SVM_Today's Farm_011123

BY TAMMIE SLOUP FarmWeek

When her father became ill several years ago, the interactions with his doctors stood out to Rock Falls native Heather Moser.

“Going through that interaction with him, and really kind of getting an eye-opening look at several different perspectives, from emergency room visits to neurology visits, and all the things that came along with him getting sick really opened my eyes. ... I want to be a part of that. I want to be a part of helping people, especially those from a rural community that don’t always have the

best access to health care,” she said.

Moser is now pursuing her dream to practice medicine in a rural community. The nurse and current medical student is a Rural Illinois Medical Student Assistance Program (RIMSAP) participant who is also enrolled in the Rural Medical Education Program (RMED) at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford.

To learn more about health care needs of rural residents, specifically farmers, Moser joined 26 RMED students during a recent No Harm on the Farm Tour, sponsored by RIMSAP, where two Stephenson County farms served as their classrooms for the day.

Tractor rollovers. A limb caught in an auger. A grain bin accident. All involve injuries medical professionals in rural areas may treat. The tour, led by Doug and Dan Scheider, owners of Scheidairy Farms in Freeport, and Mark Baker, an Orangeville farmer and founder of Stateline Farm Rescue, emphasized injuries and disease on the farm and how to treat them.

Just as important, the students were also offered advice on how to talk to farmers.

“In general, farmers don’t like to go see you folks,” Doug Scheider told the group. “You need to talk about other things and build relationships of trust.”

Farmers can spend many hours a day on the combine, resulting in stress on the back and other issues. Farmers also may have issues with eating healthy and breathing in chemicals, as well as mental health struggles.

They also may have hearing impairments due to being around loud equipment.

“So, just in case you’re talking to someone, and you think you’re not get-

ting through, they may not be able to hear you,” Scheider said.

Scheider also serves on the RMED recruitment and retention committee. He and son Dan showed the medical students around their dairy farm — a tour they’ve given for 16 years — with Dan noting his fear is not having medical care choices in rural areas due to a shortage of professionals. They expressed their gratitude for the students’ interest in rural medicine, with Dan adding his son was delivered by an RMED grad.

The second stop on the tour was at Baker’s farm, where students participated in a hands-on simulated grain entrapment rescue directed by Baker.

Baker, also a firefighter and EMT, said that in his experience, farming accidents seem more “horrific” today.

“I think a lot of it is because we are trying to do more with less help,” he said. “The equipment that we’re using is quicker and faster. So, our reaction time may be less. The average age of a farmer is 60 years old. We don’t get around like we used to.”

HEALTH CARE cont’d to page 17

A Rock Falls native is taking part in a pair of programs that teaches students to not only understand the importance bringing better health care to the farm, but bringing a better understanding of the farmer, too

Students experienced being both rescuers and victims during a grain entrapment using a simulator in Baker’s garage.

“We want to try to bring it to their awareness of the traumas and how violent some of these injuries are going to be,” Baker said. “So, when they go to practice as a doctor, they’ll be prepared for it.”

Cheyenne Carr, a first-year medical student from El Paso, said the simulation was an incredible experience, from learning about the different types of injuries that can occur to the rescue logistics.

Both Carr and Moser are part of RIMSAP, sponsored by the Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois State Medical Society. RIMSAP helps medical school applicants hurdle financial needs or borderline academic barriers to a medical education with a recommendation for acceptance into medical school and/or a loan. In return, students must agree to practice medicine in an approved rural community in Illinois for a set number of years, depending on their situation.

Mark Meurer, associate director of recruitment/public relations for RMED, has coordinated the No Harm on the Farm Tour for 16 years. He noted RMED, which includes rural health

education on top of the medical school curriculum, has seen an increase in students during the past decade.

“We’re the only program in the whole country that actively goes out and recruits students who have rural backgrounds to go to medical school,” Meurer said. The program, which is the largest rural medical education program in the country, has 104 students from 11 states enrolled.

“So, this is our opportunity for our future rural doctors to get out on a farm and actually experience the lifestyle and the culture and the working environment of agriculture in a modern agricultural setting,” he said.

Speaking to the students, Doug Scheider said he believed the tour would be a memorable day.

Moser agreed, adding she never expected such a unique experience in medical school.

“It definitely adds value to why we’re here,” she said. “To see these people who are our future patients in their element, and the kind of hazards they face on a daily basis, ... I think that’s really eye-opening, and it’s an important experience.”

This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visit FarmWeekNow.com.

Medical students in the Rural Medical Education Program at the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Rockford participate in a simulated grain entrapment rescue at Mark Baker’s farm in Orangeville. The rescue was part of the recent No Harm on the Farm Tour.

Photo by Tammie Sloup

An award-winning topic of discussion

In 2018, the family decided to reestablish an apple orchard that the farm previously had.

County this year,” he said.

BY JEANNINE OTTO Shaw Media AgriNews Publications

a neighbor six or seven years ago and that’s where we got our start in the cattle operation,” Reeverts said.

BYRON,

Ill. — One question Ryan Reeverts might be asked is how he prepared for the Illinois Farm Bureau Discussion Meet, which he won at the IFB’s annual meeting in Chicago in December.

A better question might be: How did he find the time?

“I definitely try to stay busy,” Reeverts said.

And he does.

Reeverts farms with his father and uncle, raising corn and soybeans and alfalfa and utilizing alternative cover crops, such as cereal rye, oats and cowpeas, and sorghum and sudangrass for forage. Reeverts and his father also have a 40-cow herd of American Aberdeen cattle.

“I bought some feeder calves from

They have three American Aberdeen bulls that they rent to other producers, as well as selling genetics from those bulls.

The calf crop is sold as feeder calves or as breeding stock to other American Aberdeen producers across the country.

In 2019, Reeverts Farms in Byron received a retail meat license that enabled the family to sell packaged beef from their farm, in addition to the halves, quarters and wholes that they had been selling.

Reeverts, who graduated from Byron High School and was a member of the Byron FFA, served as Illinois FFA state reporter in 2017-18, and graduated from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale in 2021.

“We started planting some trees, and in the last five years, we’ve gone up to 60 dwarf apple trees,” Reeverts said.

They sell apples at farmers markets and pick by order from the farm.

On top of all that, Reeverts works full-time at Peabudy’s North, an outdoor and farm equipment dealership, in Pecatonica.

And as if all that weren’t enough, Reeverts is also involved in the Illinois Farm Bureau Young Leaders, where he serves as the chairman of the Ogle County Farm Bureau Young Leaders group.

“We’ve got a good group of around 15 individuals at the county level. We do programming within Ogle County, like donating to food banks and doing some programs at the Ogle County Fair. We donated grain rescue equipment to fire departments in Ogle

“We have a good group of active individuals who want to do things at the county level and advocate for the industry that way.”

In spite of a schedule that looks like it barely allows for sleep — “sleep is a challenge some days,” Reeverts said — he makes it a priority to consume news and information from a variety of sources.

“I keep up with the news on RFD and DTN. I use a lot of different sources to stay up to date on information that’s relevant to our farm operation, as well as to the industry in general,” he said.

Reeverts said this year’s topics, which range from climate change to autonomous equipment to supply chain disruptions to retaining young farmers, presented challenges in gathering and distilling information relevant to the topics, and then finding middle ground.

PROPHETSTOWN

114 West Third Street (815) 537-2348

GENESEO

700 US Highway 6 East (309) 944-0580

MORRISON

1100 East Lincolnway (815) 772-3700

A Byron farmer not only walks the walk, he talks the talk — and that earned him an award from the Illinois Farm Bureau

“Being able to look at all the perspectives and take the information that’s provided by your fellow competitors and then put that toward one common solution can be difficult, especially when everybody comes to the table with different talking points,” Reeverts said.

The Discussion Meet scenario is structured around a committee meeting, where each participant has to offer discussion and participants are expected to exchange ideas.

Reeverts said his customer service experience — with both farmers at his job at Peabudy’s and from the family farm’s beef and apple businesses — helped.

“The opportunities I’ve had off the farm, working at Peabudy’s and seeing what producers are dealing with on a daily basis, trying to get them back up and running and trying to find a solution to the problem at hand definitely helped me working through the Discussion Meet,” he said.

Reeverts competed in the Discussion Meet as a member of Collegiate Farm Bureau at SIU. He said he was surprised when he was announced as the winner.

“This is only my second year in Discussion Meet as a Young Leader. I was definitely shocked and I feel very fortunate to win it this year,” he said.

“We had a lot of younger competitors this year, closer to my age. I think that is definitely optimistic for the future, to see those competitors involved in the conversations about issues our industry is facing.”

Jeannine Otto can be reached at 815-410-2258, or jotto@shawmedia.com. Follow her on Twitter at: @AgNews_Otto.

OF TOMORROW

Contributed photo

Byron farmer Ryan Reeverts (right) receives his trophy from Illinois Farm Bureau President Richard Guebert Jr. in December. Reeverts won the 2022 Illinois Farm Bureau Discussion Meet at the IFB Annual Meeting in Chicago, which was held Dec. 3-6. He went on to represent Illinois at the American Farm Bureau Federation Young Farmers and Ranchers Discussion Meet, held Jan. 7-9 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

A mixed bag of numbers

BY TIMOTHY EGGERT FarmWeek

Agriculture remains a top employer in rural parts of the U.S. but who worked in the industry has changed during the past three years, according to new data released by USDA’s Economic Research Service (ERS).

In its annual report, “Rural America at a Glance,” ERS found overall population growth in rural or “nonmetro” areas “took a dramatic upswing” between July 2020 and July 2021 when it increased 0.3% to 46.1 million total residents.

It marked the first time since the mid-1990s that nonmetro areas grew at a faster rate than metro areas and was largely because of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the report.

Specifically, as COVID-19 infection rates increased, more people moved into less densely populated areas at a

faster rate than those who were leaving them.

But despite those positive shifts, rural America is becoming older, with people 65 years and older making up more than 20% of the nonmetro population in 2021 — the first time in history. The size of the working-age population also declined in 2021, with 58% of rural residents aged 18 to 54.

“Declines in the working-age population may make it harder to meet labor demands in some rural industries and local labor markets,” the report’s authors noted. “At the same time, many rural areas lack sufficient health care capacity, broadband service, community centers and other services to address the challenges associated with an aging population.”

While data for 2021 wasn’t available, the report found that as of 2019, the strongest rural job gains came in the real estate, administrative ser -

vices, education, professional services, health care/social assistance and finance/insurance industries.

And in 2019, the four industries in rural America with the highest employment were government, manufacturing, retail and health care/social assistance.

Those industries dovetail with the next highest employed industry — agriculture — as “families on small- to mid-sized farms often depend on nonagricultural jobs in their local economies as off-farm sources of income,” the report noted.

Here are three other ways the report found the rural ag industry has changed:

TOP RURAL INDUSTRY — Agriculture remains a primary source of employment for rural America, as 7% of all nonmetro jobs in 2019 were related to the industry, compared to 1.1% of all metro jobs.

The report said that disparity in employment can largely be attributed to comparative advantages, like the availability of resources and land costs.

RURAL

AG BECOMING MORE

DIVERSE — The rural ag industry continues to feature more white workers than workers of color, but the share of minorities employed in the field has improved, the report found.

As of 2019, Hispanic workers performed 14.4% of rural jobs in agriculture, while 2.4% of the rural ag workers were Black. American Indian and Asian workers each made up less than 2% of rural ag jobs.

JOBS

DOWN, PRODUCTIVITY

UP — While ag still accounts for a higher share of rural jobs compared to other industries, the total number of jobs in agriculture has gone down, according to the report.

Rural America’s overall population is up, but its working-age population is down. Worker productivity is up, but the number of jobs is down. Our country’s country is …

Specifically, the total number of rural ag jobs in 2020 was about 89% of the total number that were available in 2001. That long-term decline in industry jobs, however, has aligned with a long-term rise in agricultural productivity.

Since 2012, the labor productivity, or output per worker, and the total output, or gross domestic product, of the ag industry have both increased by at least 50%. And both measures have nearly doubled since their 2001 levels.

“Due to advances in technology and capital deepening, the rural agricultural industry has thrived,” ERS economist and report co-author James Davis said during a webinar about the report. “This industry produces a lot more with the same or fewer workers.”

This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visit FarmWeekNow.com.

Putting the ‘mill’ in millions

BY DANIEL GRANT FarmWeek

The addition of the largest, newly built wheat mill in the U.S. three years ago near Mendota has driven up demand for the crop in northern Illinois and other regions of the country, and farmers have responded.

“Since we came to Mendota, we’ve truly seen an increase in wheat acres in the area,” said Joe Greene of Decatur-based Archer Daniels Midland Co. “We expected that to happen and it’s following through for sure.”

Greene serves as the commercial director of milling and baking solutions for ADM Carbohydrate Solutions, and he discussed the market and ADM’s state-of-the-art wheat mill in Mendota during an interview and private tour of the facility late last year.

“Global prices are helping to con -

tinue to support that increase in acres,” he said. “We’re very well situated to continue to provide farmers a fantastic outlet for locally grown wheat.”

ADM’s massive wheat mill in Mendota — about 10 miles southeast of Amboy — essentially replaced a much older facility in Chicago. The new mill has the capacity to produce a whopping 3 million pounds of flour per day, equivalent to 60 semi truckloads.

The mill maintains ADM’s markets for flour from the Chicagoland area and northwest Indiana to northwest Ohio, southern Wisconsin and northeast Iowa.

The fully automated mill also features a loop track system to unload 110-car unit trains. Wheat unloaded from the trains moves on underground conveyors into the mill for testing and processing.

Nearly all the soft red wheat processed at the mill is sourced from northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin. The mill’s multifaceted logistical capabilities also allow for the sourcing of hard red wheat, mostly from Kansas and Nebraska, along with spring wheat from the Dakotas and Minnesota.

“We’re supporting local farmers with about one-third of our production here on a daily basis and we continue to support other areas,” Greene said.

“Mendota is well situated in northern Illinois to have access to local soft red wheat crops as well as our unit train unloader that allows us to bring in shuttles of wheat from the Southern Plains on the hard red wheat side and from the Northern Plains on the spring wheat side.”

What is all the flour from the ADM mill used for across the upper Midwest? It depends on the wheat class and protein levels of each crop.

ADM’s wheat mill in Mendota has the capacity to produce about 3 million pounds of flour per day. The soft red wheat used at the facility is sourced from northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin while hard red and spring wheat are shipped to the plant via trains.

Daniel Grant of FarmWeek MILL cont’d from page 21

is typically used to bake items such as cakes and cookies. Flour from hard red wheat is used for breads and bagels while different blends of wheat flour are used for batterings, breadings, tortillas and frozen pizza among other items.

“It’s all about how each flour performs in the oven,” Greene said.

The mill provides farmers with other key opportunities. It produces about 22% mill feed, which goes into local markets for livestock feed.

And the unit trains which bring wheat to LaSalle County are reloaded with corn, which is shipped from northern Illinois to feed yards in destinations such as Texas and California.

“This helps maintain successful farming operations going forward,” Greene said.

Since opening the Mendota mill in 2019, ADM Milling also achieved carbon neutral status, which it passes on to consumers and farmers though sustainability programs that offer payments per acre for locally grown crops.

This story was distributed through a cooperative project between Illinois Farm Bureau and the Illinois Press Association. For more food and farming news, visitFarmWeekNow.com.