kansas City, MO with Agriculture Future of America Leadership Conference.  For those of you on Facebook and Twitter, look them up under Agriculture Future of America, or under the Twitter "hashtag," #AFALC13.  

This conference is quickly changing my life.  It is not that I am going to be living my life any differently after this conference necessarily, but there are many things to be said about this absolutely phenomenal conference and the people here.  I will highlight some of the high points for me personally, and since the conference continues through Sunday, I will speak about it at least once again. 

This conference works in "tracks."  Freshmen participate in track 1, sophomores, track 2, juniors and some seniors, 3, and a select group of highly qualified seniors get to participate in track 4.  Each track involves different types of activities.  For example, today Track One got to have a morning session on building and improving our resumes, and working on the famous "elevator speech" that you give in interviews.  For some of us who have not been at a job/internship opportunity fair for a while, this is a good thing to practice.  Until I got to college and began meeting new people nearly every day, I never realized how important it was to be able to describe yourself in two minutes or less.  Later this afternoon, all four tracks got to visit the "opportunity fair."  Opportunity fairs are comparable to what you may call a job fair... except mostly for internships or entry level jobs.  The agriculture community comes from far and wide, looking for the very best of the best students.  Just like all of us, they want to continue moving this industry forward rapidly so that we can continue to feed this rapidly growing population.  The afternoon consisted of of an etiquette luncheon to teach all of us freshmen the art of eating in a very formal setting.  After this was a panel discussion with representatives from all different facets of agriculture, and the topic was consumer information.  In today's day and age, more consumers are questioning the safety and story behind their food.  The problem is that there is more misinformation available at their disposal, than truth. 

I suggest you all check out the website, www.fooddialogues.com.  Here, every week there is an online public discussion on issues that bother consumers and are on the minds of the general public.  This is brought to you by the U.S. Farmer's and Rancher's Alliance.  

The world is changing and so is the face of agriculture.  In these fast-changing times, we must all remember.  The future of American Agriculture is in our hands.  That means, the future of this entire world is in our hands.  Now, what are we going to do with it?

Thanks for continuing to read my blog!