Navigating change on the family farm

作者:Amy Sitze

As a child, 泰勒戈林 often heard her dad say, “Farming is my therapy.”

It didn’t make sense to her at the time, but as a young adult helping to manage her family’s diversified farming and ranching operation in central Kansas, she now laughs when she catches those same words coming out of her mouth. “You hear people say that if you love your job, you don’t work a day in your life, and that’s how I feel about farming,她说。. “No matter how tough it gets, I absolutely love what I do.”

对农业的热爱

泰勒是全美最受欢迎的女性之一.200万女性农业生产者. That number accounts for 36% of the country’s 3.400万生产者, according to the USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service 2017 agricultural census (the most recent available).

Her father, Greg Goering, says he originally thought his son, Trenton, would someday run the farm. But Trenton followed a different path, joining the military. 泰勒, 另一方面, showed a strong interest in farming from a young age, and has recently taken on responsibility for business decisions about crop rotation, 财务状况, 技术, 劳动, 设备及更多.

“泰勒 has a passion for it,” Greg says. “She thinks, eats, sleeps and drinks farming. She’s always thinking about the future: What’s the best thing to do tomorrow and how are we going to do it?”

泰勒 and Greg both say they feel fortunate to have help making those decisions from Brandon 施拉格, MKC皇冠hga010安卓二维码的销售总监, 合作社有11个以上,000 members across central and southwest Kansas. 施拉格, who has known the Goering family for more than 20 years and remembers 泰勒 when she was “knee-high,” says he’s enjoyed watching her grow into a leadership role on the family farm and appreciates her willingness to col劳动ate in the face of challenges.

“She might be looking at a field and wondering why the corn is yellowing,” he says. “We’ll walk through it together and try to figure out the problem and come up with solutions.”

不断发展的技术

不管有多冲动, intelligent and tech-savvy the Goerings and other farmers are, 施拉格 says they’re too busy with daily work and business challenges to keep up with all the rapid changes in products and 技术. “It’s my job to stay up-to-date with new 技术 and new practices and bring them to their farm,施拉格说。. “It’s also my job to challenge the status quo and sometimes encourage them to change practices to help their profitability and reach their yield goals.”

对于泰勒, change is what farming is all about — even in an operation whose history stretches back to the early 1900s. (A favorite family story describes her great-grandfather hearing the siren announcing the end of World War I on Nov. 11, 1918, as he was finishing the barn roof.)

“Technology is changing and evolving every day in agriculture,她说。. “It can be hard to understand and utilize, 但最后, it makes things easier for all of us — and we can see the return on investment.”

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