Commodity Classic Pictures and Comments!

The 2011 Commodity Classic is in the books!  It was a great conference and convention.  There were record numbers of attendees there this year; 4823 total attendees with 1600 of them being growers. 

This year my badge had three ribbons on it!  I spent my time at the trade show in both the National Corn Growers Association’s (NCGA) booth and the United Soybean Board’s (USB) booth.  It was great to meet a lot of new people and see how excited everyone to see all the advancements in agriculture.  We also did a lot of media interviews explaining what CommonGround is all about!  What a great experience!

On Friday afternoon CommonGround was on the schedule for one of the WIN (What is New) sessions.  We had a full house (between 200-250) attendees joined us for our presentation.  Our session was titled “Growing Consumer Trust in Food and Farming.”  We discussed ways that the volunteers of CommonGround tell our stories about living on a family farm and also how to discuss those “tough” questions.  It was a great session and we were very happy with the attendance and all the comments afterwards.  I am looking forward to seeing this program take off!  Can’t wait to start meeting the urban consumers of our products that we raise and grow on our farm!

My part of the presentation was “What makes CommonGround uniquely important?” -It belongs to all of us-one voice of agriculture -It is a grassroots effort that is farmer funded and farmer driven -We focus on open, honest dialogue

We then divided up into groups and discussed various questions that we have been asked about farming.