The Final Chapter of Our Trip to Orlando......(Part 4)

Welcome to Part 4, the final post on our National YF&R Conference in Orlando.  I would have been done last week, but our great state YF&R Coordinator/Field Rep., Stephanie Licht, sent me a disc a pictures that she had taken, many of which are from the tour that the other half of our Nevadans went on.  So, while I don't have a lot of detailed information about their tours, their is a brief description of each of the places they went to and what they had the chance to see.  They all said they enjoyed drinking tangerine juice and eating ice cream (almost as much as I enjoyed holding an alligator?).

I hope you have enjoyed my reports as much as I enjoyed retelling the story of such an awesome conference--feel free to pass on throughout your counties to anyone you might want to introduce to Farm Bureau and the YF&R program.  We were so excited to have such great support from Churchill County this year in inviting Pete and Michelle Olsen to go with us--we loved having them and hope that they loved going with us--we are looking forward to great things developing in Churchill FB and in their new and growing YF&R!

Yep, that's me, and no, I am not singing or whatever it looks like I am doing ;)  Every year at the conference the state YF&R Chairs are given a 30 second slot at one of the lunches to introduce their states.  Sometimes it is a rush to tell what they produce, or what they are number one in, sometimes it is who can be the most creative, humorous, or longest (which gets booed off the stage at the 30-second mark, though some try to keep talking through it ;)  Being so close to the Kennedy Space Center I told that we were home to the nation's 'other' space center, Area 51, that we also like our meat and potatoes--beef being our largest livestock industry and we are home to the 2nd largest potato farm in the nation (the things you learn when you come to state meeting in Winnemucca!) and that 14 of our 17 county's did not send Harry back to DC (Last year I mentioned a lot of what we produced, and how we were trying not to send any bad apples back to DC in the next election)

Pete and Michelle

Pete, Michelle, Lee and Grant in one of the Workshops by Dick Wittman.  These workshops were some of the GREAT highlights of the conference.  We all thought that they had incredible value for anyone in the agriculture industry and definitely those with issues passing on, sharing the farm, starting from scratch, etc.

Here's a bit more info about Dick:

Keynote: “Are You Getting a Passing Grade in Farm Management”
Business management practices, not economic issues, are often the reason family operations dissolve business relationships or fail in their efforts to achieve viable business succession. Wittman examines key managerial proficiencies that must be implemented as well as consequences of failing to adopt these practices in everyday operations. This speaker combines keynote comments with case study topics in the breakout sessions to tackle a number of sensitive issues related to family business management. It is presented from the viewpoint of a working family farm manager who has also provided family farm business transition consulting for over thirty years.
Bio- Wittman manages a 19,000-acre Idaho family farm partnership involving crops, cattle and timber and provides consulting services and seminars in family farm business and financial management in the US and abroad. A former FCS lender, he’s also served on numerous commodity and financial institution boards; is a director and past president of the Farm Financial Standards Council and past president of the PNW Direct Seed Association. He is an adjunct faculty member of Texas A&M teaching annually at the TEPAP program and King Ranch Institute, and also serves on the Ag Carbon Markets Working Group which provides policy development leadership in climate change legislation impacting agriculture.

Every year on the final morning, the state YF&R Chairs and Coordinators meet for Breakfast with the AFBF YF&R committee to meet those who will be over them on the committee.  We had a couple of really neat things that we did to reinforce the importance of who we are in the agriculture industry and how important it is to share our stories.  My Reps for another year are the Sawyers, in black to the left.  They are from Kansas, so definitely a different dimension from the Reps I have had over us out of Utah and Arizona, but it is always fun to visit and get to know the AFBF committee members from across the nation.  They serve a two-year term after they are elected, each year half of the committee retires as new ones come on board.

Our final address was given by Andrew McCrea, who also taught a workshop that I had attended the day before, he is a very dynamic speaker and really had some great points to make that went along well with Ken Schmidt from Harley.

Andrew McCrea

Keynote: “Ordinary to Extraordinary: The ‘Extra’ that Brings Success”
We have a choice…to be ordinary or extraordinary. We choose to be extraordinary. But what does extraordinary leadership look like? How do you build an extraordinary business? What is the ‘extra’ that makes the difference? Andrew McCrea will take you to the farm and around the globe as he uses his experiences as a rancher and an award-winning journalist to share the story of the ‘extra’ that makes people and businesses stand out among the rest. Be inspired and motivated with practical ways you can put extraordinary leadership to work in your life!

A couple of fun Farm Bureau T-shirts Steph saw along the way......

Stacie, Alyss,a and Hannah getting ready for the tours!!

Here's where their tour went:

Noble Worldwide Citrus Noble

Worldwide is a fourth generation grower/
packer/shipper of fresh Florida citrus.

Their focus is tangerines and other

specialty varieties. During the tour,

they will cover Noble’s business history,

evolution of quality and how they go to

market in today’s environment. They will

also exhibit running and packing fruit to

show their packing facility best practices.

We will also spend time in the Roe familyowned

groves.

G&F Farms & Driscoll’s of Florida, Inc.

Driscoll’s berries are grown on family

farms in some of the world’s premiere

growing regions. These farmers share a

commitment to growing the world’s best

berries and to protecting their family

land to hand down to future generations.

Driscoll’s contracts with a number of

growers in the Dover/Plant City area for

both strawberries and blueberries.

Publix Super Markets Corporate Office

Publix is a privately-held company

operating stores in Florida, Georgia, South

Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee. It

has grown into a Fortune 500 company

with more than 1,000 stores and is one

of the fastest growing employee-owned

companies in the United States. During

your tour you will not only be able to see

firsthand the impressive volume of the

dairy processing facility in Lakeland, you

will also have the opportunity to taste

their own brand of ice cream.

The TOurs ended at the Florida FFA Retreat where dinner and activities had been prepared.  Unfortunately, the rains were coming down and that pushed it all inside--where I would guess they were trying to feed about 700 or more people.  Our bus was one of the last to show up and the line for food was over an hour long, so instead of waiting, we hopped a bus back to the resort to have dinner there.....though usually well prepared, we had been all day without water and they ran out of drinks at lunch, so hungry and thirsty we decided we wouldn't wait, but this group got there earlier and were able to try all the deep-fried treats and hopefully had a great time.

AFBF YF&R Chair

This was the line for food--the had yet to get into the room where the food was--but looking back as the picture was taken, you could see the people still waiting, and not the people around the corner still coming in from buses....like I said, about an hour wait for the food.