It’s a compliment to the filling nutrition of our programming that those who gorge themselves at the Ol’ Farm Bureau Buffet sometimes push away for an extended breather. It’s a common and familiar enough pattern that a wise organization accepts it as inevitable and builds a leadership structure flexible enough to accommodate it.
In other words: It has to be okay for people to take a break.
Today’s example is Gratiot County Farm Bureau’s new president Eric Whitford, who raises 250 acres of cash grains near Ashley and does his best to keep up with his and wife Jennifer’s three young boys.
Well coached and rested up for the big game, Eric Whitford is putting his deep leadership-development resume to work as Gratiot County Farm Bureau’s new president.
“I always knew I was gonna come back,” he recently clarified over lunch at JJ Ruby’s. “I just needed a break.”
Whitford spent much of the mid-to-late 2000s neck-deep in the Young Farmer program, first locally as Gratiot’s chair, then on the state committee. In 2005 he took part in and graduated from ProFILE, MFB’s elite leadership development program.
Now in his mid-40s and with a rekindled interest in the organization, his Farm Bureau involvement is resurgent and he’s starting by checking in where he left off.
“I want to see the Young Farmer program succeed,” he said. “That’s the foundation of the organization.”
To that end he wants to better promote the organization locally — raise its profile and visibility in its own community.
“I’m amazed by the number of people directly involved in agriculture who don’t know about Farm Bureau,” Whitford said, acknowledging that doing the job right will involve some elbow grease in the form of personal contact.
“Had I not been personally invited I don’t think I’d ever have gotten involved in Farm Bureau.”
But he’s thankful for it now and eager to spread the gospel to the unconverted.
“The biggest value of the organization as a whole I think is our political voice. Through our involvement we can influence the ag policies, the farm bill… Farm Bureau is one of the most listened-to organizations on a political level.”
But from the heights of federal farm policy Whitford came full circle, right back to the grassroots relationships that are the source of Farm Bureau’s effectiveness.
“I’ve always enjoyed the social aspect of it,” he said. “You develop this network of peers all over the state — friends…”
His example:
“You know Brad Brown? Brad and I were on the Argentina trip together and got to know each other pretty well” — which between farmers usually involves some back-and-forth around equipment-brand biases, right? It’s almost territorial.
“So a while back I’m at an International Harvester auction near here and I see Brad Brown’s there. I go up to him and say, ‘Brad — you’re two hours from home — why didn’t you let me know you were coming?
“And Brad just looks at me and says, ‘Well, I figured it’s an IH auction so I already knew you’d be here.”
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P.S. — As a matter of fact I do know Brad Brown, and soon you will too because he’s another new Farm Bureau president in my own homeland, Mason County. Look for Brad in an upcoming issue of Farm Gate.