FFA Corner: Another way of thinking

I’m a dedicated agriculture nerd. Ask any of my friends and one of the first things they’ll tell you about me is that I won’t shut up about cows or cover crops and I spend much of my free time listening to podcasts about ag tech.

It’s pretty accurate. I’m not ashamed.

Knowing this, you can bet that when I had a conversation about systems thinking in the context of agriculture, my interest was piqued.

One of my favorite aspects of being a National FFA officer is meeting with agriculture industry professionals during our corporate sponsor visits. Often, my teammates and I have the opportunity to interact with executives as well as field staff who have a personal connection to FFA, from companies that work in animal health to seed and chemical research to technology.

After one of these industry friends mentioned the importance of systems thinking a few weeks ago, I’ve been reflecting on what that looks like and how to leverage it.

The main idea of systems thinking is largely as opposed to focusing on silos of information, it’s looking at the big picture instead of just the pieces that make it up.

There’s immense value to be found when we connect the pieces. But without an understanding of the pieces themselves, we won’t be able to put them together effectively.

How do we achieve the proper balance of specialization and generalization? I met an FFA member a few years back that exemplified this balance.

Tyler was applying for his State FFA degree. As I listened to him share what he had learned through his Supervised Agricultural Experience, where he worked for a local row crop farmer, I was astounded at how he described the equipment he worked with on the farm.

The level of detail to which he understood the equipment itself, as well as why it mattered, was impressive. That was just the beginning, though.

He was about to graduate and had been tasked by his boss to recruit and select his own replacement. Not only did he understand the technicalities of his job, but he also knew how to work with people effectively. It was clear that his boss held him in high regard.

I’ve never forgotten that conversation with Tyler and I’m starting to realize that perhaps it’s because he knew, whether explicitly or not, the value of both systems and silo thinking. He had spent a lot of time in the farm equipment “silo,” allowing him to not only operate, but also maintain and repair the implements as needed.

Yet, he knew how to rise up out of that silo and think about the entire farming system, not just of his boss’s farm, but of the industry as a whole. On another level, he was equipped to find his own replacement because of both his specialization in his field and his ability to recognize how another person would fit into the system as a whole.

Tyler’s story is representative of how the three-circle model of agricultural education — in-class instruction; experiential learning, through SAEs; and leadership, through FFA programs — equips students for an effective balance of silo and systems thinking.

We learn about the broad scope of agriculture in our introduction classes, we gain our own experience in one particular area through our SAE and we learn how to integrate the knowledge of both to foster effective relationships through our time in FFA leadership programs and positions.

I think all of us can learn a lesson from Tyler — specialize enough to do excellent work in one area, but generalize enough to spread the impact of that work to the other areas of the system in which we operate.

Miriam Hoffman of Earlville, Illinois, is the National FFA eastern region vice president. She is an agribusiness economics major at Southern Illinois University.