Farming Podcast | Agriculture Education Insights: Ag Career Advice for Students

00:00:00 Advice for the new graduates looking at going into the business of agriculture. What sort of education should they attain? 00:00:08 I'm talking to Connor Verne Garrett about that very topic in this episode of Extreme Ag Sky in the Curve. 00:00:14 It's extreme ag cutting the curve podcast, cutting your learning curve, and improving your farming operation every week. 00:00:21 This episode of The Cutting the Curve podcast is powered by Nature's bio kay technology delivering enhanced nutrient 00:00:27 cycling, greater plant health, and elevated stress mitigation leading to increased crop yields. 00:00:33 Visit natures.com. And now let's get ready to learn with your host, Damien Mason. Hey there. Welcome to another fantastic episode 00:00:41 of Extreme Acts Cutting the Curve. I've got a recent college graduate by recent, I mean in the last four or five years. 00:00:46 His name is Connor, but he goes by Verne. He is the oldest child of Mr. Kelly Garrett, uh, with Extreme Mag. 00:00:53 And about a couple weeks ago he was approached, Connor was by a family friend 00:00:59 and said, I've got daughter who's a junior in high school, and her boyfriend's a senior in high school, 00:01:02 and they're going to, uh, go into agriculture. Uh, what do, what should they study? What do they need to know? What's, what's the advice 00:01:08 that you would give us as a 25, 20 6-year-old guy that just got out of Iowa State, uh, three or four or five years ago? 00:01:14 And that's where Vern stepped in. I said, you know what? That'd be a great episode. It'd also tie in nicely 00:01:18 with the time of year, it's graduation time, and the fact that here at Extreme Ag for like the third or fourth year in a row, now we are doing the Extreme Ag 00:01:25 Scholar, uh, scholarship program. We're, we're giving away 10, $3,000 scholarships. So anyway, Mr. Connor, Garrett, this will be on here. 00:01:33 What did you tell 'em? Um, yeah, thanks for having me, Damien. So I graduated, uh, May, 2021 00:01:42 with a degree in agronomy from Iowa State. And they just, you know, they were thinking about college, they were thinking about going into agriculture in some 00:01:50 major, and they wanted to know my opinion on it and that whole kinda take, and I had a great experience when I went up. 00:01:58 You know, we, I learned a lot of cool stuff, met a lot of cool people. Um, but we just kind of talked 00:02:05 through my experience doing it and kind of how I approached it. You know, I got a, to be a senior in high school 00:02:11 and I was pretty sick to homework. I was pretty sick of stupid busy work from people that don't really care to give you the material 00:02:18 and you don't really care about the material. And I think that was what made them a little skeptical about going in 00:02:23 for four more years of school, you know, as a farm kid that you don't know whether or not you needed. And I was up there with a lot of kids like that too, 00:02:31 and a lot of 'em didn't make it all the way through the four years. Um, but kind of one of the things that helped me, 00:02:39 I took a lot of college credits going in. Uh, I, I took a lot of online classes, so I had 40 credits going in. 00:02:44 I had over a year done. And I would really recommend that to anyone because that took care of a lot 00:02:51 of my gen ed requirements, right? I didn't have to take intro to psychology, sociology, English comp, some of those math classes, all 00:02:59 that stupid stuff that you've already done in high school. I got to go immediately into the agronomy classes, which is 00:03:05 what I was there for, which is what I was interested in. And that was a huge advantage for me. 00:03:10 You know, a lot of, like I said, a lot of the farm kids that I was with did not make it through those classes. They dropped out, they said, this is stupid. I'm done. 00:03:17 I'm going home to work on the farm. And I stuck around and I got to do stuff I was interested in that was more realistic 00:03:24 and is stuff that's helpful to me today. Uh, so first off, uh, that's probably an option, but not an option for everybody. 00:03:33 I don't think it was even an option to, like, for instance, when I went to school, that you 00:03:36 could do it all ahead of time. So that's a good thing and it's good advice. And also there's a cost savings to that as well, 00:03:41 Right? It was a lot cheaper and Right, like you said, it wasn't an option when my dad went to school, but he talked about he saw the kids that went 00:03:48 to bigger schools had that option. Yep. And now that we have these online classes available, I was able to get all those done online 00:03:53 and it was cheap, easy, and not a problem. There's the tendency of someone saying, I'm gonna go back to the farm. 00:04:03 I don't need this. I think that that's certainly, I mean, I've been 19 and I know that I didn't like school either, 00:04:08 but, uh, that's a lot that goes along. Besides the coursework about going from age 18 or 19 to being 21 00:04:15 or 22, there's the growth, uh, trajectory, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, did you, did you grow up and mature? 00:04:22 You've always kind of almost like kind of been an old man as a young guy anyhow, did you grow up mature at Oh, 00:04:30 I, I, for sure grew up in mature in my time up there. I, I had some phases and, you know, like, uh, my brother Kale, he, 00:04:36 he did one year up there and it wasn't for him. He came back and, you know, he didn't have that period, you know, I was away for 40 years 00:04:43 and that was huge for just growing up. That was the biggest thing about the whole, the whole experience. 00:04:47 I would say that I got to go grow up somewhere else and then come back. If you're, if you just stay in the same spot 00:04:54 that whole time, everybody's gonna treat you like a 16-year-old for a long time. You know, that's how they know you, that's 00:05:00 how they know your personality. And when, when you get away for four years and come back, it, I don't know if it how much you change 00:05:06 or how much just their perspective changes of you, but things definitely change. And that was the biggest part of it, always Just being away, 00:05:12 growing up, being on your own. Okay. So the advice you gave, uh, the, the family friend, you said if you can get general ed credits, uh, knocked out 00:05:21 before you get there, it's a cost savings and also it gets you more, uh, right into what you want to go and do. 00:05:25 Now that's good, except for the person that doesn't know what the hell they wanna do. You never wavered. 00:05:30 Um, a lot of people change degrees, change majors several times and do that bopping around. So there is that, uh, that caveat 00:05:40 to doing it the way you did it. Then if you decide you wanna change, um, you still have your general stuff all done, 00:05:45 but you, you, uh, you hopped right into it. So maybe there's actually a benefit. I don't know. Was it a benefit? Yeah, there's, 00:05:50 You're able to move around a lot, but like I, I always wanted to be in agro. That's what I was interested in. 00:05:55 I did some extracurricular stuff in high school that got me into that plant science. I knew that's what I wanted to do. 00:06:00 But, you know, there's a ton of majors. Um, but there's a, there's a really open one called Ag Studies 00:06:05 and a lot of farm kids go into that. And you can take a little bit of the agronomy classes, a little bit of the livestock classes, uh, ag business, 00:06:12 ag systems, technology, where you deal with a lot of the more of the mechanicals. It's Al it's almost like vocational ag in high school 00:06:17 as it traditionally was, but it's at the college level. Exactly. Yep. Yep. And then you get a little bit of everything, 00:06:22 a lot of farm kids in that. Yeah. What else, what else did, what did you tell these kids? First off, did it dawn on you 00:06:27 that you're now an old guy when you're being asked to advise 17 year olds on their future? Did it dawn on you that you've now turned, 00:06:34 you're gonna have a kid next month, and now you've also decided that you're gonna be in the advise the young, the, uh, the, 00:06:39 uh, teenagers now? It, it, it was kind of a wake up call that all of a sudden. Yeah, man, I've been outta college for four years now. It's, 00:06:48 Well, I mean, bifocals, bifocals and an old Buick are probably next for somebody like you. Yeah, I guess so. Maybe not quite, 00:06:56 Um, bifocal in a Buick. That's funny. All right, I'm glad I said that. Alright, here, here's my next thing. 00:07:00 You, what did you tell 'em? You said, all right, here's what you need to know. All right. Besides the, the 00:07:04 education, did you tell 'em where to go? Um, for me, I, you know, I would say it's a great school for agronomy, but for me it was about being close to home, 00:07:13 but not too close to home. Mm-hmm. Right. I was two hours away. So mom and dad weren't, it wasn't like, 00:07:19 you're still living at home doing laundry there and that kind of thing. Mm-hmm. But during planting 00:07:24 and harvest, I was two, I could come home that weekend and be in the field all weekend. Mm. You know, place the employees that were off. 00:07:29 So I thought, I thought that was about perfect, you know, So you recommended these kids go far enough away 00:07:34 that they are not still being, uh, helicoptered by their parents, but close enough that they can come home, uh, uh, occasionally. 00:07:40 Exactly. You know, that's different for everybody, but that is what kind of worked out perfect for me. I agree with you. I was about two hours away from home 00:07:47 and, uh, and I, I tried to, I I was very happy to be that and there's a lot of growth on that also. 00:07:51 What else did you tell 'em? Um, did you tell Iowa State or did you say just go somewhere? Or did you say don't go? Did you look at 'em 00:07:57 and say, you know what, you're not that bright. You should probably just really look into maybe like the working at the tire store. I mean, what did you tell? I 00:08:04 I, I told 'em that I thought that they should go, you know, they're, they're both pretty smart kids, pretty sharp kids that are interested in that kind of thing. 00:08:11 And I thought it was, you know, it was a good thing for them to go and, and to learn all that stuff. 00:08:14 Right. Um, you stick around here, you're gonna do a lot of your learning about farming in the coffee shop. And those guys have been doing it 00:08:21 the same way for a long time. It was, it was great to go see what the pe well, we were researching in our universities, right. 00:08:27 Hearing what the cutting edge research was saying, all that kind of stuff. Yep. And, and the huge part of it was making connections. 00:08:33 One of the things he asked me, is it worth it to go four years or should I just try to hop in for two years, you know, do this or that? 00:08:40 And I said, the thing about going for four years was once you get to that third and fourth year, those professors know who you are. 00:08:46 Then you're in the higher level classes. That's when you're doing the real learning about things. And, uh, that was big for me too. That's, 00:08:53 I would agree, I would agree with that, that, uh, you had, I mean, it, it's, what's the hurry? 00:08:58 Uh, you're still, you know, 20 years old, whatever. So, uh, I would, I would agree with that. Um, do you think of all the things, 00:09:08 I'm a proponent of education for people that obviously want to do it, and I think that there's this, uh, 00:09:14 there's this sort of perception from people that are not in our industry, that we're not as well educated as we are. 00:09:21 Um, those that obviously work with the industry are like, oh, well, yeah, of course. 00:09:24 But, uh, do you think that perception's changing? Do you think that there's this now thing like your age and younger where it's like you can't be in this business 00:09:32 without having your s**t together? Yeah. I I, I definitely think so. It's the people that really are tracking everything, 00:09:40 are trying new things, are, are looking at and managing at every, at the higher level, you know, trying to be as precise as possible. 00:09:47 Those are the people that are succeeding and kind of the old way is Falling. What'd you tell those 00:09:52 young kids? Or that you would tell any teenager right now, someone's getting out of high school right now. 00:09:56 What would you, what did you tell 'em not to do anything? Don't, don't force yourself into something just 00:10:04 'cause you think you're supposed to do it, right? Mm-hmm. You've gotta love what you're doing. You've gotta be passionate about what you're learning about 00:10:10 what you're doing, about what you're trying, or you're not gonna do it very long. You're gonna struggle along and it's not gonna be any fun. 00:10:16 Mm-hmm. You gotta, you gotta love it. Especially in this, in this industry. I would agree with that. Um, there's a lot of people that, 00:10:24 uh, uh, well, you got told as a kid that you were supposed to be a nuclear engineer or some such thing, and, uh, 00:10:29 and, and, and you did. You didn't wanna do that. No, no. That was, uh, the Navy recruiting. But, uh, I told 'em I wanted to be a farmer 00:10:37 and boy, they thought that was crazy. But you gotta love. What else did you tell these, uh, teenagers not to do? 00:10:45 Uh, well, it's like I touched on earlier. Uh, but once I got into that, those 300, 400 level classes and the work just got so much more interesting. 00:10:54 Right. Instead of homework being algebra, sulfur X, now it's, yeah. It's, uh, make a recommendation to this farmer about 00:11:01 what he can do to improve his operation. Sure. Right. And it's, what can you do at all? I, I talked about starter fertilizer, about variable rating, 00:11:08 about irrigation, you know, write up a recommendation and that, that was so fun for me, be able to do A project Yeah. Became more applicable 00:11:14 and it became more actionable and more importantly became more relevant. Okay. If I had to, if I had to give somebody advice, 00:11:20 first off, I, I don't know about tell them where to go. Right. Um, I, I'd probably have a couple places where I'd tell 'em where not to go. 00:11:28 Yeah. Yeah. And, and of course that'd be Ohio State, because nobody should ever support Ohio State ever. Uh, in fact, you shouldn't even go to Columbus, Ohio 00:11:37 unless you're being paid to go there. That's just my personal, that's just, I mean, that's, maybe I have a little bit of a bias. 00:11:42 But anyway, aside from my disdain for Ohio State, other than that, did I tell you I hate Ohio State 00:11:48 anyway, Vernon, it's a different story. Um, alright, I I, what about a course of study, do you say, here's where, here's where you should spend your time 00:11:55 and here's not where you should spend your time within agriculture? There's a whole bunch of things. 00:12:00 Yeah. You know, it's, it's really what you're interested in and what's, like, what I wanted 00:12:05 to look at is what's gonna apply to my operation After I was always interested in agronomy. We were doing a lot of agronomy things, 00:12:10 getting into the irrigation and the yield contest and trying to do better. I wanna do agronomy. 00:12:14 Uh, both my brothers were born interested in the cattle side and that was what they started to pursue. 00:12:20 So they, um, you know, cheese didn't make it very long, but col and graduated with, uh, in animal science and that was kind of what he was into. 00:12:29 But it's like, right. If you got, if you got hogs, maybe you don't wanna go into animal science. If you've got, 00:12:34 I got personal opinion about animal science. If you're gonna become a veterinarian, you should probably go ahead and get 00:12:38 your bachelor's degree in animal science. Otherwise, I don't know that, I don't know that it's got a lot of application. 00:12:43 What do you think? Am I off on that? Um, You know, Colin, with, he, he had some interesting things that he knew about, um, 00:12:51 and, you know, nutrition, the feeding side of, we, we've background our own cattle out here. Yep. The feeding side and working with him a bit. 00:12:58 But I, I could see where you would've that, Would you agree? Would you agree with that? 00:13:03 Would I agree with you? Yes. Yeah. Halfway. Alright. Halfway. Alright. I'll give you another one that a lot of, uh, 00:13:09 since the advent of social media, I think the number of kids going into agriculture communications, there might be more people in agriculture 00:13:17 communications than any other thing. I don't know. 'cause I don't have kids in college, but it seems to me that's my perception. 00:13:22 And you wanna tell 'em? I, it's kind of, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of a saturated spot. What do you think? 00:13:30 I I would, I I would definitely agree with that. I had some friends in there, so I, I'll uh, not be too harsh on it, 00:13:36 but yeah, I, I don't really know what that is. Maybe I, I, I, Yeah, you don't really know what I mean. 00:13:42 I, I know how to put together, I still don't know for sure what a Jaron is, but I can tell you that I do know how 00:13:46 to write and communicate and I never took an agricultural communications class, let alone have that as a degree. 00:13:50 Yeah. I think it's, I think it's saturated and I think it's because a bunch of, uh, 00:13:54 ag people said, oh, this is really cool. I wanna go and tell everybody I'm an advocate. Which I don't know what that is either. Uh, yeah. 00:13:59 I'm with you there. I think you, I I'd agree with you there. You can learn that stuff. Other places. 00:14:04 I would say focus maybe more on technical scientific type of Thing. Something that 00:14:08 actually is a little bit more that you just can't learn it by being on Facebook. Hey, um, I wanna remind you, 00:14:13 as your farm operation grows, so do the challenges. Superior grain equipment's, grain storage systems are built to make your job easier 00:14:19 and help your grain reach its full potential. Are you losing grain condition? Are you losing money? Is an, is an antiquated agricultural grain setup 00:14:27 actually costing you money that you don't even realize it probably is. Farm. Uh, farmers that wanna be move ahead 00:14:33 and keep their grain in great condition can contact superior grain equipment from general mix flow 00:14:37 dryers to durable storage. Get the flexibility to market your grain on your time. Visit with the experts from Superior Grain Equipment 00:14:43 at Farm Progress Show. That's this August in Decatur, Illinois. Or I can visit them anytime online@superiorbins.com. 00:14:49 Superior bins.com. What else do you tell these young people? You said, um, do you tell 'em 00:14:57 what kind of grades they're supposed to get? Do you think that matters? I think, I think completion. I think completion matters. 00:15:02 I think showing up, I think getting away, I think getting a lot of experience matters. Whether you get a B minus or an A or an a plus. 00:15:07 I'm not sure all that. I'm not sure that's as important, uh, when you're 20 years outta school as, 00:15:12 as it is at the moment. I, I would definitely agree with that. You know, I was, I did everything in high school 00:15:19 was so that I could get to college. Good. And then so, um, I got good grades. I got a full ride in college 00:15:25 and once I was there, it was kind of like, I, you know, I don't need a job after this. I, I'm, I'm not looking to pad my resume. 00:15:31 I'm not looking to have the best grades I'm looking to learn the most. And so I had some stupid classes that I didn't pay quite 00:15:37 as much attention to and I took worse grades than that. But, you know, it was about showing up and I was actually learning the kind of things 00:15:42 that I'm gonna be using was the main thing for me. Yeah. There's, there's a argument made though. 00:15:47 The liberal arts people make this argument that it, that that that college is supposed 00:15:51 to be about broadening your horizons and, and being forced to read Socrates or something like this. I don't know if, if there even is Socrates to be read. 00:15:59 But anyway, I, I, I don't know the editor of this. I was a liberal arts degree, so I try to insult liberal arts degrees as often as possible just 00:16:05 for the, uh, our producer, uh, will anyway, what's your thought? What's the thing that you took? 00:16:11 Like you're saying here's something about college that I thought was probably stupid and I really, looking back, man, 00:16:16 I'm really glad I was exposed to that. Something that I thought was stupid and I, uh, you know, on the way up, I, I wasn't 00:16:24 that interested in soils classes. Right. I, I thought, you know, there's only so much about it. I, I did soil judging in high school 00:16:32 and I, it wasn't terribly interesting to me. But the professors up there at soils were great. Uh, Dr. Burris, Dr. 00:16:38 And I had some, I took, I ended up taking like five soils classes. Got I It was awesome 00:16:44 When these young people, you know, they're overwhelmed 'cause they're 17, 18 years old and, and they're all that usually I think the advice is 00:16:53 don't worry as much because when you're 18 you, you know, if people keep asking what you're gonna do, 00:16:57 I think if I was asked to advise somebody that was young, I would say, you don't have 00:17:01 to have it all figured out this second. You're 18 that just go, go grow. Yeah. You don't have to have it figured out. That would be the 00:17:08 probably the piece of advice I would give. 100%. That was one of the things we said to 'em as well. Right. It's like you Yeah. 00:17:14 You don't have to have the, your whole life planned out right now. You don't have to have every little detail. 00:17:18 Just go up there and see what happens. You don't have to. Right. Just live it, you know, live in the moment. 00:17:25 See, see what you like, see what you enjoy. See what paths open up to you. Is there anything that you think that education 00:17:32 and at the higher level gets wrong? Because I I can, I can go first. Um, academics obviously lack real world experience. 00:17:39 I'm not being any way mean, but academics have spent their time at the West Lafayette, Indiana or Ames, Iowa 00:17:44 or wherever their university happens to be. Um, with living in a gig economy and in, in such a different era than it was even 20 years 00:17:54 ago or 30 or 50. Um, if there could be a more tilt to entrepreneurialism guests, guest presenters to talk about running their business, 00:18:04 about the creative side of creating a business, I would love to see a bit more of that versus pure academia. 00:18:11 And that's a bit of a stretch for people that work in academia. That's my thing that I would like to see changed. 00:18:17 I, I would agree with you. I thought that was lacking when I was up there a hundred percent. 00:18:21 Um, and in my last year I actually took a class that was called Ag Entrepreneurship with Professor Kevin Kimley, 00:18:27 who had run a couple startups in, in ag and then they had started up this foundation within the university and they taught a really great class 00:18:33 that was along that kind of thing. It was, it was a lot more outside the box creative thinking through those types of things. 00:18:38 And it was an awesome class. So, you know, there's some, You have named the, the names of prof. 00:18:44 More professors than I could if I had, if I had money on the table and they said, we'll give you this money. 00:18:49 If you can name these professors that you had, the kind of kids that always knew their professors were kind of as kissers Vern. 00:18:56 That's all I can say right here. I'm thinking that you're kind of a brown nose. I, uh, no, I didn't go to a lot of office hours. 00:19:01 I didn't recognize them a a lot. But, uh, you know, I liked my class. I did, I did well in school. I, I kind of enjoyed school. 00:19:09 Um, I always got good grades and I, I wouldn't say I'm an ass kisser. I could see where he might, he might be coming with that, 00:19:15 but no, I wasn't leaving apples on the desks or anything. Uh, what's the bright spot in agriculture? 00:19:22 'cause right now we're heading into an ag downturn. If someone's 18 years old, you know, you could see a, a year or two or three down the road where they think, 00:19:29 I'm not sure this is the industry to be in. Or their parents might say, Hey, you know what, uh, the getting isn't so good here. 00:19:35 What would you, what would you say is this, is this still a place where we need do, would you go into this? 00:19:39 If you, would you tell your, you're gonna have a baby here next month, would you tell your baby to go into this business? 00:19:46 You know, I, I, I love this business and it's, it's the only thing I'd want to be in. And if you feel that way, then 00:19:52 that's the only thing you should be in. There's gonna be cycles, there's gonna be tough times, there's gonna be good times. 00:19:57 Um, and if it's what you wanna do, you gotta, you gotta love it. You gotta live it, you gotta do it. 00:20:02 And it, it's good to have a degree to fall back onto if that's, if something goes wrong out there. Uh, I, I ended up taking a minor in ag business 00:20:09 and so I, I took a lot of economics classes and I was interested in that and we took some marketing classes and stuff and you know, that 00:20:15 that's gonna help you in your bad times too. Yeah. I, I agree with that. Uh, junior college, there's some people 00:20:22 that just aren't cut out for the big, the big, the big, the big road man. Uh, it's, it's a little overwhelming. 00:20:27 Maybe they're smaller town people. Um, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't think there's anything wrong with it. 00:20:32 Uh, and going and grabbing, uh, you know, a two year degree. But that's where I would say at that point then realize 00:20:40 that you want to be very hands on. I, I would want it to be very almost technical, uh, you know, with somebody needs to know how 00:20:47 to work this machinery or how to fix this stuff. I think that that's a, a good option. I agree with that for sure. You know, I, 00:20:54 I can't give you a one size fits all solution. It's, it depends on the, on the kid and you gotta think about what you wanna do. 00:21:00 And if you're not, if you don't love being in school that long and you want, and you can't do four years, then two years is a great option. 00:21:08 And if it's something more, like you said, hands-on technical learning how to fix it, learning how to run it, learning how to do this, that there's, 00:21:15 there's got a lot of good options for that too, as far as I understood. So what was your closing advice then? 00:21:20 You, you got up and said, that's all I gotta say. That's all I gotta say to you young people. What? Try and get mom and dad to pay 00:21:26 for it. Was that any of your advice? Yeah, that makes it a lot easier. Uh, College is a lot easier if you buy me a new car. 00:21:33 Maybe that's advice. I dunno. Yeah. But no, I, I just, and uh, you know, one of the things I talked about was having fun with it. 00:21:41 Right? I, like I said, I was on a full ride. I bought a house while I was up there, so I like, and I went in with years worth of credit, 00:21:48 so I didn't really have to take a senior year, but it was good to be away for four years. It was good to grow up. So my last year I took casino 00:21:55 management, wine tasting, beer tasting and golf. And I had a lot of fun doing that too. So That's Fantastic. I I 00:22:03 didn't know that I, I mean, beer tasting, wine tasting in golf, I mean that's kinda like, like, like my life. 00:22:08 It's just I didn't realize I could get college credit for doing it. You, You should maybe try to teach that. 00:22:12 Yeah. Well actually not the wine tasting. I had to leave that to somebody like you. No, I wasn't really into that, but you know, 00:22:16 I still took every sample Somebody with somebody with a better palette like you. Uh, all right. So I think that, uh, the other piece 00:22:22 of advice here should be, you and I both agree, this industry still needs young people. It needs talent, it needs brain power 00:22:29 and downturn or upturn. You know, I got out of high school in the eighties when it was obviously very, very bad and I still went into this 00:22:35 thinking that there was probably no option to even be in this industry. And, and here we are all these years later. 00:22:40 So I'd agree with that biggest mistake that you actually think you made. This is kinda the last thing where you can finally say, 00:22:48 you know what, here's where I screwed up. Oh, part of me wishes I participated more. You know, we had up there, we had soil judging teams, 00:22:56 we had crop judging teams, we had study abroad options. Uh, but I always wanted to make sure that I was available to go home on weekends to the field if we were in the field. 00:23:06 Mm-hmm. And I had some fun drinking beer with buddies. And I, you know, I, instead of, I could have been more of a participator, I could have been in club condo agronomy 00:23:14 club more and different Yeah. Could've network more and made more connections, more participation. I could have, could have. 00:23:19 Yeah. I think we then we can all say that. And the thing is, you say that when you're more of an adult, but when you're 19 you've already, 00:23:25 you know, you're doing what you want to do. Yeah. There's, there's probably opportunities that weren't necessarily squandered 00:23:29 but not, not fully, uh, exploited. Yeah, absolutely. You feel confident about these young people going into ag agriculture right now. 00:23:37 You like those young people. Like you got done talking to 'em, you're like, I feel good about the future of this industry. 00:23:41 Yeah, yeah. You know, they're talented, bright people that could go into whatever they wanted and be successful. And 00:23:47 You're not quite old enough that you're griping about the next generation saying, these damn kids. 00:23:51 No, I'm not there yet. And I, I hope I don't get there. Adv advice, advice to the recent graduate going into agriculture. 00:24:01 We, uh, we, we had, uh, Connor, Vern Garrett on here talking about that. And I think it's all good advice. So go, go do it. 00:24:08 Test out as many things you possibly can involve yourself even if you think you're already involved. 00:24:12 There is a tremendous amount networking involved there. Go far enough away that you're not next to being helicoptered parented by your parents. 00:24:19 Uh, I think that was it. Those are the main ones. Yeah. And then if you do it right, you'll take a beer, a beer tasting class in golf your last semester. 00:24:28 Exactly. That, that was fun too. Uh, we we're here and as a reminder, we do for like the third year now we're doing 00:24:34 the extreme Ag scholarship. You can go on the Extreme ag.farm website and you can sign up. 00:24:39 We're giving away 10, $3,000 scholarships. That's right. $30,000 to a student pursuing a two 00:24:45 or a four year degree at an accredited agricultural college or university. Uh, do get this done. The applications are due by August. 00:24:52 Do not dilly dally for $3,000 a chance at $3,000. Why would you mess around? It'll take you like 20 minutes to fill the thing out. 00:24:58 And we've been doing this very excited to be helping and fostering along the next generation of agriculture. Speaking of the next generation of 00:25:03 agriculture, his name's Vern. Really, it's Connor, but it's been Vern for a long, long time. 00:25:08 And if you enjoy this kind of programming tool and check out hundreds of videos just like this videos that people like Vern shoot in the 00:25:13 field to help you farm better. And also our new show, the Grain re filmed at my on-Farm Saloon right here with the guys from Extreme Ag covering all things from the 00:25:20 personal to professional in agriculture to next time, thanks for being here, Mr. Verne. Yeah, thanks for having me, Damien. 00:25:25 And until next time, I'm Damien Mason with extreme Ag cutting the curve. That's a wrap for this episode 00:25:30 of Extreme ags Cutting the Curve Podcast. Make sure to check out extreme ag.com for more great content. 00:25:37 Cutting. The curve is powered by Nature's bio. Kay. Check out nature's dot com to learn more about how Bio Kay can improve your farm's. 719 00:25:44.645 --> 00:25:45.085