By RICK A. RICHARDS
Indiana Correspondent HANNA, Ind. — It wouldn’t be too far off-base to describe Gene Schmidt as a missionary: Schmidt, who has farmed 1,600 acres of land just north of the Kankakee River in southern LaPorte County, is a believer in being a steward of the land.
In the new year, he will have the opportunity to take his beliefs to a national audience as incoming president of the National Assoc. of Conservation Districts (NACD).
Taking over as president of the NACD for the next two years is a natural progression for Schmidt. Most recently, he was first vice president for the organization and in the past, was involved at the county, state and regional levels.
“I was elected to represent Indiana at the national level and I did that for a couple of years,” said Schmidt, leaning back in a chair at his desk in an office lined with bookshelves, recognition plaques and farm die-cast toys.
The NACD was founded in 1946, based on a philosophy that conservation decisions should be made at the local level by local people who best understand their area’s resource needs. Today, the organization has 3,000 individual and conservation district members concerned about conserving land, water, forests and wildlife. Many of the individual conservation districts date back to the Dust Bowl of the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Although he was born in central Illinois, Schmidt moved to Indiana and began farming on his own in 1972. His father farmed rented land for several years in Illinois, but when the farm was sold in 1966, he left farming and went to work at the local high school.
Schmidt, though, went to work for a couple of other farmers. Later, when an uncle rented some land and began farming, Schmidt joined him. His hard work at the end of a successful harvest was noticed.
“The lady that owned the farm I’m on now was from central Illinois. She had an acquaintance with the banker who worked with my uncle and she wanted to know if he knew of a young farmer who wanted to go out on his own. That was how I got started,” said Schmidt.
As he was getting started, he developed a friendship with Howard Guse, a neighbor who was a well-known LaPorte County farmer, who was involved in conservation. Guse has served as a board member of the NACD. As Guse preached the importance of being a steward of the land, Schmidt began to appreciate the importance of conservation.
“He was my mentor,” said Schmidt, of Guse.
So, as Schmidt takes on the responsibility of a position where he expects to spend at least 150 days a year on the road, he can’t help but worry about the operation of his farm.
“I’ve got some concerns. I have a wife (Diane) who’s very supportive and we have four boys, all gainfully employed,” said Schmidt. “They live close to us, and even though they’re busy raising their families, they’ve said they’d help me get through this.” His oldest son is Adam, 37, followed by Dan, 35, Tony, 33, and Steve, 30.
He will spend a lot of time in Washington, D.C., meeting with members of Congress, but he’ll also travel around the country for speaking engagements and meetings with farmers. His goal in doing that, he said, is to raise the profile of the NACD.
“We’ve been a humble group; we don’t brag a lot,” said Schmidt. “We don’t talk a lot to the public about what we do in agriculture and we need to do a better job of that.”
Besides raising the NACD’s profile, Schmidt said he wants a seat at the table where negotiations are going on for a new farm bill.
“We have two issues before us,” he said. “We have to deal with budget reconciliation” and with the probability there will be cuts in Title II of the massive farm bill. Title II is the section that deals directly with conservation.
“We have a good deal of programs that don’t have a baseline. They were put in ’08 farm bill and they’re automatically out of the next bill unless they’re reinstalled,” said Schmidt, explaining that those are the kinds of programs like retired land conservation, which creates wildlife habitat but not food, fuel or fiber.
Schmidt said he isn’t pushing for an increase in conservation spending. Instead, his goal is to maintain conservation funding where it is. “Right now, 14 percent of the farm bill is ag-related. The rest is nutrition.”
“We will be at the table in the farm bill discussion,” said Schmidt. “It’s a continuing education process. It’s hard to educate at the D.C. level because it’s a constantly changing scene.” Just as the education process is complete, he said a member of the Agriculture Committee will move to another committee or be ousted in an election.
“The hardest part is that you have individuals assigned a task to come up with solutions and they don’t have any background in agriculture,” said Schmidt.
In the end, Schmidt said all he cares about is results. “My idea of leadership is I don’t care who gets the credit. You just drop the seed and throw the thoughts out there. I’ll preach about better practices and why it’s important to us as an industry.”
Schmidt said that approach – a voluntary system of educating people to make informed decisions – is preferable to a regulatory approach where rules are handed down without consideration of the impact new rules might have on individual farmers.
“The resource base of this country is so important our goal as an organization is to document what we’ve done with the dollars we’ve gotten through the conservation program,” said Schmidt. “Our goal is to provide the folks around the table with the best information and that we are efficient and they are getting a good return for their dollar in conservation and water quality.”
Schmidt said he’s had time to reflect on the responsibilities before him. “It’s pretty humbling to fly and look down and think, ‘I better be careful what I say because you never know how it’s going to be interpreted.’
“We don’t brag but there are conservation practices we can document that lessened the impact of Hurricane Katrina and minimized the impact of the recent floods in Tennessee. Those are the kinds of things we use to help educate folks making the tough decisions.
“We’ve also got watershed initiatives around the country,” said Schmidt. “A lot of conservation happens voluntarily. We don’t have a system to gather what voluntary conservation has been implemented.”
And while there are success stories that can be pointed to as examples, Schmidt said he and the NACD have to be careful because one size won’t fit all. “You can’t take information that works in Chesapeake Bay and go to Klamath in Washington because the issues in the west are different than they are in the east.”
Schmidt said conservation issues are a constant struggle for the NACD. As new technologies are brought online, they need to be balanced with existing regulations and those being proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
It’s a juggling act and Schmidt said he’s prepared himself for the challenge. |
