New Mexico Ag Leadership - Class 15

Our trip to the Nation's Capital was a great venture to the East coast.  The opportunity to visit Gettysburg and participate in a Leadership experience with Diamond6 Leadership was a fantastic way to kick off our trip.  My favorite meeting of the trip was our time with American Farm Bureau Federation.  Their staff is a great source of advocacy for Farmers, Ranchers, and all producers across the nation.  They have an impressive array of responsibilities to cover in order to advocate for agriculture as a whole.  The wide array of meetings we were able to cover provided great insight into what goes on at a higher level than what we see on a daily basis.  Being joined by the other leadership groups from Washington state, Kansas, Kentucky, and Virginia provided opportunities for bigger audiences to attend meetings.  It also gave us a great opportunity to meet Ag folks from across the US that we would not normally be able to meet in our normal day to day operations.  Capping the week off

We visited Las Cruces again this November and enjoyed tours around pecan processing, a local cotton gin, the Border Authority and enjoyed presentations from multiple NMSU staff members and NM Livestock Board.  We were able to polish up techniques for public speaking and explored our DiSC profiles even further.  I enjoyed getting to understand more techniques for communicating with other personality types.   Seeing the livestock crossing at Santa Teresa is always and experience and we were able to receive an in-depth tour of the crossing and see it in action.  The operation is impressive for trade across the border with over 600,000 head of cattle processed each year.  We go next to Santa Fe and are looking forward to exploring NM legislature ahead of our trip to D.C. in March!

What a blast we had!  The views were nothing short of amazing and the memories made will last a lifetime.  After flying 14+ hours, I got to take the London Underground "Tube" for the first time and it was a great experience.  I find public transportation fascinating and fun to master so the Tube was quite a bit of fun for me to navigate.  Our arranged visits ranged far and wide on the spectrum of policy to operators and it was surprising to hear that many of the challenges facing UK agriculture is also what the USA is up against.  There is one HUGE difference between our agriculture and theirs... no one in the UK knows how much rain they get on average! What a problem to have!  We wouldn't have been able to complete our trip without our trusty mascot Bob the Artichoke!  He was along for most visits and even managed to set off the security at the US Embassy in London when going through the x-ray machine.  I'm thrilled our class gets along so well as we had a great time

Our second in person seminar proved that the connection we found at the first seminar was no fluke.  With winds upwards of 40 mph, we enjoyed our sessions INSIDE the Artesia Chamber of Commerce off the heart of downtown.  Our tour of the Seven River Pecan Farm near Carlsbad was enjoyable even with the winds blowing across the fields.  It was pleasant sitting around and talking plans for our trip to Scotland and England.  In the morning we took a quick walk down to a local coffee shop which had a few different drinks on their morning menu, including the vanilla coke macchiato that I still may try to recreate as it was very intriguing.  Our food and company was enjoyable and I think we are all looking forward to hopping across the pond for more adventures!   Our sessions ran the gamut and kicked off with discussing the legislative process with Representatives Brown and Townsend.  This discussion was eye opening for me regarding the impact that oil & gas has on the New Mexico economy

 The first seminar for Class 15 of New Mexico Agricultural Leadership kicked off in Las Cruces.  We started off with tentative conversations, but by the end of the first day, and certainly by the end of the seminar - we were starting to click!  I truly enjoyed getting to know each of the fellows as we kicked off. Who knew we would have a class mascot by lunch on the last day!   I think kicking off with our discussion from Dr. Norris about personality types provided an insight into each other that helped us connect.  It has been a few years since I have taken a personality quiz so it was intriguing to see the results.  My results of the verbal cues/scenarios directly conflicted with the word comparison behavioral alignment.  The most useful information I took out of this session was the differing communication styles each type prefers and how you can accommodate them.  Immediately when I returned to the office on Monday, I began identifying different traits for the personality types in