Growing next gen of producers will take leadership
Talk with Roxi Mccormick for a few minutes and you’ll soon end up talking about two of her most passionate interests. In fact, it’s right there in her email address: cowsncorn@ ##### .com.
Mccormick and her husband Dusty own Advanced Agri-solutions, a consulting and sales company that helps producers maximize yields. She was recently reelected to a two-year term on the Colorado Farm Bureau board of
directors – one of three women on the 15-member board – and chairs the Farm Bureau’s Women’s Leadership Committee.
The biggest issue she sees facing farmers and ranchers today, Mccormick said, is commodity prices and finding markets for Colorado’s ag products.
“We have to have places to sell our products,” she said. “Colorado needs to do more marketing for the consumers, but lately we seem to have fallen of f the map.”
She also realizes that a growing number of young farmers are women, which explains her involvement withthewlc.
“I see a lot of wives and especially daughters coming back to the farm when their brothers decide they want to do something else,” she said. “We need to provide them with opportunities in leadership to take those positions in agriculture.”
Mccormick grew up on her family’s cattle and crop operation, which straddles the Colorado-nebraska state line between Sidney and Crook. A graduate of Sidney High School, she holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and, in 2017, completed Annie’s Project. She and her husband and their four children live on a hilltop that was part of her family’s farm, where they star ted Advanced Agri-solutions a decade ago.
Mccormick’s involvement in Farm Bureau comes out of her need to provide growers with as much information as possible, and that includes information about federal, state and local policies and regulations that can affect production agriculture.
“Our business was starting, and I wanted to reach out to find more information for our growers,” she said.
The information she has found is nearly endless. A question about water quickly leads to a conversation about timing of irrigation, the effect of nighttime temperature on a corn plant’s ability to “rest” suf ficiently and generate sugars needed to grow the next day, and the fact that corn, like many grasses, is basically a lazy plant; pamper it, and it will grow shallow roots and yield less product. Mccormick’s growing season duties have her delving into customer’s center pivot systems and monitor root growth with moisture probes, to manage irrigation as efficiently as possible.
Along with her knowledge of irrigation comes a fluency in water issues. She is especially passionate about water quality, and not just because she wants her family to have clean water to
drink. She wants her customers to have clean water to irrigate with, and she’s keeping an eye on the quality of water coming down the South Platte River after it’s used by 80 percent of Colorado’s population for ever ything from drinking to flushing toilets. Recent studies show increasing salinity in South Platte River water, an issue that she said needs to be addressed soon.
“Contaminated water isn’t good for people, it isn’t good for livestock, and it isn’t good for crops,” she said. “This needs to be addressed while we can still find solutions for the problem instead of trying to minimize the effects of the problem.”
Mccormick is a tireless advocate for letting farmers and ranchers continue to be the stewards of the land they always have been. Her work has taken her to Washington, D.C., for face time with the state’s Congressional delegation on the U.S., Mexico and Canada trade agreement.
Her work isn’t confined to the adult world; with her “agriculture in motion” trailer, she visits schools to tell students about all aspects of Colorado agriculture. She reads books about agriculture to students, then donates the books to the school librar y.
“(Children) have to know about the importance of agriculture in Colorado,” she said. “We need to be developing and investing in these kids to create the next generation of ag leaders.”