In the melting pot that is the reality of my life, advocacy and leadership training has always been important to me.  During my childhood and teenage years, I was surrounded by agriculture and was involved in both 4-H and FFA, as well as the FBLA and Beta clubs.  That is truly when my leadership journey began through livestock projects, livestock judging, public speaking and parliamentary procedure activities.

Fast forward to my college years spent in Boston, and I was active in student government, student admissions representatives, the crew team, and the student-run pub on campus.  It was here I first really saw and began to understand our society’s disconnect with agriculture as I witnessed genuinely intelligent people thinking the food chain starts at the grocery store.  To say I was surprised is an understatement.

Agriculture has been in my blood from the very beginning, and that is the path I followed upon graduating college.  As I settled back into farm life in Louisiana, I became involved with cattle and agriculture organizations, and quickly was admitted into the LSU Ag Leadership Program.  Like many agriculture leadership programs, the LSU program provided an incredible overview to numerous aspects of Louisiana’s agriculture.  The networking gained through the program is priceless as I have access, contact and friendships with some of the most proactive farmers and ranchers in our state!

In the same time frame I was in Ag Leadership, I became involved with Louisiana Farm Bureau Federation’s Young Farmers and Ranchers Committee.  Through that involvement, I participated in numerous advocacy and leadership trainings and conferences throughout the state and country.  Those experiences led to my interest in American Farm Bureau Federation’s Partners in Advocacy Leadership Program, which is a highly selective, intensely immersive learning experience.  In 2017, I was one of ten farmers and ranchers from all across the United States named as PAL Class 9.

Over the course of two years, the ten of us received hands-on training from four instructors in a ‘learning by doing’ environment.  We started our PALs journey focusing on connecting through storytelling, which was the topic of our first module in New York, New York.  Where else would one go to connect with consumers and the media?  The storytelling focus became the foundation of the rest of our advocacy training, which was essential in connecting with our policymakers at our second module in Washington D.C.  We traveled to Europe for our third module to visit with farmers in the United Kingdom to get firsthand accounts of their opinions and concerns regarding Brexit.  We also traveled to Brussels, where we visited with EU policymakers and government employees to hear their perspectives on Brexit, as well as the overwhelming task of writing and implementing food and farm policy from scratch.  We spent our final module in St. Louis, Missouri to learn more about communicating about biotechnology from the experts of Monsanto, now Bayer.  That module also had an emphasis on media interviews, which reiterates the common storytelling foundation.

Participating in AFBF’s PAL program has meant so much to me.  Yes, I already had a collection of advocacy skills, but PAL honed, refined and expanded abilities.  Additionally, through both the class members and instructors, I have a collection of lifelong friends and mentors!

Learn more about the American Farm Bureau Partners in Advocacy Leadership program.