WV Farm Bureau Magazine March 2014 | Page 12

Young Farmer and Rancher Update Susan Wilkins, YF&R Chair February saw young farmers and ranchers from across the country – and the world – converge on Virginia Beach, Virginia for the 2014 AFBF YF&R Leadership Conference. Fourteen folks attended from West Virginia. As Secretary of the national YF&R Committee, I had the very special privilege of opening up the conference at our General Session on February 8th and giving remarks to the 1,000+ attendees. Our theme for the conference was “All Hands on Deck.” As each of us know, farming is truly a family effort and it takes everyone lending a hand on our farms to make them successful. The same is true for Farm Bureau. Our work is a lot easier and our voices a lot stronger when we all come together. In my welcome, I used Lois Alt’s story as an example of the power of being “all hands on deck” for the farming industry and the type of advocate that we each need to be for agriculture. Consumers today have a lot of questions about the food and products they are purchasing, and we have to be able to answer those questions. Agriculture is doing more than ever to meet the needs of Americans and people around the world. If we hope to pass this lifestyle on to our children, we have to help more people understand why agriculture is so important. Throughout the conference, we learned new ways to use our voices and our stories to ensure a bright future for the ag industry – we learned how to become more involved in the policy development process in our states, gained new business tools to try on our farms, and networked with other farmers and ranchers. We also attended workshops focusing on what we can do after the YF&R program and using the leadership skills we’ve gained for the Farm Bureau organization as a whole. 12 West Virginia Farm Bureau News A highlight of the conference was the Collegiate Discussion Meet. We were very proud to have a member of the West Virginia University Collegiate Chapter represent our state in the competition. Amber Huiet, an agriculture and extension education major, competed in the first two rounds of the Discussion Meet. Some extremely special additions to this year’s conference were guests from the Canadian Young Farmers Forum, as well as a group of young farmers from Russia. When people from around the world were flocking to Sochi, Russia for the Winter Olympic Games, this group of farmers chose to visit the United States to attend our conference instead! The Russian delegation was accompanied by an interpreter as most of them knew very little – if any – English. On Monday of the conference, we traveled by buses to tour a variety of farms, ag businesses, and historical sites around Virginia Beach. My group happened to include the Russian delegation and we visited the early settlements of Jamestown and Yorktown. As a proud American, I was a little awe-struck by visiting Jamestown and standing on the exact ground where the history of our country truly began. In fact, the history of the Wilkins family began in this place in 1618, when John Wilkins arrived in Jamestown on the ship “Marygould”. A few years later, he married Bridget Craft who had just arrived with a group of prospective brides hoping to help settle the new world. I couldn’t help but marvel at the fact that despite my having vacationed in the Virginia Beach area for the last fifteen years I had never been to Jamestown. And when I finally did, I went with a group that included international visitors on their very first trip to our country! I always leave this particular conference feeling motivated and excited about the YF&R program, but this year was especially unique because of the added international perspective. Throughout the day of riding around on the bus,