Orion Samuelson

OPENING GENERAL SESSION Orion Samuelson Good morning and welcome to my university, or as I got today, we need to be aware of the change, and we need my doctorate the easy way, an honorary one, and it was to do something about it. actually my first college degree, and I got it at age 67. One of my concerns over the years is the fact that, Now, you don’t have to do the arithmetic. I’m now 72, but generally, we let change lead us in agriculture, and we as you will learn, I am Norwegian and at age 72 I figure have paid some rather heavy penalties over the years for I’m half done, so I plan on, plan on being around for a letting that change lead us. I’m pleased to see that we are while. beginning now to lead the change more than we have I appreciate the opportunity to share some personal over the past several decades, but we need to be more prejudices, biases and opinions with you this morning. I proactive in leading the change, and one of the challenges can assure I will not talk science. That would be foolhardy that I want to leave with you today is the need for you, as on my part to do that surrounded by, I would guess if I people in science, to help me as a communicator relate to said is there a doctor in the house, I’d probably see two the people who benefit from the work you do, the con- hundred hands go up. So I’m not going to get into that. sumers of this country and the world, to help them And I might also add to the background that you just understand what it is you do, and why it’s important to all heard. I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, and getting of us. I very often challenge people in science before I do up at five o’clock in the morning to milk cows, and by the a radio or a television interview; you’ve got to use words time I was nineteen or twenty I decided I was not going to that I can understand, because I think if I can understand spend the rest of my life getting up at five o’clock in the it, then my audience can understand. Don’t talk scientific morning to milk cows. Didn’t like to work that hard. Still terms. That’s going to lose people. It’s important in your don’t. So I left and became an agricultural broadcaster community, but that’s one of the challenges that I lay out and ever since I have been getting up at three o’clock in at the very beginning: To be able to communicate in the morning to do a program for people who get up at five layman’s language, because it is important that we be o’clock to milk cows. This doesn’t say much. The Univer- able to talk to specialists and scientists like you to help us sity of Illinois may want to take that doctorate back, I’m not understand the change and what it means, but we have to sure, because it does not say much about what’s happen- be able to share it in understandable language. ing upstairs here. But I will say that sitting in a warm studio Well, let me talk about how difficult change can be. As I on a cold winter morning is a lot better than sitting in a mentioned, I grew up on a dairy farm in Wisconsin, in the dairy barn and milking cows and getting wrapped around hills of Western Wisconsin, and I’ll talk a little about the the neck with a tail that’s been in the gutter all night. change in that dairy farm. But I grew up in a community That’s one of the reasons I’d get on the school bus in the where if you were Norwegian you were Lutheran and if morning and the kids would move as far away from me as you were German-Irish you were Catholic, and in those they could get, because that just never left you. young days for me, never the twain shall meet. That’s I want to spend some time today, as I said, not talking changed, and I’m grateful for that. But the town of Westby, science but talking about the challenge of change. Dean Wisconsin where my family now lives, after selling the Easter talked a great deal about change, and I want to farm, is so Norwegian dogs bark in Norwegian in that continue on that theme and analyze it; share and amplify community, and of course in Scandinavian humor we have just a little bit more because every event, every agricul- Ollie and Lena and Lars and Sven. Only lived in Westby, tural meeting that I attend these days, there is one word I Wisconsin, worked hard and then got transferred to a town hear more than any other. It’s not a four-letter word. It is in Northern Wisconsin that was all German and all Catho- the word change. This is what everybody is talking about. lic back in the days that Catholics observed meatless Fri- Change and how it seems to be increasing in speed and day. First Friday that Ollie’s in this northern town, he’s out volume, and as people involved in the agricultural industry in the backyard grilling steaks on the barbecue. His Catho- lic neighbors are out in the back yard smelling this aroma Orion Samuelson and wondering what has happened to the community. The WGN Radio next Friday its pork chops, the next Friday its hamburgers, and finally his Catholic neighbors said we have to do Proceedings of the 59th American Meat Science Association something about this. So they said we’ll meet with Ollie, Reciprocal Meat Conference and they said, “Ollie you have to understand you’re now in June 18-21, 2006, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois www.meatscience.org a Catholic community. We cannot eat meat on Friday. We 59th Annual Reciprocal Meat Conference 19 cannot have you in the backyard tempting us with those dio communication, and in April of 1955, at the end of win- meat aromas on Friday, and we figure the way to handle ter, the snow beginning to melt, it was a foggy day, and the situation is for you to become a Catholic.” Good- our neighbor who lived about a little over a quarter of a natured Ollie said, “fine.” Sunday at mass, the priest calls mile away across the valley, I could barely see across the Ollie up to the alter, and he stands there, and he said, valley, but I heard Carmen Simonsen pounding on metal, “Ollie you were born a Lutheran, you were raised a Lu- and I looked across the valley, and I could see that he was theran. Now you’re a Catholic.” The neighbors figure that standing by the windmill hitting the bottom of a washtub takes care of it. The next Friday they’re out in the back- with a hammer, and when he saw that he had my atten- yard in the evening and what do they smell coming over tion, he shouted across the valley, and he said, “Orion, tell the fence from Ollie’s backyard? Venison steak. They look your folks the president died today.” That was April of over the fence and here’s Ollie with a salt shaker saying, 1945. I learned about the death of Franklin Delano Roo- “You were born a deer, you were raised a deer. Now sevelt, shouted across the valley, by a neighbor. Little did I you’re a halibut.” know that less than 20 years later I would be standing on a stage in Atlanta at a meeting of the American Soybean Change is difficult, very difficult, but where would we be Association, along side a screen like this, and moderating today in our life without change? Several years ago a a program that went an hour and a half with a soybean viewer in Iowa, and I know you can’t see this from back buyer in Tokyo, a soybean producer in Brazil and a soy- there but I want to share it with you, a viewer from Iowa bean buyer in London appearing instantly on the stage, sent me a full-page ad that appeared in a farm magazine responding to questions immediately. And as I finished that is no longer with us, but one that I enjoyed as a that session, I couldn’t help but think in a relatively short youngster growing up, The Country Gentleman, because it time I had gone from news shouted across the valley, to had a mixture of fiction and agriculture. This full-page ad technology that allowed me to not only talk to and listen to, reads “one man cultivates two rows at a time with the but see people around the world. Talk about change. Moline Universal Tractor. It solves the farm help problem.” And then the small cartoons say “one man cultivates Now, listening to Dean Easter talk about specialization twelve to twenty acres in ten hours.” “One man can plow today in livestock production, on our farm we had two five to eight acres in ten hours.” And “one man harvests hundred chickens, six sows, thirty milk cows, a dozen fifteen to twenty-five acres of grain in ten hours.” When calves, a dog and thirteen cats.

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