6-6 IAN Jack of All Trades

  Some time ago I went to lunch with the marketing director for a local tire company and, very candidly,  my boss and I were trying to encourage her to advertise with our ag programs. I said that farmers would be wonderful candidates to target for the tire business when you consider that so many of them drive pickup trucks, tractors, combines and all kinds of other heavy equipment needing extremely expensive tires. While rambling on and on about this idea it dawned on me just how talented people in the ag community have to be and how broad their basis of knowledge has to be. Ironically in a  recent conversation with Travis Jones, Executive Director of the Idaho Grain Producers Association the subject came up again and Travis waxed poetic: “Farmers are jacks of all trades, they don’t get credit for being all of those things you mentioned but also being small businessmen. In some cases they are large businessmen. They do all the taxes and property values and power rates and costs had in an astronomical level for just a homeowner or small business owner. Also, nearly every part of the economy can have an influence on production and the bottom line for a producer. And they are chemists, biologists, weathermen, statisticians and it goes on.