Advocacy and Involvement Important For Young Stockgrowers

Advocacy and Involvement Important For Young Stockgrowers

By Lacey Sutherlin, Stevensville, Young Stockgrowers Chair

Greetings from the Beautiful Bitterroot Valley! I just finished our annual board meetings at ORIgen last week. And it has been an exciting year in cattle genetics thus far. Semen sales are up substantially in 2014. We are tending to see in an increase in sales to commercial customers verse registered due to many people keeping replacement heifers.

While in Billings, I also attended part of the Northern June Video sale. It was exciting to see all the smiles on the producers faces that evening at dinner as many of them had sold their calves for record setting prices earlier that day. It was also mentioned that it was the first Northern Video Sale that every single lot that day sold; they did not have any no-sales recorded that day.

Back at the ranch in Stevensville, we are haying like crazy and the yields are impressive! We are done with first cutting alfalfa and are working on grain and grass now. After the finish initial rinse cycle on some of the first hay we cut, we have been able to put up some of the most beautiful green hay that I have seen in a while.

Baler wisdom: As I travel around in circles in my tractor and baler I was thinking of what advice I could give the YSG members. The most important thing I can think of is be involved and become an advocate of agriculture! We are the future of the industry and we need to everything we can to protect it. I encourage you to become involved at least on a local level and eventually a state level. I realize we are all busy but at least join an organization and pay your dues to give that organization some support to have a voice in Helena and in Washington.

I think the biggest issue we have is that people that are negative towards agriculture because they are uneducated about what we really do. And who would better to inform them than the young people living in the industry every day. I am not asking you to take on the world but I do challenge you to take moment at your local grocery to start up a conversation with a consumer or if you travel have that “elevator speech” ready to tell people who you are and what you do for them!

We had an AWESOME Young Stockgrower Meeting at Mid-Year in Miles City. In summary, we had a presentation on Social Media, a Beef Industry Update, a Land Appraisal Update, a presentation on Cover Crops and speaker about Land Prices and Ag Real Estate. We also had an excellent question and answer session to wrap-up the meeting. We are already planning a great meeting a state convention in December so make sure you plan to attend! Between now and then we have the T-Bone Classic Golf Tournament and it would be great if we could get some YSG attendance. Also October 3-5 will be the Young Ag Leadership Conference (YALC) in Bozeman. The committee has a great agenda slated for the conference and I encourage you to attend this as well.

I hope the haying season is going well for all of you and I look forward to seeing all of you along the road somewhere! If you have any questions or need info on any of the events mentioned above feel free to contact me. [email protected]