May 3, 2018

Road trip

Topic: Issues

NDFB President Daryl Lies shares his thoughts from a road trip delivering show pigs.

Download the One size doesn't fit all mp3

Read the transcript:

The things we do on our farm takes me across several states at times. And this last week I spent time delivering show pigs into South Dakota, Wyoming and Utah. And this gives me an opportunity to spend time learning what issues agriculture is facing in each of those states.

So, I spent some extra time in Utah, and surprisingly enough their issues are not that much different than ours. They do things a little differently. When you’re farming along the mountains, you’ve got some orchards, you’ve got dairy, you’ve got corn, alfalfa, hay and you’ve got a very unique way of doing it, in comparison to the way we do things, generally, in North Dakota.

But learning those issues of those other states, and the way they do things, and the ability to share what our issues are and how they compare and how they are similar, helps us at NDFB develop policy and implement policy and make our arguments for policy with those throughout AFBF, and we can join our differences together. That’s what makes the network of Farm Bureau so great, being able to share those experiences, learn how others are affected by the policies that we want, and sharing how we are affected by the policies that that they think they need, and get everyone on the same page to understand there is no one size fits all when it comes to agriculture.

But when I’m on these trips, I always appreciate how we do agriculture in North Dakota and our farmers and ranchers are second-to-none in the production of the food that our world needs.