“I have learned that if we
aren’t going to fight for
agriculture, who is
going to?”
– Alisen Anderson
Ottawa County Farm Bureau member Alisen Anderson shares her passion for agriculture from the farm to the national stage with the American Farm Bureau Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee
From the Summer 2023 issue of Oklahoma Country magazine
Story and photos by Dustin Mielke
Standing in a wheat field near Miami, Oklahoma, hundreds of miles and more than two decades separate Alisen Anderson from the Indiana family farm where she was raised. The time that has passed since she left her home state for Oklahoma can be counted in more than just years. Wheat harvests, life experiences, lessons learned and lives touched are the measures of growth and change that mark the time that has lapsed since she grew up riding through fields and walking through pastures back home with her grandparents.
“My grandpa really ignited that passion for production agriculture for me,” Alisen said. “I remember being three years old on a very old Gleaner combine with no cab harvesting wheat with him. And that was one of my very earliest memories as a kid. I remember falling in love with the whole process.”
Today, Alisen and her husband, Jared, farm almost 900 acres of wheat, corn and soybeans near Miami while also ranching alongside Jared’s family. The couple’s three children mark the family’s seventh generation to grow up in agriculture.
The passion for agriculture that she learned from hours spent on the farm with her grandparents has carried Alisen through high school, college and a career teaching agriculture at Northeastern Oklahoma A&M College that she recently concluded after more than a decade in the classroom. Her passion now drives Alisen to serve fellow young agriculturalists as a member of the American Farm Bureau Young Farmers & Ranchers Committee.
As a national YF&R leader, Alisen has the opportunity to share her excitement for agriculture with fellow agriculturalists in the early years of their own farming, ranching and agribusiness careers. From encouraging fellow Farm Bureau members to planning and hosting events for participants from across the nation, Alisen pours her heart for agriculture into fellow YF&R members not only for the love of agriculture, but most importantly for the love of people.
That focus on helping others in agriculture is part of an ongoing cycle of investing time, encouragement and assistance, which she learned – and continues to learn – from role models, peers and students from all walks of life.
Alisen admits that coming from a long line of farmers, agriculture is intertwined into every fiber of her being. While the passion she has for production agriculture and the agriculture industry was ignited by her grandfather, the flames were fanned by her high school and college agriculture education teachers.
“I had two incredible ag teachers,” Alisen said. “I was very blessed in high school by Mr. McLochlin and Mr. Wildermuth. Then I came to a little junior college called Northeastern Oklahoma A&M where I met someone named Roger Fent who further ignited that passion. I wanted to be him – and I still do.”
Alisen said she enjoyed each of Fent’s classes and even told Fent she wanted to do exactly what he was doing. A short four or five years later, Alisen was offered Fent’s position after his retirement from NEO. Alisen found herself as an instructor at the college that was instrumental in shaping her life with a new opportunity to guide and nurture agriculture students sitting in the same chairs where she once sat.
With classrooms full of young agriculturalists looking to begin a career in agriculture, Alisen poured herself into her teaching duties, becoming more than an instructor, but a mentor, friend and confidant for students walking through the door of her classroom. It was a chance to continue the cycle of investing into others that she benefited from thanks to her grandfather, her high school agriculture teachers and Fent.
“We were taught to do the job, but do it for people,” Alisen said.
“I’m so blessed by all of those students who have come through my classroom. I know they are changing the world, and that’s the best paycheck. Even though there are trials and tribulations and mountains you have to climb in education, those kids are out changing the world, and they are making life better for everyone who will go into agriculture in some way or another. They are feeding the world, they are advertising agriculture, they are marketing agriculture, and they are pushing people to be the best that they can be.”
In her time teaching at NEO, Alisen taught students from 42 states, Canada and Mexico, sharing her passion for agriculture while helping them envision and follow their own dreams within the industry she loves.
Alisen’s involvement with Farm Bureau started similarly to her start in agriculture education: through encouragement and with the assistance of mentors.
Two longtime Ottawa County Farm Bureau leaders, Greg Leonard and James Fuser, encouraged Alisen and Jared to jump into Farm Bureau activities and programs with both feet.
“Those guys were so vital to us being integrated into the Farm Bureau family,” Alisen said.
“They were the ones who pushed us to do anything and everything we could with Farm Bureau. They gave us all the resources we needed to start our own YF&R in Ottawa County and the collegiate Farm Bureau.”
As an NEO agriculture instructor, Alisen was the driving force that started the NEO Collegiate Farm Bureau chapter, and she served as chapter adviser from its inception until her recent departure from the college. Under her leadership and guidance, the NEO Collegiate Farm Bureau chapter grew to become the state’s most active and visible chapter, hosting events for students that included agriculture tours to different parts of Oklahoma and regular participation in state and national Farm Bureau events.
“I want to show my kids that it is important to give yourself to things that will better our generation,” Alisen said of her investment in the collegiate Farm Bureau program. “And that’s agriculture for me, and that’s Farm Bureau for me.”
Students that spent time at NEO as Collegiate Farm Bureau members are now serving as county Farm Bureau leaders, state YF&R committee members and even state Farm Bureau board members in 27 states.
Alisen said she has seen the impact that Farm Bureau has made in the lives of students, herself and her husband. From expanding students’ horizons through collegiate Farm Bureau to serving as the 2023 Oklahoma Farm Bureau YF&R state committee chair with her husband, Jared, Farm Bureau is one more place that Alisen has had the opportunity to invest in others while growing as a leader herself.
“When I say Farm Bureau changes lives, I truly mean it,” she said.
For all the leadership qualifications, experience and credentials Alisen has acquired, and with a career spent spurring students to explore and grab hold of leadership opportunities, when an opportunity came to step into a national leadership role with Farm Bureau, she was apprehensive about moving into the spotlight herself.
“Even though I stood in front of hundreds of kids each semester and taught them everything I know about agriculture, I had very little self-confidence,” Alisen said. “I think God telling people to prod me along was very important.”
With some encouragement from fellow agricultural leaders and her husband, Alisen applied and was accepted to serve a two-year term as an AFBF YF&R committee member representing Farm Bureau members across a region of states including Oklahoma.
“The people who I get to serve with are incredible, wholesome, loving Farm Bureau members who do exactly what we do, just all throughout the country,” Alisen said.
As an AFBF YF&R Committee member, Alisen has traveled the country in the past 18 months, investing her time and passion for agriculture in fellow Farm Bureau members ages 18-35. From serving as a workshop presenter for Washington Farm Bureau to helping a school in Puerto Rico that serves special needs children prepare a school garden, she has worked as an advocate for Farm Bureau and agriculture across the nation.
Alisen also serves as chair of the AFBF YF&R Leadership subcommittee, which is tasked with planning and hosting the AFBF YF&R Leadership Conference scheduled for March 8-11, 2024, in Omaha.
“Coming together as a whole committee, we get to do a lot of good team-building and a lot of good strength-building,” Alisen said. “We go through training so that we can make sure we are telling the story of Farm Bureau accurately and also passionately.”
Through her involvement at the national level, Alisen said she has come to see exactly how AFBF works to represent Farm Bureau members in every facet of agriculture.
“I truly know now that AFBF has our best interest at heart, especially with the people I get to work with.” Alisen said. “I hope to make sure I’m not just learning what they’re teaching me, but also that I’m able to bring that back to my own county and of course Oklahoma Farm Bureau as well.
“The connections we get to create with other state Farm Bureau members are incredible, but it is the camaraderie and the people who make it great.”
Alisen and her three kids, Grace, Colt and Piper, sit in a pasture on the ranch the Andersons run alongside Jared’s parents. The Andersons’ children are the seventh generation to grow up in agriculture, carrying a tradition and passion that was in both Alisen and Jared from a young age.
Alisen speaks to fellow Young Farmers & Ranchers members from around the nation at the 2023 American Farm Bureau FUSION Conference in Florida. As an AFBF YF&R committee member, Alisen works alongside committee members to encourage young agriculturalists, plan and host events for fellow Farm Bureau members, and advocate for agriculture.
As she stood next to her husband and children, watching a combine glide through one of the Anderson family’s northeastern Oklahoma wheat fields in the early days of June, Alisen was also preparing to travel to Milwaukee for the summer AFBF YF&R committee meeting.
While the family’s wheat field and a meeting room in Milwaukee may seem like different worlds, for Alisen, they are both simply platforms that she capitalizes upon to build and share her passion for agriculture.
“I can’t have an excuse to not be great for agriculture,” Alisen said. “I can’t have an excuse to not be great for my kids or my husband or our farm and our ranch. There’s not an excuse as to why we shouldn’t fight for what we love and fight for what we believe in.”
Through her time as an AFBF YF&R committee member, Alisen said she discovered even more self-confidence along with a deeper understanding of agriculture. Sharing the need to tell the agriculture story and stand up for the industry she loves has been a key part of her service on the national stage.
“I have learned that if we aren’t going to fight for agriculture, who is going to?” she said.
Alisen recently wrapped up her 11-year career at NEO where she helped build leaders for agriculture and numerous other industries. Her success as a teacher, mentor and adviser to students was driven by a deep sense of duty to help students achieve their dreams – a philosophy formed by mentors throughout Alisen’s life who helped her achieve her goals. That drive to invest her time and energy in others extends to her work for Farm Bureau in Ottawa County, in Oklahoma, and now, around the nation.
“If we are not trying to build up people, if we’re not trying to make people better, than what are we here for?” Alisen asked. “I know that I am put on this earth to love people in agriculture and to teach them. However I can do that, whatever space I can do that in, I want to.”
From her earliest memory of riding around Indiana wheat fields with her grandfather to standing in an Oklahoma wheat field alongside her husband and children, the time Alisen has spent between those two harvests has been focused on investing in students, fellow agriculturalists and Farm Bureau members. Alisen’s investment in what matters most – people – comes from her own sense of purpose, which is rooted in her faith.
“We are borrowing our farms, our ranches – everything that we are doing in life – we are borrowing from God,” Alisen said. “We are borrowing this land and these animals from God, and I want to make sure I’m taking care of them as best as I can.
“But also, we are here to take care of his people, and that is very precious and important to me because other people did that for me, and they showed me God’s love, and I want to do the same.”
