Agriculture Future of America Leaders Conference

This year I had the opportunity to travel to Kansas City Missouris to attend the AFA Leaders Conference. AFA is a great opportunity for networking with industry and other college students studying agriculture. Fortunately, this was my second year attending the conference and my trip was sponsored by Corteva Agriscience. It is a great opportunity given industry reviews your application and chooses to sponsor you to attend the conference. This is about a four-day trip where every day you get to hear from keynote speakers, attend an excellent career fair, and meet some amazing peers. One of my favorite speakers this year was a professor from the University of Illinois who helps council farming families. It was eye-opening to hear his perspective and share his own experience within a family agribusiness. We also had sessions where we learned about body language, managing money, and how to become better listeners. These topics may seem boring but I promise you they are not. The speakers are very knowledgeable and have some great information to share, but the speakers do change from year to year. The opportunity fair is an opportunity, unlike the Purdue Career fair where you can talk to big-name companies like Land O’Lakes and Cargill. When you speak with these companies at AFA it means much more than the university career fair gave you were chosen to be at AFA due to your leadership and other astonishing qualities. I strongly recommend looking into attending AFA whether you are an incoming freshman or about to start your junior year. I have made numerous connections with other agriculture students from other universities on LinkedIn and continue to stay in touch with them. College is the time to grow and expand. I believe that AFA is a great opportunity for continued growth. Plus, they offer some other opportunities outside of leaders conference like institutes and scholarships. Institutes range from crop science to a policy where you get to travel and experience these topics firsthand at industries leading companies.