Individuals who win a spot in Class XIII of the Minnesota Agriculture and Rural Leadership (MARL) program will work with more than thirty peers in a dozen seminars over two years, digging into how leadership works, making case studies in great leadership, and meeting the folks who lead major businesses and organizations of Minnesota’s agricultural, forestry, and mining industries. Apply here.
The greatest benefit among many? MARL participants tap into the MARL alumni network of 329 graduates since 2000 (with the 23 members of Class XII joining the ranks in June). These alumni are at the top of every aspect of agriculture and rural community life in the state of Minnesota.
Minnesota Corn has been a major supporter of the program, both funding it and directing talented people to consider applying.
“This group of people, the MARL Class XII cohort, will be lifetime friends of mine,” said David Beyerl, who works as the transportation manager for Farmward Cooperative in Morgan, Minnesota. “The networking that you gain from being in the MARL program does carry through professionally and in any kind of networking you do. You can run into people at different functions and get to talking, ‘Hey, you are in the current MARL class? Oh, well, I was in Class IV, and suddenly you have this connection.”
Waseca crop farmer Katie Covino, also a member of Class XII, says MARL has been invaluable to developing her network.
Covino said, “Sometimes you get focused on just your own sphere of people, and for me, moving back from the East Coast—I hadn’t lived in Waseca for 15 years—I didn’t really have much of a network beyond my own family. MARL seemed like a really good opportunity to expand beyond my own little nucleus. It’s all over the state, draws from different parts of agriculture, so it is helping me to branch out. … I think for me, that’s one of the key benefits, interacting with people in an intensive program.”
MARL brings its participants together with leaders at every level of government, and MARL class XII completed its weeklong tour of Washington, D.C., in early December. You can read their blog of the trip here.
“The trip was packed with professional visits with members of Congress, meetings with representatives of agriculture organizations—American Farm Bureau Federation, the USDA and the Foreign Ag Service,” said MARL Program Leader Toby Spanier. “For me personally, one of the highlights was seeing a different side of Washington, D.C. We visited So Others Might Eat (SOME)—it’s a non-profit organization that operates in the district itself. They have been serving lunches since 1970, 365 days a year, and they have not missed a day! It was so great to see the interaction of our MARL participants—from greater Minnesota primarily—working directly with people working in a metropolitan area on homelessness and poverty. It might look a little different in our rural communities, but poverty and homelessness exist here, too. We might not see it, but it does exist. I think it was a very nice leadership lesson, recognizing that leaders need to be ethical and moral and care for others.”
Beyerl pointed to a unique experience: Congressman Brad Finstad of Minnesota took the group on a nighttime tour of the U.S. Capitol complex, so they had the storied spaces of American democracy to themselves, while hearing from an insider about experiences he has had there.
“I enjoyed getting to know and talk to Brad. We heard his views on agriculture, and his perspective on the Farm Bill. His leadership experience. He gave us a quote: ‘Being in Washington and being a leader, you become comfortable being uncomfortable.’ I took that to mean learning how to make difficult decisions, and how to work with people who have different views from your own.”
Speaking of comfort zones, MARL Executive Director Brad Schloesser (himself an alumnus of MARL) believes that creating opportunities for personal growth, the honing of leadership skills, is most effective in situations that expand and lead a person outside their usual environment and circle of acquaintances.
“The highlight of program is the international tour,” Schloesser said. Panama is this year’s international destination for MARL, coming up in February. “The international trip takes you out of the environment you are comfortable in, and places you in a new environment, where you are going to struggle some—it’s through that struggle that you grow, and learn, and need to support each other.”
As a MARL Class XI participant in 2020, Schloesser traveled to Ecuador, where the packed schedule took the participants everywhere from pineapple plantations (“The juiciest most delicious pineapple I’ve ever eaten”) to guinea pig farms (a staple of Ecuadoran cuisine) to one of America’s largest sources for roses, on Valentine’s Day and all year long—Ecuadoran flower farms.
Another key experience that sets MARL apart from other leadership programs, according to Schloesser, is its Capstone Project. Each MARL participant determines a long-range project to undertake themselves, to integrate all they have learned over the two years of the MARL seminars, and to create something of lasting value for their farm operation, business, community or membership group.
Covino notes how their farm operation changed radically a couple years ago when they sold off their longtime hog operation. Though she grew up on the farm run by her father and her uncle, she never really learned farming, and now she is picking it up as she goes. Last year she planted soybeans on their nearly 4,000-acre operation.
“We need to figure out what the next phase of our farm looks like and what our sixth generation is going to bring into it,” Covino said. “It is kind of hard to come into an operation and not really have a background in it, but to have to figure out what the next big thing will be. That’s been on my mind since I came back. My capstone will be to bring all the family and employees to work together as a group to really implement something on the farm by 2025, something that’s either a new practice or a new side business. What is the next innovation on the farm going to be?
Beyerl has decided to tackle a problem he sees every day at his fast-growing farm supply cooperative, and which he believes every rural business and community faces—attracting and retaining employees.
“In our St. Paul seminar we were able to meet with the state demographer who told us in rural Minnesota our population is aging, we don’t necessarily have a housing shortage, but we have a housing gap. … What I am trying to work on here is how to recruit people that live in the metro/suburban areas, who would be attracted to the kinds of jobs they could find at the great companies in rural Minnesota.”
Click here to read more mncorn.org
Photo Credit: gettyimages-eugenesergeev
Categories: Minnesota, Business, Crops, Soybeans