The Ag Council has undergone some leadership changes in recent months. Leslie Druffel (The McGregor Company) and Lindsey Williams (Agriculture & Natural Resource Center of Excellence) have stepped in to co-chair the council and bring their collective knowledge and experience to the group. Pam Lewison (Washington Policy Center and JP Ranch) and Danika Pink (Blyehl Co-Op) have also joined the council. With the many seat changes that have occurred in the last few months, the council has taken time to regroup and re-examine both the collective goals of myTRI 2030 and the specific goals of the Ag Council.
The recent change in leadership has helped move the Ag Council toward keeping the larger goals of the council in sight while also taking on smaller projects that help maintain enthusiasm. To that end, the Ag Council has focused on highlighting agricultural professions – both in and out of the sphere of production agriculture – by working with Tri-Cities area FFA Chapters to create hashtags to be used in social media posts. The following hashtags were created by high school students to draw attention to careers in agriculture in the region and to highlight the myTRI 2030 Ag Council projects:
- #3citiesag
- #TRIag
- #farmthebasin
The hashtag project will include Instagram and Twitter posts in hopes of creating a focus on ag-related careers that are not necessarily specifically tied to the growing of crops but also include ancillary agriculture jobs like accounting, marketing, banking, risk management, real estate, public policy, agronomy, and more.
Ag Council member Vicky Scharlau, Columbia Basin Development League, gave a presentation to the group about the
Columbia Basin Project. Members were interested in getting a better understanding of where the project is currently and what steps are needed to keep it moving forward. The Ag Council determined that a letter in support of completing the Columbia Basin Project and, by extension, the Odessa Groundwater Replacement Program project, is a worthwhile effort.
The Ag Council is continuing small steps on a previously identified video project. This project is in the early stages of planning and will provide a narrative highlighting the various careers in agriculture both in and out of the “field.”
The culmination of the many smaller projects the Ag Council is undertaking are to address the ultimate goal of many of the myTRI 2030 planning sessions: an Ag Innovation Center. There are several infrastructure topics under the umbrella of the innovation center that need to be addressed including ensuring there is not a duplication of work being done through WSU, CBC, and WWCC, identifying funding sources, creating community interest, and more.
The Ag Council is working toward collaboration with fellow councils in addressing overlapping issues related to innovation center development. The needs are many, including interfacing with the Education and Energy Councils on research topics; working with the Inclusion Council to ensure representation of all communities; and working with the Life and Prosperity Councils to provide a collective understanding of what the center and agriculture bring to the Tri-Cities.
