"Agricultural Meetings" might sound quaint in an always-on iPhone world, but today's agricultural organizations cover an entire library of topics—plant botany and animal husbandry, to be sure, but also climate, hydrology, transportation, entrepreneurship and even retirement planning. As a result, planners are looking at more diversity than they may have previously imagined.
What follows are some of the topics today's ag organizations are meeting about; how the transition to the next generation of farmers is an especially hot subject; and some specific concerns about conducting agricultural off-sites.
Ag Is Diverse
Forget the "American Gothic" image of farmer-spouse-and-barn when you think about today's ag-meeting attendee. David Smart, director of Destinations, the meeting and event production department of the Alabama Farmers Federation (AFF), says that AFF members are a diverse group of businesspeople who point a lot of capital at a wide array of agricultural concerns.
"It's interesting when a person drives by a poultry farm and sees four chicken houses, and [doesn't know] those four houses are worth over $1 million,” Smart says. “They're $250,000 each!"
The AFF's 87,000 members range from large farms or farm-machinery dealerships down to part-timers who keep honeybees or simply process and sell honey as a commodity. Destinations handles the business end of these groups' meetings and also liaises with AFF technical staff, who provide seminar content specifically oriented to Alabama's varied commodity groups—cotton, cattle, grains, greenhouse crops, poultry, aquaculture and a dozen others.
Mike Bradley, manager of resource development, membership marketing and meeting management for the California Farm Bureau (CFB), notes that ag is the biggest business in the nation's most populous state—and its list of concerns is lengthy.
"Labor, Air Resources Board [regulations], financing, illegal marijuana grows, disease and pests, energy—these issues impact every farmer in the state,” Bradley says. “And then we work specifically with commodity groups: There are 450 commercially grown in the state, so there's a great diversity here [including] hay, wine grapes, rice, beef, dairy, row crops, and specialty crops such as melons."
With big money comes potential legal disputes, including battles over water rights, encroachment by neighboring farmers, and theft of farmers' equipment and even harvests, Bradley says, so CFB holds conferences in Sacramento that include meetings between CFB members and their legislators.
Liz Birnbaum, program coordinator at the Ecological Farming Association (EFA) in Soquel, Calif., plans meetings that are generally smaller than those of the AFF or CFB, but the EFA's portfolio still ranges far and wide.
"We have a focus on ecology and conservation, and on politics and activism, which ties to science and social justice," Birnbaum says, adding that this means technical workshops on seed saving, cover cropping, pollination, food safety and labor law, but also consumer-friendly topics such as butchery, home fermentation and heirloom tomatoes.PageBreak
Ag Is Both Aging and Renewing
Every business experiences turnover as older owners and workers leave and younger hands come aboard, but this process is particularly prevalent in family farms, with their multigenerational heritage and roots. Tax management and estate planning issues were mentioned by all three planners interviewed for this story, as Baby Boomer farmers and ranchers look to pass their land, equipment and hard-won knowledge to the next generation.
It's imperative to make these programs worth attendees' while, David Smart says, since leaving their operation invests some of their most precious commodity.
"When you turn the key of your car or truck to leave, you're investing your time,” Smart remarks.
Grooming the next generation of farm leaders is also a perennial concern, and AFF recently ran a Young Farmers Leadership Conference with 270 attendees, plus a separate women's leadership conference to reflect agricultural women's activism at every level.
CFB's Bradley notes that the average California farmer is 65, and mentions a Young Farmers and Ranchers group for those "who are either just entering the workforce or are already young professionals. We provide leadership opportunities and training ... [and] they become our leaders 15–20 years from now."
The younger generation of farmers is also being drawn to EFA gatherings, which promote farming-as-community alongside farming-as-business, says Birnbaum. Almost 40 percent of those at EFA's January conference skewed younger than average, falling into the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's "beginning farmers" category—those with less than 10 years of experience.PageBreak
Ag Is Hands-On
Off-site agricultural tours are a natural fit with attendees' typically pragmatic, hands-on styles. As part of a larger conference, David Smart's Destinations group charters 10–12 buses each August to take attendees to farm or other agriculture-industry operations, leading to questions that might not occur to non-ag planners.
"Will the charter company put their coach onto an unpaved road, or into a field?” he asks. “We check with the stops about their soil conditions—can their cattle gaps support a coach loaded with people and fuel? Are there places to turn around? And so on."
International ag tours require arrangements with local officials to speak to visiting AFF members, which may in turn require a translator, Smart says.
The CFB recently created the California Bountiful Foundation to raise money for research, education and public outreach. It brings together community figures who are not necessarily farmers or ranchers—chefs, farmers, consumers, attorneys—for talks on agriculture's importance to California. In May, California Bountiful will hold an event at Hearst Ranch in San Simeon, where attendees will examine California's avocado business in depth and tour the world's largest abalone farm in nearby Cayucas.
Small-scale agriculture and processing already have a hands-on feel that EFA embraces, Birnbaum says.
"At a pre-conference event we did a session on butchery, and there were 50 people there,” she explains. “It was about the cuts of meat, how do you do them, how do you explain to the person cutting up your meat what you want so that you get the most from your animal."
It's not exactly your average PowerPoint presentation. As Birnbaum says, "That's one awesome thing about food and farming: It does have this diversity of topics and pulls everything in. You can have a conversation about the whole world."
