A Farmer's Hats

     Hats, hats, hats. Lots of hats. That is what I have collected a lot of over the years when I have gone to trade shows, grower meetings, or the salesman has dropped off. Like any other farmer, I tend to collect plenty of hats and never seem to run short. A couple months ago I went through my closet cleaning out hats I had never worn and probably would never wear. Yet, I still seem to have plenty of hats. I almost feel like a hat collector and I think my closet feels the same!

     After cleaning out the hats I didn't want and putting away the ones I wanted to keep, it reminded me of the different kinds of "hats" a farmer wears everyday that are non-visible. These hats aren't made out of cotton or mesh but rather formed out of learning, knowledge, and wisdom. These hats are much more valuable than the hats any farmer could ever buy. These hats reflect the different titles a farmer holds, such as accountant, marketer, agronomist, manager, laborer, and so on. 

     A farmer is a unique individual. The role a farmer has one minute can change to a different role the next minute. One minute a farmer might be doing book work and in the next minute he is heading out to the field to put the next year's crop in the ground. Unfortunately, there are some people out there that think farming is easy and that farmers have it easy. However, what most people don't know is that the role of the farmer becomes more complicated each year. Commodity markets are volatile and seem to become more volatile each year due to weather impacts, foreign competition, economic issues, and so on. This requires more monitoring of the markets as well as studying what is happening in the markets. On top of that there is book work to be done, and as farms grow, so does the amount of book work that has to be done. Not only is there book work that has to be done, but there is also paper work and meetings that a farmer must attend to learn and stay in accordance with local, state and federal regulations. We can't forget that there is also the actual physical work that has to be done on the farm. This can go from running a piece of machinery to fixing something that is broke down. Many farmers now days find themselves taking on the educator role. Farmers are having to spend more time telling their story about how they raise a safe and affordable product for consumers. 

     Even though the role of the farmer might seem to be more complex in today's farming world, there are many things that have come along to help make the farmers job a little bit less strenuous and safer. Thanks to technology, farmers are able to be more mobile with the work they do both in the office and out in the field. Now farmers can carry their farm's information on a computer, tablet, or their phone and not have to worry about being in the office but instead can work away from the office from time to time. Farmers can do a better job with their marketing of commodities thanks to smart phones that allows farmers to get up-to-date information on the markets. GPS helps prevent fatigue for farmers and lets them work longer hours as well as work in situations where visibility can be an issue. Today's technology definitely benefits farmers and helps farmers work safer as well as be more efficient in everything they do from putting seed in the ground to keeping good records in the office.  

     It is a safe to say that a farmer's "hat" changes every minute. As far as I know, there isn't a farmer that wears just one type of "hat". For most farmers, that is why they enjoy the career in farming. The roles a farmer plays in his or her family farm changes every minute and every day. Some roles are newer than the roles previous generations may have had. I will bet that in the years ahead, farmers will take on new roles that they may have thought they would never have when running their family farm. No matter what the role is that the farmer holds today or tomorrow, one thing remains the same and that is their passion for their job. For me, no matter how bad or good the day may be in farming, I always look forward to the next day and challenge I may face. Farming is not easy but it is a good life that can give great rewards with hard work, dedication, and having a willingness to learn. So next time you meet a farmer wearing a hat, remember that they are already wearing more than just the one hat on their head!

     As planting season begins to start rolling for many family farms across the nation, I want to wish everyone a safe planting season and that everyone may have a blessed growing season! 

Starting "A Growing Passion"

Welcome to "A Growing Passion", a blog where I want to share my ever growing passion for agriculture, leadership, faith, and other things that are having an impact on my life. To be honest, I never thought I would even start my own blog because I thought it would take too much time, and I was too afraid to even manage one. However, that all changed several months ago.

A little under a year ago, I had the opportunity to begin interning with the Nebraska Corn Board. My title was the Communication and Market Development intern. I understood what market development meant, which was helping find new uses for corn and doing research. However, I didn't quite know what the "communication" part of this title meant. I knew it didn't mean answering phone calls all day but thought maybe it dealt more with trade shows or communicating more with Nebraska's 26,000 corn farmers. While those two things were part of the internship experience, I soon found out that the communication part meant I would do a lot of work with social media.

I was familiar with what social media was, I mean I did have a Facebook account, but soon realized that there was much more to social media. There is Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Google Plus, Pinterest, and last but not least- the blog. Like I mentioned before,  I had a Facebook account but hadn't even thought about doing any of the other social media stuff. Yet, that all changed as soon as I started at the corn board. All of a sudden I had my own personal twitter account set up (@latwater1) and then started making educational videos to post on the Nebraska Corn Board Youtube page. Lets just say I was learning quite a bit about social media and to be honest, was really getting into it. After about a month being with the corn board, I began to write blogs for the Nebraska Corn Kernels talking about some of the current issues facing both the corn and agriculture industry. After writing a couple of blogs for the Nebraska Corn Kernels, I began to post monthly "Interesting Intern Insights", which featured blogs that had my opinion on certain issues that agriculture faced. For a person that was skeptic about blogging, I suddenly fell in love with it because it gave me the opportunity to share my story about agriculture with others.

As I mentioned earlier, I started with the Nebraska Corn Board just under a year ago and will soon be ending my internship with them come this May. It has truly been a great experience with them and I am thankful for them getting me more involved with social media, which I find myself constantly using. If I am not on Facebook, I am usually on twitter. With my internship coming to end it also meant that my blogging on the Nebraska Corn Kernels would also becoming to an end as well. However, I didn't want to stop sharing my passion for agriculture, and that is why I created "A Growing Passion". I want to continue to share my growing passion for agriculture with others and what better way to do it than start my own blog!

While I hope that you will enjoy reading my posts, I hope that you will also learn something about the agriculture industry. While "A Growing Passion" will have a heavy focus on agriculture, there will also be occasions where I will blog about leadership, faith, and other things that have had an impact on my life. I hope you enjoy the blog and who knows, maybe it will help you grow your passion!