By Nathan Mentzer, Allen County farmer
Change of seasons, change of crops, the progress of technology or even physical changes as we watch our families grow and age. Change is inevitable. But when faced with it, we have two choices. We can ignore it and seek comfort on our farm and hope it goes away or adapt and grow with it, becoming stronger and more resilient with each new step we take.
My wife and I farm near Iola, and I am privileged to represent the third Casten Fellows cohort. I am always amazed at the talent Kansas Farm Bureau brings to the table and my cohort represented a wide and diverse cross section of agriculture in Kansas. We also have a diverse set of backgrounds and experiences.
The opportunity to build relationships with such amazing leaders throughout the state and gain insight into how they tackled issues is what originally attracted me to the Casten Fellows program.
A year ago, as our group was starting this journey together we were looking for ways to grow as individuals for the betterment of our communities and our organization. Through this time, we have gotten to know each other, become friends and we are now a group that is comfortable sharing deep conversations and taking on tough issues.
We learned how to discuss issues with a commitment to lean into vulnerability, to stay curious and generous. We have rumbled about the many changes in agriculture and how they have impacted us and Kansas — trade and tariffs, artificial intelligence, farming practices, personal beliefs — and dived into local issues such as access to schools, local economies, fentanyl and the impacts of drug use. Our experience culminated with an international excursion to Israel.
Leading through change has been a big focus for our cohort this year, as we have seen change, not only within our own lives and work operations, but within the Casten Fellows program as well, including changes in staff, changes in our destination country and changes in timelines because of conflict in the Middle East.
In Israel we experienced the impacts of continuous change. The most obvious being a Tel such as in Tel Aviv. In Hebrew a “Tel” is a small hill resulting from the ruins of one civilization built on top of another built on top of another. Our tour guides would joke that if we saw a mosque, it was generally built on top of a church that was built on top of a synagogue. We saw how the conflict and cooperation between these cultures shaped Israel into what it is today.
One of the first books we studied this year was “Dare to Lead” by Brene Brown, who gives an example of leading through change:
“During a time of difficult change and uncertainty, daring leaders might sit with their teams and say: These changes are coming in hard and fast, and I know there’s a lot of anxiety — I’m feeling it too, and it’s hard to work through … I will share everything I can about the changes with you, as soon as I can”.
The team at Kansas Farm Bureau dared to lead us through these changes and we as a cohort grew in our own abilities because of their example and our own experiences.
We have learned to listen, to understand, to assess the situation, to pivot to new ideas when needed and to navigate the new dynamics. Many other organizations might have quit or given up at any one of the challenges that arose, but we pressed on and moved forward. This represents to me the strength and resilience of Kansas Farm Bureau as an organization and our commitment to develop leaders equipped to lead through change on local, state, national and global level.
Personally, I am looking forward to implementing all of the lessons I have learned on the farm, being better a father, on local co-op, water and Farm Bureau boards. The one thing they all have in common is that change is inevitable.
“Insight” is a weekly column published by Kansas Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization whose mission is to strengthen agriculture and the lives of Kansans through advocacy, education and service.
