What it means to be a ‘joiner’

BY CAMERON MULRONY ICA Executive Vice President

Time marches on, and it is rolling through the month of March as you settle in to read this column. Food security and safety continue to be items of discussion in areas around the nation and around the state house here in Idaho, among other topics.

With the thick of bull sale season in February and throughout March, this is a great time to visit with a representative on the ICA Board of Directors or staff member in your part of the world.

Communicating the message is key. We need to be clear and concise, and this is hard for our board and staff to communicate with leaders in the state if we too are receiving a mixed message from the industry. The ICA works to be effective in our lobby and our messaging. We work with other groups within Agriculture, and when we send a clear, concise, and unified message it is easily heard by those whom have the ability to hear.

Now, it seems in two short paragraphs, I have jumped from one end of the spectrum to the other. I only point this out to drive home this message: we as an industry need to communicate with each other. That is not a new statement, as I have often echoed this sentiment in my other “ramblings” as well. Why do I again bring this to your attention? I have observed the changes in our state house this session, including the large number of freshman legislators- those folks very well could be the best person for the job in Boise. They were the individuals elected by their constituents; however, watching your neighbor run a cattle operation is much different than having to do the work as a producer.

The work of communicating our needs as an industry will come from each of you reading this, your neighbors in the industry, our partners in the allied industries and others in agriculture. The message regardless of the messenger needs to continue to be unified when it gets to the halls of the statehouse or the chambers of congress.

As members of the association, ask your friends, neighbors, in-laws, and outlaws to be joiners. It looks like as we travel and attend events the numbers at our events are consistent and even growing slightly. However, our population is increasing at a much faster rate than our involvement level and this is why I encourage you to ask people to be joiners, join the PTA, the rotary club, the community group, the 4-H the FFA, the ICA, the NCBA, hell join a band if you want to, but be a joiner. If you choose not to join, the only influence you have on change is the influence of changing the channel on your television.

March is membership month, we need to increase our membership; our involvement, our voice. I attended a meeting which discussed this very topic and one of the takeaways was that I keep going back to is that its much easier to increase communication and membership when you have a problem to unify the membership and industry. Well that seems to me like an oxymoron. If I do my job well, I am hoping we avoid the big issues that we have to rally behind, but can instead focus on multiple more moderate issues. So this is why I look for joiners. Lets communicate among our industry the importance of a large unified message, and if you choose to not participate in the conversations, the only change you can make is on the ol’ boob tube at home. Be a joiner, be a member, be a leader, be a cowboy, be a legend, just be cool.