Grassroots Leaders: Jocelyn Schlichting
Written by Jonathan Eisenthal
The Minnesota Corn Growers Association and Minnesota Corn Research & Promotion Council are farmer-led grassroots organizations focused on identifying and promoting opportunities for corn farmers. This “Grassroots Leaders” series introduces you to the grower leaders who are working on your behalf as corn farmers.
Coming back to the farm was one of the best decisions Jocelyn Schlichting feels she has ever made.
And now she brings her training as a tax accountant and her experience with analytical computer applications, to help the family operation in Rice, Minn. She also decided to lend a hand to all farmers, by becoming a board member of the Minnesota Corn Growers Association (MCGA), where she wants to help the team of grower-leaders in one of their foremost missions: helping consumers feel connected to agriculture.
It’s work she has already engaged in, as a volunteer with CommonGround Minnesota, an organization connecting women in agriculture with consumers for conversations about food and farming.
Schlichtings’ family farm raises potatoes, corn and dry edible beans. The land is almost entirely on sandy ground, which requires irrigation, and they have taken advantage of that to devise a schedule of split applications of nitrogen. This benefits the plants and the environment.
“My dad manages production,” said Schlichting. “My cousin and her mom manage half the farm, and my mom also helps to manage the business side. This will be my fifth harvest since I came back. I was a tax accountant at 3M. I was looking for a little more fulfillment, and a little more control over my career.”
Her parents are still very actively managing the farm, but they were planning for the future, and were not interested in handing the operation to others to run.
“So now I’m here,” Jocelyn said.
Her work focuses on the support and management of the farm’s 15 full-time employees.
“I’m doing accounting and getting myself set up to manage the business end,” said Schlichting. “I am also trying to bring some of my data analytic knowledge to bear, using more of the on-farm data we have been collecting. I am calculating more detailed break-evens, to make it easier to make decisions about buying new equipment, or which crop varieties to choose. It takes all kinds of different skills to run a farm these days.”
She thinks that the majority of people don’t understand how modern agriculture works, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
“I think there is a big disconnect between agriculture and consumers nowadays,” she said. “CommonGround in particular, does an incredible job of connecting well-intentioned consumers with well-intentioned farmers and establishing your ‘common ground.’”
Schlichting said her work with the volunteer organization motivated her to run for a spot on the MCGA board. “I was so impressed with how CommonGround spent its resources, and I knew that [MCGA was] a worthwhile organization, too. They do so much with the resources farmers give them, to advocate for the industry as a whole. They are just an impressive group. Any time you have a chance to be part of that decision-making, you’ve got to take it!”
