Ag Day

Yesterday, Tuesday, I got to do one of my favorite thing.. AGVOCATE of course. I was asked by our state Midwest Dairy rep to talk about dairy to the students that were attending the Ag Day. 

Here is a link for an article about the event!

I talked at this same event last year to nearly 400 students and was impressed with the turnout and the event in general. They said last year the event numbers were down due to school district budget cuts and not having the funding for busing. So the organizers of the event decided to make a short video about what kids experience during the event. They sent the video out to anyone in that area who had influence over school planning and budgeting. Clearly it worked! This year there were nearly 850 students who attended! That is purely amazing! Many had no idea about what the difference between a dairy and beef cow were or that there are quite an array of products in the grocery store that are made from milk, but that's what they were there to learn!

Of course my favorite part of any event like this is the questions! 

One of the MANY classes I spoke with

*When I asked what products at the grocery store were made from milk these are a few of the answers I got - "cake", "bacon" "eggs" (this was a common answer), "bread"  so needless to say the Aggie in me had to give them a quick lesson on where those things actually come from

 * how exactly cows turned water and feed into milk.. this one stumped me

*how come cows drink milk to make milk 

*a few arguments on whether we can milk bulls 

*a few class discussions on what that "thing sticking out of that cows butt is" - turns out they were talking about the udder... who knew?! 


So after nearly 40 presentations I was dairy'ed out and ready for a nap, but all-in-all it was a success, hopefully those kids learned something!

I used the video to help start discussion
and questions.

~Lastly, here is a video that I love to use when I present about modern dairy farms. The kids really enjoy this video, it does a great job keeping their attention and giving them the important general facts! 
         

Follow Passion, Take Action

So weird thing about myself: I love conferences! ESPECIALLY Ag conferences. I love meeting new people! I love learning about Agriculture in different parts of the country. This past weekend I got the chance to attend one of the best ones I've ever been to.. Agriculture Future of America (AFA) Leadership conference and boy was there lots to be learned.

Thanks to the Nebraska Corn Board for letting us drive
the Corn Van to Kansas City!

The conference was a four day long adventure where we spent our time interacting with industry professionals,listening to speakers,and attending a career fair among many other things. There were 500+ college aged students attending this conference which was broken up into 4 tracts. Each tract is based on your year in college, each focusing on a different part of becoming a young professional in the Ag industry.We talked about everything from how to plan for your financial future, how to approach entrepreneurship, becoming a leader, and even the importance of farm families.

The Corn Van even unpacks itself, pretty neat...

I think my favorite part of the whole thing though was just meeting other kids from across the nation! It was great seeing so many other kids there representing their respective universities but all still had a common goal: find passion, take action.

It was great just talking to kids about what Ag looks like in their area; how to grow peanuts and cotton in South Carolina or how they feed leftover potatoes to their dairy cows in Idaho (shockingly dairy being their #1 industry, not potatoes) Another great thing to see is these kids starting to take action in their communities and campuses; Purdue University started a SWAG (See What Ag Gives) program to try to teach kids about agriculture at their school. Lastly it was great to see so many African American's and women getting involved in Ag.

I got the opportunity to have a few discussions with two awesome African American young ladies with no background in Ag (although one did have a pet chicken she kept in her basement named Lunch Meat haha)but who had found a passion for it! Firstly I firmly believe there is no room for discrimination in Ag or anywhere if we want to be successful. Secondly, to me this is a reassurance that we are getting our message across to some people. They are seeing the importance and good things we're doing and want to be involved. Lastly one of the things I was most proud of was packing over 28,000 packets of soup to send oversea's to those in hunger. In lieu of speaker gifts, AFA choose to take the money to buy products to make these packets then having the students take time to assemble them, it was awesome!!

Just a few of us Nebraska students who attended AFA.

I encourage any college kid with an interest in Ag to attend this conference, there are so many things that you can take away from this conference that you will find almost nowhere else! If you want to know what some of the delegates were learning/tweeting about, just check out the #AFALC12 hashtag. To see pictures from the event you can check out the Agriculture Future of America Facebook page or the AFA website!

So I'm gonna leave you with a few quotes I got from this year's conference;

-No one remembers boring

- "Two best days of your life; the day you were born and the day you figured out why you were" ~ Mark Twain

- "People don't care what you know until they know what you care"

- "Experience is what you get when you don't get what you want"

- "Passion gives us confidence to move through things and the ability to inspire"

Once an #Agnerd....

Holy Cow, there hasn't been a new post on this blog for almost two weeks.

These last couple weeks have been super busy and pretty exciting if I may say so. Not to make excuses or anything but last Thursday, the 23rd, was my 21st birthday so needless to say there was no blogging  (or really anything) done this weekend.

Last Monday was the first day of my senior year of college, I can't believe how fast time has flown. Seems like yesterday I was starting my freshman year, all dazed and confused about college life with my bag all packed 3 days before class even started. Us seniors laugh now because most of us don't even hardly know our schedules a day before class let alone have our schools supplies (maybe that's just me).

One of the biggest changes I've noticed is that I've become a complete and total #Agnerd!

Super cute agnerd me getting ready to go help dad with chores

Looking back to freshman year there is no way I would've thought that I would be where I am. I was sitting in a Cultural Diversity and Leadership class today and we had to pinpoint some important events and moments in our lives and share them with the class. Not even kidding, probably 7 out of the 8 had something to do with growing up on a farm and being part of the great industry that is agriculture. This is a class full of Hospitality, tourism, and restaurant management majors, basically they're all from city campus. Some may not know what that means, here at the University of Nebraska Lincoln there are two campus's; East and City. East is the Ag campus while city is pretty much everything else. So some of the kids looked at me really funny but after class a couple kids stopped me and thanked me for talking about it. They said that they didn't really know anything bout Ag let alone a real life farmer.

 I knew hardly anything about pigs before college but I got involved

with the Nebraska Pork Producers Mentoring program and learned so much

Thanks to that program I was able to talk to City campus kids about modern pork

production at our 'Husker Food Connection' Ag event

So I'm making it my goal this semester to bring up and discuss Ag any time I can in this class. I'm pretty excited.

The #agnerd in me started just by talking about what I knew, Dairy

I always encourage other farmers kids to talk about what they and their parents do! You don't have to be some great speaker, lord nows I'm not, just talk about what you do during the summer and on the weekends. It really helps if you know some of the great things that are going on in the industry, whether it be that 95% of all farms in the U.S. are family owned, or corn farmers have cut soil erosion by nearly 44% thanks to new inovations and technologies, or even 1 in 3 jobs are related to Agriculture.

But that wasn't what I was gonna talk about in this blog, I'm saving that stuff for another time! I just needed to get back in the blog saddle.

 This is my friend Roco (yes he's real), pretty neat right?!



What's even more exciting... only 2 more days til HUSKER FOOTBALL!!  WOOHOO

Guest Blog: Tell your story!

 Me, Andi, and Caitlin
 (Both attended NAYI for the past 2 years, so proud of these girls!)

 So one of my favorite events was this last week here in Lincoln; the Nebraska Agricultural Youth Institute (NAYI). I was lucky enough to attend it the two years as a delegate and got the priviledge to serve as a Counselor for two more years. But today my good friend Caitlin, who attended NAYI last week as a Returning Delegate, wrote a blog about her experience with NAYI and what it means to her!

Hey all! My name is Caitlin Ohnoutka and I am from Valparaiso, Nebraska. I recently had the opportunity to attend the 41st Annual Nebraska Agricultural Youth Institute (NAYI) for a week on UNL’s East Campus. NAYI is a week long conference for Nebraska juniors and seniors to come learn about Nebraska’s agriculture! This year there were around 160 delegates that attended and also 3 delegates from Taiwan! This institute is planned and counseled by the Nebraska Agriculture Youth Council (NAYC), which consisted of 18 dedicated college students from across Nebraska.

The great group of Counselors (NAYC)

All the delegates at NAYI

NAYI is filled with many group discussions about various commodities, current agriculture issues, farm management competition, and is highlighted by the State Dinner with keynote speaker, Governor Dave Heineman. (HSUS, if I were you, I’d watch out for that man…) Many of these discussions are interactive and also give you many success tips, such as how to network, how to present yourself as a professional, and how to overcome the dreaded “I don’t know which bread and drink is mine” at formal meals.

All the delegates are divided into 8 smaller groups with 2 head counselors.
This was my group!

If you ask many of the delegates, aside from meeting 159 new friends, the highlight of their week is listening to “Advocates for Agriculture”, Troy and Stacy Hadrick. Troy and Stacy are a young farm & ranch family from South Dakota, who travel the country and Australia telling their story about the importance of agriculture. The Hadrick’s have seen first hand the destructive power of the media and have also learned the influential power of social media. In my opinion, the best piece of advice the advocates gave was: “There are too many people out there trying to tell your story. If you want your story told, you better do it yourself.” So begin developing your 30-second elevator speech and get your story out there!

The delgates listening to Troy and Stacy Hadrick

The delegates during a session

NAYI has been an important part of my life the last two years. I’m blessed to have met amazing people, learn how to tell my story, and become an important part of what’s at the core of many Nebraska families, agriculture.



There is always lots of games and 'bonding' time at NAYI



The Street dance on the last night we were in Lincoln





Just your typical farm boy dance off

To learn more about NAYI and NAYC (and see more pictures) visit their website or like their Facebook page!!

Omaha Adventure

This past weekend we had yet another dairy event here in Nebraska, Moo at the Zoo! It is an event held in Omaha at the Henry Doorly Zoo in partnership with the Nebraska Midwest Dairy Association. It is a fairly new event and I was pretty impressed seeing it for the first time.



Moo at the Zoo



Henry Doorly is one of the top zoo’s in the U.S. (depending on the person you talk to of course). But it really is impressive how progressive and realistic the zoo is. They are always pushing to do new things that no one else has done. But this last weekend was a sort of Ag weekend at the zoo. They brought in tractors and ag promotion groups (pork producers etc) to set up booths and interact with people. And they also set up a huge tent to bring some dairy animals in. They decided they wanted to bring six of the dairy breeds in for people to see and pet. So they had contacted my family about a month ago to get a Guernsey heifer, so we gave them one of my brother’s yearlings “Mini”. Mini was a twin, so she was a little thing, but the other twin was stillborn. My brother would let her out during chores and she would follow him around all afternoon so she became kind of a pet so we hoped she would be social enough to let people pet her.



Nebraska Dairy Princess with 'Mini' talking to
people about dairy



So as a member of the Dairy Ambassador program and a pretty active dairy advocate in Nebraska they asked me to work a few hours. So I convinced my sister, Andi, and brother Vin (Vince) to come to Omaha with me for the afternoon. So Andi and I spent Saturday afternoon just walking around handing out ‘I met a Dairy Farmer’ stickers to little kids, Vin kind of just walked around and stared at people (typical high school boy). We would use this opportunity to answer any questions about the cows or just share some fun facts with them! We got some pretty interesting questions like “Why are these cows anorexic?” or “This cow here (a Brown Swiss) has got to be an ox?” It was actually a really cool event to get so many inner city Omaha people out to see these cows and feel free to ask questions. It was also great that there were over 10 Nebraska dairy families that worked over the weekend talking to people, 60 people total. And it was also a great weekend to have it because the Olympic Swim trials were just a little ways down the road so there were some visitors at the zoo from that event.



Andi handing out stickers and talking to some little kids



Kids trying not to scare away the Holstein



The 'cheesy' sign outside the tent






Moo at the Zoo crew (from left): Vin, Andi,
Anastasia, Me, Emma, Emma's sister



Speaking of Swim trials, two of my favorite aunts (and an uncle) took me to the trial on Saturday night and holy smokes it was awesome!! Firstly these swimmers are sooooo freaking fast, it just blows my mind. Secondly some of the guys are incredibly good looking, I always appreciate a sport where the guys don’t wear shirts and don’t really need to haha. But I do have a favorite (I think he’s probably most girl’s favorites)  Ryan Lochte. But I was impressed with him for a couple of different reasons. One was that after he won one of his events he gave away his flowers, bear, and medal to random kids in the crowd. How awesome is that? Another reason is that on national TV he promoted dairy (it’s not hard to win over my heart haha). So that was a pretty cool experience, can’t wait until London!!

A couple fun facts for you!

- Henry Doorly Zoo draws 1.6 million people per year

-The swim trials had 167,000 people at 15 sessions in 8 days. A new record for the trials (yay Omaha)!

Dairy Dream Day



When Melissa and I are together it's
usually something else!


Did you know Nebraska has 230 dairy farms in the state, making it the 5th largest agribusiness?

That’s not a very big number so that usually means that dairy is kind of overlooked, especially because we are the Cornhusker state and a beef connoisseur (which I love of course!). That was not the case this past Saturday, Melissa Keyes and myself attended one of the biggest event ag promotion events in the state; Prairieland Dairy Day. And what a great day it was.

Prairieland is located about 20 minutes south of Lincoln, and has been a leader for sustainability and new dairy practices for some time now. The dairy itself is owned by 4 different families who decided to coop together. They have grown their farm to about 1,500 cows and have started marketing their own dairy products locally and have found success! You can find 2%, 1%, skim, and chocolate milk in stores across of most Lincoln and Eastern Nebraska. They also have season milk flavors including strawberry, cotton candy, and root beer for the summer months! But that is not the only cool thing that they are doing. They recycle almost everything; the sand for bedding, the lagoon water is treated so that it can be used again, and they also make compost from the manure solid and sell it to whoever wants it. Now if that isn’t innovation I don’t know what is!

So it’s not only great that this dairy is doing all those thing for the industry and the environment but they also completely open themselves up to the public for visits, they want to be completely transparent for consumers! So every year in June they have Prairieland Dairy Day, a day people can bring their families and just enjoy a day out at the farm. The really awesome thing about it is that it’s completely free! The food, milk, ice cream and activities are all free, that is so awesome! This is the 9th year that they have hosted the event, each year better than the last! They were expected to have 6,000 people attend this year but I think they were a little under that number, but not much! This year’s activities included:

People enjoying their free lunch farmer style (dirt and straw included)

The straw castle which was a hit!

The Nebraska Dairy Princess's were even present to
take pictures with kids and cows!

Annabelle is one tricky bovine to milk, but an extra set of hands never hurt!

The corn pit was a huge success, corn was flying EVERYWHERE!

The petting zoo was popular. Kids and parents were able to pet
a calf and milking cow.

The Prairieland Gold (compost) tent. I don't know
if people realized what they were playing with but
they didn't seem to care. You could even take a
bag homewith you!

Just a few of the people that were visting Dairy Day 2012!

Prairieland is a leader in Nebraska Dairy industry for sure and are a great model for a successful business! Midwest Dairy has done a great job though with really promoting Nebraska Dairy’s. There were 2 other farms; Temme Dairy near Wayne and Wolfden Dairy near Kearney that both had open houses in the month of June! And to wrap up Dairy Month there will be a huge event at the Omaha Henry Doorly Zoo this Saturday called Moo at the Zoo. I’ll be attending so sure enough there will be a blog to follow!