CommonGround Kansas

My daughter is nearly 18 months old right now. It’s the perfect age to remember all the things you were going to do as the “perfect” parent — and it’s been long enough to have broken most of those rules already.

These days, it seems like everyone is being asked to do more with less — fewer hours in the day, smaller budgets and less resources. Farming is no different. Today, producers are being tasked with increasing their yields while reducing their costs. To accomplish this goal, farmers must make every acre of ground more efficient as resources become more scarce. And, we’ve done it.

For me, growing plants is both a profession and a hobby. I’m an avid gardener, but my day-to-day job is helping farmers grow healthy crops. My education in plant and soil science can be applied to thousands of acres of corn, wheat and soybeans — and it can just as easily be used to help a few tomato plants thrive in my backyard.

If you have a social media account, you have probably seen some heated discussions about food. In real life, I’ve had a lot of great conversations about food, farming and agriculture. In fact, I have the opportunity to talk about my farm nearly every day at work.

On a typical farm, producers harvest their commodity and sell it to a company or cooperative, which turns it into something you might see a grocery store. That’s the way our farm operated from about 1930 until 2007 when our family decided to build a processing plant.

Buy local” is a phrase I hear often — even in rural America. As a farmer, my job is to put safe, healthy foods on tables across America. That includes my local community.

Chances are, you’ve seen “sustainably farmed” labels at your grocery store. Did you ever stop to wonder what that means? Like many confusing food labels, the definition is not universal. In fact, sustainability can mean different things from one farm to another.

I spent years trading hamburgers for veggie patties, a “morally-conscious” food consumer who sought organic, natural ingredients whenever possible. Growing up in the city, I didn’t really understand how our food was grown. That is, until I left and started raising cattle myself.

In the last 30 years, a lot has changed about farming. Agriculture is advancing with the help of technology — just like many industries. Our farm’s philosophy is growth through innovation. In many cases, that means incorporating technology. We research, evaluate, test and calculate the return on investment on each new venture we try.