Top Producer Summit

Horizon Award Honors Husband-and-Wife Team for Their Drive and Focus

Tue, 25 Jul 2023 16:59:42 GMT

Each year, Top Producer recognizes a producer under the age of 35 who demonstrates excellence in the business of farming, specifically marketing, finance, technology and family and employee relations. Congratulations to Martin Angus, the 2022 recipient of the Tomorrow’s Top Producer Horizon Award. Brendan and Elaine Martin were recognized at a ceremony held Feb. 14 during Top Producer Summit in Nashville.

Brendan Martin learned early on that cows equal cash flow. He started building his herd in high school with the goal of one day owning his own farm.

Growing up in the Shenandoah Valley near Mt. Solon, Va., Brendan began building equity and his farming dream through heifers, custom hay bailing and hard work. His reputation attracted the attention of a neighbor who was looking to slow down. The neighbor wanted a young, energetic farmer to purchase his cow herd and lease his 280-acre farm. Brendan stepped up to the plate.

Today, Brendan’s diversified and multi-faceted operation is a team effort with his wife, Elaine. In addition to their 280-acre home base, they lease around 600 acres of pasture and farmland. They raise corn, alfalfa, small grains and hay, and their cattle operation includes a registered Angus and commercial Angus herd, 210 fed cattle and 1,030 feeder calves. In the past couple of years, they have invested in their cattle facilities to increase cow comfort and feeding efficiency.

In 2019, the Martins added Blue Cedar Beef, a direct-to-consumer beef business. They ship beef all over the nation every week of the year. They also do custom mowing and litter spreading and recently added a trucking business. Their team includes two full-time and two part-time employees. Brendan also owns a large animal mobile veterinary practice, Valley Herd Health. Elaine specializes in record keeping, payroll and financial management for the farm, as well as keeping a close eye on the cattle herd.

As the Martins look toward the future, their goal is not to have the most cows or acres. They are motivated by their return on investment and creating generational impact in the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.

Take a trip to Martin Angus with this video from AgDay.

The Horizon Award is sponsored by Corteva and Pioneer. The winner receives an all-expenses-paid trip to Top Producer Summit; virtual mentoring sessions from Kristjan Hebert, the 2020 Top Producer of the Year; and a DJI Phantom 4 Drone, courtesy of Corteva.

The Online Top Producer Summit is set for Feb. 22-23 and will include live, on-demand and recorded sessions from the event in Nashville. Register now!

The Surprising Truth: 4 Things You May Not Know About Reaching Goals

Wed, 17 Mar 2021 20:16:36 GMT

Why don’t we finish goals? Jon Acuff, best-selling author and motivational speaker, says we often focus on the wrong thing when we talk about our goals. It’s kind of like a marathon, he describes. Everyone cheers you on at the beginning and the end, but no one’s there in the middle – and that is the toughest part.

“Most people think a goal is like this,” Acuff explains. “If you have 30 days, the beginning will be days 0 through 10. The middle will be days 11 through 20. And the finish will be days 21 through 30. That feels right mathematically; unfortunately, that’s not how it goes. Usually, the beginning is day one, the middle is days 2 through 29. And the finish is day 30.”

There’s a lot of middle to every goal. That’s why he says our focus should be on finishing, not starting. He wanted to dig into this topic more and commissioned a research study with a Ph.D. student at the University of Memphis. They studied 900 people for six months who were working on a variety of goals to see if people could go from being chronic starters into consistent finishers.

Acuff shared the results and what it takes to finish the goals that matter during the Online Top Producer Summit .

Get the size right.
The very first thing to do with any goal is to figure out what the size of the goal should be. After all, Acuff says goals in and of themselves are not complicated. There are four parts of a goal: the results you want, the timeline, the actions and the motivation.

“The problem with these four different components is we tend to be really terrible at estimating what we can accomplish,” Acuff says.

In the study, researchers asked participants to cut their goal in half and evaluated what happened. They learned that people who cut their goal in half were 63% more successful. Acuff says this proves how bad most people are at figuring out their goals. But he says there is hope because most people are good at results and timelines. That leaves more time to focus on the parts of a goal that people can actually have the most control over: motivation and actions.

Choose what to bomb.
One of the most important things you can do with a goal is choose what to bomb, Acuff explains. Recognize some things matter, some things don’t.

“When you lean into new goals, you have a really simple choice: shame or strategy. Shame says you should be able to do it all. Strategy says these are the things that matter, these are things that don’t. It’s important to figure that out because there’s so many things trying to take your time right now,” Acuff says.

Sometimes, even if you can’t stop something, you can simplify it, he suggests. Ask yourself hard questions. Are we doing this in a complicated way? During this season, does this matter as much as it might matter during another season? Can I bring on help? What can I stop?

“The one thing you can’t stop are relationships,” Acuff says. “And the challenge with that is a lot of you didn’t get into farming so you could manage people. However, you can’t ignore the people challenges.”

This is where empathy comes into the picture.

“I know empathy is one of those soft sounding words, it sounds like a candle flavor at Bed, Bath and Beyond...sandalwood and empathy,” he jokes. “But here’s how I define it in the context of business. Empathy has two parts, understanding what someone needs and acting on it.”

He says if you want to ruin an employee or vendor or customer relationship, understand what people need and then don’t do anything about it. Empathy is essential if you want to grow teams and grow what you are doing.

So, how do we know what people care about? “Read less minds, ask more questions. What I’ve learned over the years is it’s much better to meet a need than it is to invent a need,” Acuff says.

Make it fun.
Make it fun if you want it done. The most surprising part of the research for Acuff was discovering that fun, joy, engagement and fulfillment matter to all goals.

“Most people think a goal has to be difficult or miserable to count,” he says.

In the study, researchers asked participants to make what they were doing fun. The people that did had a 31% increase in satisfaction and felt more connected to the work, Acuff explains. The research also showed they had a 46% increase in performance success. People actually performed better when they made their goals fun.

“Like every job, every goal has difficult parts, whether you’re going to lose weight or get your finances in order. So, don’t hear me saying everything will be fun,” he says.

It’s not necessarily about having fun, though. He says it’s about making your goals fun. There are two ways to do that: reward and fear.

“Sometimes when we see the word fear, we think of the negative connotations only. When I say fear, I mean consequence. If you ever got something done on a Thursday, because you had a Friday deadline, you experience a positive motivation from fear,” he says.

For others, rewards may incentivize them to stick to their goals. Rewards can be as a simple as attending a movie all by yourself, Acuff says. But it’s up to everyone to figure out what motivates them. Is it a little bit of reward or is a little bit of consequence?

Eliminate your secret rules.
Everybody brings secret rules into goal setting, Acuff says. These are often things people don’t even know they’re doing that get in the way.

“Secret rules are often inherited,” Acuff adds. “Maybe a teacher told you one time that you’re not a leader. Maybe you’ve been believing it for 10, 20, 30 years. Every time you get an opportunity to be the leader, you feel this pulling back because you’ve got this secret rule that’s getting in the way.”

When you feed a secret rule time, energy and creativity, Acuff says you get stuck believing that lie. That’s why it’s important as you work on new goals, to decide not to be held back by secret rules. One of the most common he sees is the rule that says you must have it all together.

“There’s this old school mentality that said, ‘If I share my weaknesses, people won’t trust my strengths,’” Acuff says. “I think new school leadership is ‘If I pretend I don’t have weaknesses, people won’t trust my strengths.’”

If you really want to grow, borrow someone else’s diploma. Where does it say you must have the experience to learn from the experience? Acuff says it’s important to have mentors – ahead of you and behind you in age. When we are humble enough to “borrow that diploma,” we’ll grow in a way we never expected, he adds.

“We’re not talking about being perfect. We’re talking about being better than we were yesterday, and then repeating that tomorrow. That’s our goal,” Acuff says. “When it comes to finishing, starting is fun. But the future belongs to finishers.”

Read more coverage of the Top Producer Summit .

More from the Online Top Producer Summit:
Don’t Waste This Crisis: Make 2021 a Leap Year

Use Emotional Intelligence to Tackle The Tough Stuff

Setting Expectations Smooths the Path for Succession Planning with Off-Farm Heirs

7 Ways to Ruin Your Lender Relationship

Use Emotional Intelligence to Tackle The Tough Stuff

Sat, 27 Feb 2021 16:04:57 GMT

As a leader, you are looked to for your reaction in many tough situations. And your reaction sets the tone for how the rest of the team will proceed through the situation themselves.

During the 2021 Top Producer Summit Dr. JP Pawliw-Fry, co-founder of Institute for Health and Human Potential and NY Times best-selling author, gives tips on how to reframe hard situations so they aren’t happening to you but rather happening for you.

Pawliw-Fry has worked with the NFL, NBA, Navy Seals and Olympic athletes. He says the most common barrier to success is our reaction to challenges, which can be managed through using emotional intelligence.

He shares in hard to have conversations, hard to make decisions and hard to do tasks, people can easily navigate the first 92%, but it’s the final 8% of completing one of those three that falls victim to one of two predictable behaviors—avoidance or making a mess of it.

“If you can manage these moments, the world is yours,” he says. “By our data, most people are avoiders, and if you know your patterns, you can manage around it.”

He shares there are two risks to not completing that final 8%. There can be a loss of external reputation from your team, and there’s also a loss of internal reputation within yourself.

“When we choose to avoid a situation, or take an off-ramp or make a mess of something, it effects how we are seen and how we view ourselves,” he says. “If you manage through that last 8% it means you don’t burn up energy in anxiety, you’re managing intentions, and you stay in relationship with those who are you having the tough conversation.”

Our brains our designed to make us feel before we think. If you can hijack that natural process to allow yourself to stay engaged in a challenge rather than react emotionally, you can chart a course for success.

As a tool to assess yourself, Pawliw-Fry shares these three ways to know when you are reacting on emotion:

How you feel physically. For example, heat in your face/head, tightness in your chest, or butterflies in your stomach.
Having a sense of certainty. This is when the world becomes very black/white or right/wrong. It results in being closed off from the conversation at hand.
Urgency. If you feel like an event demands action right now, it means you are overlooking the value of analyzing the situation.

As a tool to help leaders start their day with mindfulness, movement and mental training, he has a free podcast, The Last 8% Morning. Click here to learn more.

And you can see his full presentation, The Calm Person in The Boat: Leverage the Power Of Emotional Intelligence, from the 2021 Top Producer Summit. You can still register for access to the full event’s presentations through March 31. Use the code “ONDEMAND” to take $25 off your registration fee.

Read more coverage of the Top Producer Summit

Grandin, Mitloehner Serve Up Facts About Animal Ag and Greenhouse Gases

Thu, 25 Feb 2021 21:29:05 GMT

Climate change and sustainability are no longer topics that can be ignored as consumers and policymakers push for action. In a keynote crossover session for the Online Top Producer Summit and Trust in Food Symposium: Regenerative Reset , Colin Woodall, Dr. Temple Grandin and Dr. Frank Mitloehner shared the steps animal agriculture is taking to tackle sustainability. Learn more here .

Animal agriculture gets a bad rap when it comes to sustainability. But that is why it’s vital that the industry take a bigger role in correcting misperceptions and using its voice to be its own best advocate and share the strides it has made over the last few decades, said NCBA CEO Colin Woodall. Modern cattle ranching produces the same amount of beef as was produced in the 1970s, but with a third fewer cattle—a change driven by the industry, without governmental mandates.

“We did so without the EPA telling us to do it, without Congress or the White House telling us to do it. And it’s taking that experience, taking that innovation as an industry and showcasing it to everybody,” Woodall said. “But also recognizing that we cannot rest on our laurels. We have to be committed to continual improvement. That’s the only way that we’re going to be able to be a serious participant at the table, discussing sustainability.”

It goes hand-in-hand with participation from producers. The word sustainability may bring to mind more regulations or burdens on their ranch, Woodall said. But to be sustainable, that narrative has to change. And part of that comes from support from industry leadership, like the NCBA.

“For the NCBA, our first priority with this new strategic plan is to focus on our membership to make sure that they understand that this is about showcasing the stewardship of producers, showcasing what we’ve already done, in order to make sure that they understand that this is all of us working together, to connect with the consumer, connect with the policymakers, rather than just waiting for somebody to tell us what we have to do.”

Dr. Grandin, a professor of animal science at Colorado State University and a pioneer in farm animal handling and welfare, stressed that as guidelines and processes are set, they must be clear and manageable in the long-term, not just to make a splash in the short-term.

“A few things about sustainability—a care for the environment is definitely is one of them. Then there’s the social responsibility where [animal] welfare would be part of that. And then the third thing is people do have to make a living. I want to emphasize make a living, not trying to make a killing,” she said. “The problem with some stuff that’s not sustainable is in the short term you make money, but in the long term you wreck things.”

Dr. Mitloehner, a professor and air quality specialist in cooperative extension in the department of animal science at the University of California, Davis, used his expertise to dispel some of the myths about greenhouse gases related to animal agriculture.

While livestock take a lot of flak for producing methane, the perception is wrong, Mitloehner emphasizes. Anyone who compares cows to cars has been misled into thinking that the two are similar in scale or process, but they’re not.

“In the U.S 80% of all greenhouse gases stem from the use of fossil fuel. And that’s transportation, power production/use, and the cement industry,” he said. “Livestock on the other side, in the U.S., emits approximately 4% of all greenhouse gases, according to the EPA.”

In terms of types of greenhouse gases, the methane that livestock produces is considered a flow gas—more is produced, but at the same time it has a much shorter half-life—10 years. So it’s not just produced, it’s also consumed. This is compared to the 1,000 years it takes to remove Co2, which is considered a stock gas. As more is created it’s added to the “stock,” and it’s a cumulative effect.

Another important factor: agriculture is one of the few industries that works as both a source and a sink for greenhouse gases.

“Most other sectors in society only produce greenhouse gases, but there are two sectors that are both sources, and sinks: forestry and agriculture. These land use sectors, forestry and agriculture, take on more carbon than they emit,” he said.

Mitloehner believes as technology changes and the use of things such as anerobic digesters become more commonplace, great strides can be made in a short time. Dairies in California are a prime example. The state passed a mandate to reduce methane emissions by 40% by the year 2030, and in just a few years, they have already reached a 25% reduction.

You can still register for the Online Top Producer Summit , which gives you access to content through March 31. Use the code “ONDEMAND” to take $25 off your registration fee.

Read more coverage of the Top Producer Summit .