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Week of wisdom
Leadership Advance Tour takes participants on eye-opening educational journey
| By Chris Villines |
8/31/2012 |
The 49 outstanding farmers, University of Tennessee Extension agents, and Tennessee Farm Bureau and Co-op representatives selected to attend the 2012 Leadership Advance Tour are, kneeling from left, John Hutcheson, representing Dickson Farmers Cooperative; Stephen Ahlheit, Dickson; Jeremy Light and Zach Jolley, White County; Mark Harrison, Valley; Anthony Shelton, Washington County Extension agent; Brandon Strasser, Valley; Jimmy Farless, Franklin; Ernie Herrod, Rutherford; Devon Jones, Tennessee Farmers Cooperative; Ryan King, Tennessee Farm Bureau; Payton Elliott, Gibson; Zach Burrows
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As many of their children and grandchildren prepared to head back to school, a group of 49 farmers, University of Tennessee Extension agents, Tennessee Farm Bureau representatives, and Co-op personnel gathered at Tennessee Farmers Cooperative headquarters in LaVergne on Monday, Aug. 6, to embark on a weeklong educational journey of their own — the 2012 Leadership Advance Tour.
“This tour gives farmers and those involved with agriculture the opportunity to view the cooperative system from another perspective,” said tour organizer Keith Harrison, TFC’s marketing, advertising, and promotions coordinator. “Participants get the chance to visit with each other during the five-day period, share experiences, and think about ways they can change their own production and marketing practices to improve their operations. That’s why it’s so important for our Co-op system to sponsor activities of this nature.”
The tour, now in its 25th year, is designed to provide participants a chance to witness the cooperative system in action and gain a new appreciation for Co-op’s value to its farmer owners. As in past tours, the group spent the week visiting farms, agricultural research sites, and interregional cooperatives in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri.
After being welcomed by senior staff and key personnel at TFC headquarters Monday morning, the tour group boarded a chartered bus and headed to Bowling Green, Ky., to tour the 40,000-square-foot Universal Cooperative animal health warehouse, which stocks more than 4,000 types of animal health products that can be shipped to most member Co-ops within 24 hours of order placement. Universal is one of the Co-op system’s longtime interregional affiliates. After that, they headed to the Bowling Green location of TFC subsidiary Stockdale’s to browse the 35,000-square-foot showroom and garden center. Several of the attendees took advantage of the shopping time to make purchases.
“I was very impressed with Stockdale’s,” said Isabel Hall of the Bellwood community, a Wilson Farmers Co-op director and cow/calf operator. “It’s in a great location to pull in customers who want to experience farming and the rural lifestyle. I saw lots of really nice things.”
From Bowling Green, the bus headed for Lafayette, Ind., where the group capped off its first day with a dinner at FFR Cooperative. On Tuesday morning, the touring contingent returned to FFR to see the research trials being conducted at the interregional plant-breeding cooperative, which focuses on forage development and research and helps test other crop varieties like those marketed under the Croplan brand. FFR also has a Tennessee forage research and testing plot in Franklin.
“I enjoyed seeing all of the crop research that FFR is conducting,” said Sparta beef cattle and poultry producer David Hunter, one of three White County Farmers Co-op members on the trip. “It taught me a lot, like the fact that I’ve been planting the wrong kind of beans! I also learned just by talking to fellow farmers. Anytime you can get together with fellow farmers, you educate each other. And there was always a laugh or two on the bus.”
From FFR, the group traveled some 50 miles north to Fair Oaks Dairy, one of America’s largest dairies with more than 30,000 cows on 17,000 acres. Some 80 to 100 calves are born every day at the dairy, and cows are milked three times daily on a 72-station carousel. Fair Oaks also features a visitor center where milk production is described to consumers in a simple, easy-to-understand way and a gift shop/cafe that offers ice cream, butter, and cheese made on the farm.
Following lunch at the dairy, attendees listened to a presentation by Devon Jones of TFC’s Animal Nutrition Division on how Co-op utilizes Cooperative Research Farms studies in making feed recommendations.
Next, it was off to Chicago for a two-night stay in the Windy City. On Tuesday evening, the group enjoyed dinner and a cruise on Lake Michigan, where they captured full views of the nighttime Chicago skyline. TFC regional manager Paul Binkley gave a presentation on “Our Cooperative System” during the cruise and followed up at the hotel on Wednesday morning with a breakfast program on “Cooperative Membership Benefits.”
After breakfast, the group visited the nation’s largest skyscraper, the iconic Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower), for an overview of the city from the 1,451-foot building’s top floor “Chicago Skydeck.” They then witnessed an exciting opening session at the Chicago Board of Trade, where global commodities futures are bought and sold, followed by a tour of Chicago Heights Steel, where Co-op’s red steel T-posts are made from recycled railroad steel.
“I never put much thought into going to the Co-op and buying a fencepost,” Pollock said. “But after touring Chicago Heights Steel and seeing what goes in to making one, I found out that it’s a pretty big deal. I’ll never look at it the same again. They walked us right through where they were making them; we were right there when the hot fencepost was coming out.”
That night, tour participants watched as the Chicago White Sox took on the Kansas City Royals at Comiskey Park (the Royals won the low-scoring game 2-1), and the next morning the tour left Chicago and headed southward. Along the route, the group stopped for a tour of Four-Beck Dairy in Bartelso, Ill., which includes a 550-cow dairy along with an 1,800-acre row crop operation.
“I probably enjoyed Four-Beck Dairy more than any stop on the tour from the standpoint of seeing some practical applications of things that we can use back home,” said Greg Anderson, a Sevier Farmers Co-op member who is the agriculture and natural resources agent for McDowell County, N.C., and a patron of the Co-op’s Waynesville, N.C., branch. “The whole week was thoroughly enjoyable — I gained a better understanding of how the overall structure works and how we’re a part of that structure, and I made some good friends who I’ll keep in touch with.”
On Friday morning, the last stop before heading back to Tennessee was the Monsanto Research Center just outside St. Louis in Chesterfield, Mo. Here, the Co-op group got a behind-the-scenes tour of the facility where the latest achievements in biotech research and product development were on display.
“The technology that Monsanto has at their fingertips is just mind-boggling,” David Hunter said. “They had one machine where they could do DNA testing in about an hour. The research they’re doing with drought- and insect-resistant varieties of seed just amazed me.”
Arriving in LaVergne on late Friday afternoon, the road-tested tour group was welcomed back to TFC with pizza for the ride back to their respective homes. But many stuck around and ate their food together while sharing memories from the eventful week. Gibson Farmers Co-op customer Justin Parrish of Medina said he felt the trip was “well worth the time invested.”
“The tours that you go on, the people that you meet, and the fun that you have make it a special week,” he added. “It’s an experience I’ll never forget.”
If you’re interested in attending future Leadership Advance Tours, contact your local Co-op manager.
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