The American Farm Bureau Convention will take place in Puerto Rico beginning this weekend. Plenty of Indiana Farm Bureau members will make the trip, including Hamilton County’s Rachel Hyde who was the winner of the INFB Discussion Meet during their annual convention in December.
Hyde is a farmer, and she also works at Beck’s Hybrids as a field sales marketing coordinator. She told HAT she had a lot of fun with the discussion meet.
“Some good advice that I got was yes, this is a fake conversation because it is for a contest, but just think about it as a real discussion because you really are talking with peers in ag. And so, I just had fun with it and really enjoyed it.”
A number of ag topics were discussed during the discussion meet, including ag technology, supply chain, economic sustainability, and, of course, climate.
“Climate is a buzzword in ag. We all know that. And so, for me, one thing that I hammered home was as a farmer, I believe that climate initiatives should really be decisions at the farm gate, but it must drive profitability and ROI. So, on our farm, we already practice a lot of climate friendly initiatives. We no-till, we practice variable rate chemical and fertilizer. And so, I brought up those discussions from our own farm and really enjoyed that climate discussion.”
Hyde will now compete in Puerto Rico at the national Young Farmer & Rancher Discussion Meet. She says she’s looking forward to meeting new people in San Juan.
“I can sometimes get in my own box of row crops, coming from a corn and soybean operation and then showing on the livestock circuit and raising club lambs, but what I’m most excited about is getting opinions from other folks who are in other different types of agriculture. Here in Indiana, we can very much just think about corn and beans and row crop production acres, so I’m excited to get their opinions and really think about policy in a different light.”
Hyde won $4,000 for her discussion meet victory and an all expenses paid trip to Puerto Rico. We’ll follow her progress in the national competition and other news coming from the Farm Bureau convention here on Hoosier Ag Today.
