The Best of the Best

Last month, we closed our offices for a day to hold an employee information meeting.

Whenever our entire staff gets together, I’m reminded how lucky I am to work with such a great group of people. Our staff members are fun, and funny, but they’re also incredibly hard workers, innovative and committed to making our association the best financial partner for ag producers and rural homeowners in our area.

At that meeting last month, we recognized several employees who have gone above and beyond their call of duty in the last year. There are two types of awards: our Distinguished Service Award, an award given to employees who have improved our association and benefitted our customers in some way. These award winners are nominated by their co-workers, and those nominations are ultimately judged by our senior management team. The second award is given to people who were recognized for outstanding service attitudes. Those winners are the Employee Choice awardees, and they are nominated at large by other employees, and then chosen by a committee of their peers.

I’d like to share the winners’ names, as well as the remarks shared by their supervisors and their peers as they recognized the employees.

I hope you’ll join me in congratulating them—and give them a big THANK YOU for their contributions to our cooperative. They truly make all the difference in the world.

Rebecca Bowmaster – Distinguished Service Award
You identified some issues with our file management process that were causing confusion and redundancy. When you brought the issues to our attention, you had already prepared a well thought out and detailed solution. We liked your idea and asked you to run with it. You formed a cross sectional team of staff members, gained their consensus as well as the consensus from our IT department; led the communication effort to the rest of the staff, and finally developed and managed the implementation plan. Your actions demonstrated initiative, team work and leadership.

Garret Barbush – Distinguished Service Award
You have taken a huge leap in the past year to becoming a solid performer and a true asset to our team. While exceeding sales goals in every area, your approach to the job has impressed your co-workers. You embrace the team approach with exceptional communication and collaboration with others that allows you to deliver a high level of service to our customers. In addition to learning the skills of the Loan Officer position, you are aggressively pursuing an MBA degree.

Sandy Miller – Employees’ Choice Award
You are someone that many people rely on in many facets of the day to day operations. You help out with everything including compliance, reports, forms, procedures and operational details. We commend your ability to be mindful of the many needs of our customers and to work hard to help MidAtlantic Farm Credit provide the great customer service that sets us apart from our competition. The committee recognizes you for all you do, as do your fellow employees and our customers every day. Congratulations!

Linda Scott – Employees’ Choice Award
Your ability to handle your usual work load, pilot new procedures and pleasantly work from another office while displaced are all reasons that you exemplify what a MidAtlantic Farm Credit Employee Choice Award winner should be. The committee recognizes your dedication and resilience during busy and challenging times as well as your ability to persevere. You are a wonderful asset to the association. Congratulations and thank you for all your hard work!

Andy Terrell – Employees’ Choice Award
Your nomination was based on your knowledge not only in the agricultural industry but within the financial industry as a whole. Your ability to juggle a large agri-business portfolio while mentoring fledgling loan officers is an attribute to your hard work and dedication to MidAtlantic Farm Credit. The awards committee recognizes not only your commitment to your own job but your value on honing other loan officers as the future of the company. Congratulations and thank you for all you do!

Christine Soos – Employees’ Choice Award
After your nomination by one of your peers, the selection committee has recognized your extraordinary dedication to your job. Commendations from your nomination and the selection committee included were that when an unusual situation occurred that left us with two vacant customer service positions within a period of about two weeks, you were asked if you would help us fill the gap until we could re-staff. Without hesitation, you agreed to the redirection of your responsibilities and took over the customer service function. Even though you had help from others, your influence brought a sense of stability and calmness to an otherwise panic situation. Your approach and dedication to the task at hand set an example to others who often volunteered to help. You demonstrated teamwork and leadership in its purest form.

Congratulations to all of our winners!!

Putting the Serve in Service

One of our speakers last week (at our annual employee appreciation/information meeting) was Charles Marshall, a motivational speaker who focuses on the importance of customer service. A couple of things he said really resonated with me, and I wanted to share them here.

Charles talked about putting the SERVE back in service. By that, he means that each employee (of any company--so feel free to share this with your staff!) should always strive to:

S--Surprise their customers with their passion and excitement for the services that Farm Credit offers.

E--Evaluate the customers' needs every time you talk to them. It's so important to listen to the challenges that the customer is facing, so that you can

R--Respond to those needs. Then, after the transaction is complete,

V--Validate the customers' decision to work with you. It's a big honor to be chosen as a customers' financial partner, and we should all remember to

E--Express our thankfulness to our customers.

When I saw these five actions demonstrated in Mr. Marshall's presentation, I made a note to thank our customers when I returned to the office.

Thank you for choosing MidAtlantic Farm Credit. It's a great tribute to our staff and our reputation that you chose us to be your lending partner.

THANK YOU!

Meeting Our Mission

Last Friday, we closed our offices for our annual employee information/appreciation event.

As much as I hate to close our offices, I think it's important for our staff to get together, learn some new skills, and take the time to recognize some of our accomplishments for the year.

One of the accomplishments we talked about last week was how proud we all are that MidAtlantic has kept its mission promise to agriculture, and members of the ag community. We continue to be here for agriculture, whether it's "good times or bad" (which is taken directly from our mission statement).

The last few years have been "good times" for a lot of agriculture, especially if you look at the industry overall (there have certainly been "bad times" for individual commodities in our area, such as dairy and poultry and timber, and while I definitely don't want to belittle the challenges for folks in those industries, I do want to look at agriculture as a whole for a moment). I visited a few customers early last week--one of them told me that thanks to high corn prices, low interest rates, and stable fuel costs, he plans to pay off his loan with Farm Credit next month. Now I'm always happy to hear that a farmer has reached a point of success that he can continue to run his business without debt, but it does mean that there's not as much need for credit out there.

Our numbers show that. We're down in volume this year, compared to last year. Those numbers reflect what I hear from a lot of our membership: they're building cash, they're lowering their credit lines. They're "hunkering down", expecting that it could get tough for our industry in the next few years.

Declining volume doesn't mean that we're not here for our community. As I put my industry overview together for last week's meetings, I was surprised--and thrilled--to realize that while our volume may be down, the number of borrowers that we're serving is actually up about three percent.

So, while farmers' total indebtedness might be falling, we're continuing to offer our services to a growing number of people within our territory. That makes me feel good, because it means that we're meeting our mission and serving our industry.



We crammed a lot into a single day on Friday (like the farmers that we serve, we know how to hustle!!) I found many of the speakers to be enjoyable, and their message is inspirational. I'll share some of the highlights throughout the next few days.

In the meantime, I'd like to thank our membership (our growing membership!) for your patience and understanding as we closed our offices last Friday. While I know it may have been an inconvenience for some of you, I think that ultimately you will find that our staff members even better equipped to serve you.

And--like our mission says--that's what it's all about.

Welcome to the Future

A couple of years ago, I was in a meeting where the speaker asked the audience what color YIELD signs were.

Someone quickly yelled out “Yellow and black,” and the speaker then asked how many people in the audience thought that YIELD signs were yellow and black. I confidently raised my hand.

In fact, YIELD signs are red and white. They haven’t been yellow and black since 1971. As the speaker pointed out, the world is always changing around us. Sometimes it takes us a while to catch up.

You’ve no doubt heard about social networking, and how it is changing the way that people interact. Facebook, for instance, is only a couple of years old. It wasn’t available to the general population until 2006…today, it has 750 million active users. Twitter also began in 2006. Today it has 200 million users. It posts 200 million “tweets” a day, and it handles over 1.6 billion searches.

All these numbers mean that the world is changing. And agriculture has to change with it.

Many ag operations have already realized that social networking is a great way to connect with their customers, and market their products and operations. Social networking is a great way to tell agriculture’s story.

Let’s take a look at some farms in the area that are using social media in some fashion to grow their businesses, educate their communities, and establish relationships with future customers.

Take Elioak Farm, for instance, in Ellicott City, Maryland. Martha Anne Clark is a committed advocate of farmland preservation, and she knew that the only way to insure open space in our communities was for people to reconnect with ag in a personal way. So she opened a petting farm, then a produce stand and pick your- own operation. It was a natural progression to add technology to that mix: the farm has an active Facebook page, and is working on a Twitter account, along with projects in Google maps, search engine optimization and easily accessible videos showing life on the farm.

Or take Frey’s Greenhouses in Pennsylvania, who use a Facebook page daily to interact with their customers. They use it to promote items in their greenhouse, but also to foster conversation with their customers—it’s a time-effective (and affordable!) way to reach hundreds and hundreds of people every day.

The Hopkins Farm Creamery in Lewes, Delaware uses social media to tell customers about their latest flavors, and use customer feedback to tweak their recipes and offerings. Burli and his wife Allison Hopkins have had such success with social media, they’re looking to start a blog to help answer some of the many questions they get about the farm.

Finally, Heather McKay of Marker-Miller Orchards in Winchester, Virginia says that using social media does take additional time, but she says it’s well worth the effort. “If someone takes the time to ask me a question, I’m going to make the time to answer it,” she says, and that’s a great way to look at the give-and-take you get in social media.

I’m sure that one of these examples will resonate with you, and hopefully cause you to think about how you might use these tools in your own life or on your own farm. For my part, I’ve learned how to use Facebook, and I write this blog about things happening around MidAtlantic. My preference is still to interact with people personally, of course, but since my schedule doesn’t always allow that, I’ve found that using technology is the next best thing.

If you’re using social media already, give us a tweet ( @MidAtFarmCredit) or become a fan of our Facebook page (facebook.com/midatlanticfarmcredit).

These sites don’t take the place of personal connections—they’re a supplement to that. But they’re just one more way to keep up to date with what’s happening in your association. I hope you’ll connect with us on one of these venues in the future—I’d love to hear your feedback.

Who Died and Made You Boss?

My thoughts on the importance of leading when you’re not technically the leader.

In our employee newsletter, Across the Fence, we’ve been talking about leadership for the last few months.

Most of our discussions have focused on personal leadership, and how to develop the skills that will allow our employees to advance their career, add value to our association, and help us meet our mission. We’ve talked about how to inspire a group, how to communicate a vision, and how to effectively lead a team of co-workers to a common goal.

But there’s another aspect of leadership that doesn’t have anything to do with the title on your business card, or the organizational chart. Today I thought I’d talk about the challenges of building consensus and leading a group in which you have no authority at all.

Leadership is an interesting concept when you’re talking about cooperatives. MidAtlantic, as part of a federated cooperative system, is mandated to be bound with the other 84 associations, 4 Farm Credit Banks and 1 Agricultural Credit Bank in the country in some ways (for instance, we all follow the same regulations set forth by FCA, and we all have the same mission). But that mandate only extends to some things. In items that are not mandated, we have a choice…we can choose to work independently, or we can choose to come together in ways that aren’t mandated by law or regulation.

The latter choice, of course, requires some leadership. It requires some followership too, but it requires that the group shows leadership, and works to come together to bring value to our members.

It’s the same way with our members. They are all independent producers but they come together and agree (by choosing a cooperative as their lender) to be bound together collectively, giving them access to and control of their source of credit.

In both instances, there is a tension that exists between serving the individual need (whether that individual is a producer, an association, or even a funding bank) and the needs of the greater system (whether that system is a trade association, a lending ACA, a bank, or the whole she-bang of the national, federated Farm Credit System).

It’s because of that tension that leadership is needed. Within that framework, there is an opportunity to be something more than just the sum of the individuals. But it takes leadership—individual and group leadership—to make that happen.

Here’s a real life example. In the past several days, I’ve chaired meetings of two System committees. Both of these committees are creatures of collaboration. They are models for the “come, let us reason together” approach. They have no chartered authority to impose direction or enforce action on anybody or any entity in the System.

It sounds like a recipe for disaster, doesn’t it? Or at the very least, a big waste of time, right?

On the contrary, both of those committees can boast big accomplishments. One (the Reputation Management Committee) has overseen the establishment of a solid System communications platform. The other (the Regulations/Legislative/Public Relations Committee of the Presidents’ Planning Committee) is the starting point for developing the System’s Farm Bill agenda.

I’m not going to say that working on these committees is easy. “Come, let us reason together” sounds good in theory, but it’s not always sunshine and apple pie. The process involves managing the tensions that can exist between the individual interests and the broader, strategic interests of the System. It also involves managing egos. Managing those egos, and smoothing out disagreements, is critical because no one in the membership is required to participate. No one is required to follow the committee’s recommendation. At any point, any member of the committee can pick up their toys and go home.

That adds an interesting dimension to the tension, let me tell you.

Sometimes I wonder if this fight between the individual and the group is more prevalent in agriculture than it is in other groups. Farmers are, in some ways, lone rangers managing a business. And they like it that way. They don’t like to be told what to do. They don’t band together often, and when they do try to come together, it seems like they only want to come together in small groups (for instance, the guys and gals who milk cows can come together…but can you see them joining forces with women who raise horses? Or with the couple that raises herbs for local restaurants? Or with the guy who just bottled his first batch of wine?)

In many instances in ag, I would say that the individual wants wins over the group’s needs too many times.

Unfortunately, I think that ag producers and growers are ultimately losers if they try to go it alone, just like MidAtlantic would be on the short end of the stick if we didn’t try to collaborate with our peers and build something better together. It doesn’t really matter if we’re talking about a health care plan, or a new computer system, or consistent land usage laws, or the upcoming Farm Bill. If each one of us is yelling something different, you can’t make out any of the messages. And that means no one wins.

That’s why I think it’s important for people to stand up and agree to follow the group. Create collaboration, find some common ground, and then go home and try to recruit more people to your way of thinking. It’s not fun, battling the tension. It’s not easy, recruiting people to see your point of view (especially since you’ve seen the hours and hours of committee work that got you to that point, whereas the other people you talk to haven’t). But I think that the rewards—the outcomes—are completely worth the pain.

If one of your personal and professional goals is to become a leader, challenge yourself to do this: the next time that you’re on a committee, or meeting with your department, or even having dinner with your family, put aside your ego and don’t think about what’s best for you (this is hard, let me tell you). Think about what’s best for the group, and be an advocate for that result. Prepare to compromise, and explain your position many many times, and prepare to have some people disagree with you completely. You may even have to deal with someone packing up their toys and leaving. Don’t forget—you’re not in charge, and your job is to convince people, not just order them around.

I’ve been on enough committees in the Farm Credit System to know that building consensus isn’t easy. But once you’ve done it, and you’ve seen the whole group (or system) prosper, you’ll know that it was worth it. Even if you had to put your ego aside.

And that’s when you’ll find your true leadership potential.

Taking Stock

On Wednesday night, we held the last of our five annual stockholder meetings.

I’d like to thank the almost 2000 guests who came out to hear an update on our association, visit with friends, and have the opportunity to ask me and our entire staff any questions that they had as stockholders. It’s very gratifying to know that we have an active membership who care about the performance of their association.

It also was nice to see so many members of our community—industry representatives, equipment dealers, legislators and their staff members, Realtors, business consultants—all of the vital people in our community that keep the ag industry viable.

At each of the meetings, multiple people came up to me to thank me for helping them, and for continuing to support agriculture. It was wonderful to hear so many positive comments! Of course, I can’t take all of the credit for that happening—MidAtlantic has a strong, committed staff that makes sure that the helping happens. They’re the ones who make sure we “Walk the Talk” (our theme this year) every day, and I think they do a great job at it.

In the next week or so, we’ll post an audio recording of our meeting on our website, at http://www.mafc.com/. We’ll also post the slides from my presentation, as well as the presentation from our board chairman and our chief financial officer.

If you didn’t get a chance to attend the meetings, I invite you to check out the meeting materials (and our annual stockholder report, which you can also find on our website here). If you have any questions after you read them, please send your questions to info@mafc.com. If the question is to me, I promise I will answer it personally. If not, we’ll make sure that the right person responds to you.

Thank you to everyone who attended, and to everyone who made the meetings such a success. If you were at one of the meetings, and wanted to leave any feedback below, please do. We love to hear feedback!!

Exceptional Crop

Each year it amazes me the number of exceptional applicants we get for our scholarship program. Just when I think they can’t get any more talented, they impress me again. Our customers certainly know how to raise great families!

Congratulations to the following students, who will be receiving over $18,000 in awards:

• Denise Beam from Elverson, PA


• Jacqueline Binkley from Shenandoah Junction, WV


• Ashley Caroff from Quakertown, PA


• Carissa Doody from Union Bridge, MD


• Samantha Garst from New Windsor, MD


• Earl Gwin III from Berlin, MD


• Mark Holloway from Darlington, MD


• Shelby Hurley from Mardela Springs, MD


• Samantha Martz from Martinsburg, WV


• Julie Schmidt from Federalsburg, MD


• Laura Claire Vogler from Winchester, VA


• Lauren Williams from Lebanon, PA

We’ll be honoring these students and their parents (as a fellow parent, I know how important they are in the development of these bright young adults) in April at our annual stockholder meetings that I mentioned last week. If you know any of these folks, be sure to wish them well in their college endeavors.

Returning Profits

I get so excited this time of the year, and it’s more than just the great spring weather. I’m excited each April to announce the amount of patronage we’ll be distributing to our customers this year. For the year 2010, that amount is over $25 million - $25,755,634 to be exact.

Our structure as a cooperative is even more important today than ever. When we have a good year, we can return those profits to our customers. And last year we had a great year – one of the highest years in net income earnings (check out our annual report at mafc.com to learn more).

It is a great feeling to know we are growing our association to be here for years to come, while being able to help our customers with their lending needs.

Now you can understand my excitement!

Defining Leadership

We talk about leadership a lot here at MidAtlantic Farm Credit and often I have to stop and remind myself of what does it mean to be a leader? How do we define leadership as an association and how can I lead as an individual?

So I sat down and put some of those ideas to paper:

1. Failing to prepare is preparing to fail. Like a lot of people, I like to start new projects. It’s exciting. But I try to slow myself down and remind myself that there is great value in preparing for a task. Whether it’s researching a new law that will impact our members, or studying the loan products available to serve our members, doing the required legwork first will always pay off in the end.
2. Don’t fall into the visually-challenged porcine syndrome. I put this into my presentation last year because I like to see people’s faces when I say it. Here’s the background: They say that even a blind hog will find an acorn occasionally. Leadership is like that—sometimes, you just stumble on the right answer to a problem. Or you accidentally uncover an idea that will help our association move forward and continue to serve our members in the best way possible. It’s important for leaders to recognize that there is a good deal of luck involved in success—and not become so enamored of their own brilliance that they forget the impact that luck can have.
3. Lend cautiously in good times and in bad times lend courageously. This is a leadership trait that speaks directly to Farm Credit employees, and I learned it early in my career from one of my first supervisors. Farm Credit isn’t like other lenders…we have a mission, and we will not stray from it. As the leader of this association, I try to make sure that we’re living up to that mission, and serving our membership.
4. Never is a long time. Finally, I think a good leader is one that recognizes that everything changes, and we can’t see all of those changes coming. That’s why it’s important to never say never…the world could change in an instant (remember September 2008 when the stock market plummeted?) and what had seemed like never could suddenly be now.

That’s a short overview of some of my thoughts on leadership. But I’d like to know your thoughts? After all, being a leader means listening as well as talking (or writing). It’s your turn – what is your insight?

Meet and Eat

In about three weeks, our annual stockholder meetings will begin.

If you’re free, I hope that you will join us. One of the things that sets cooperatives apart from other types of lenders is the fact that you have an opportunity to be a part of the cooperative—whether you want to be very active, and serve on our nominating committee or board, or whether you simply want to attend the stockholder meetings and vote.

(Of course, one of the other things that sets cooperatives apart from other types of lenders is the quality of food that we serve. If you can find the time to join us, I guarantee that you won’t go home hungry!!)

Here’s the schedule:
April 5 The Fountains Salisbury, MD
April 6 Modern Maturity Ctr Dover, DE
April 7 Yoder’s Restaurant New Holland, PA
April 12 Walkersville Fire Hall Walkersville, MD
April 13 Millwood Station Winchester, VA

The meetings start at 6:45…but come a little earlier, especially if you have a patronage check to pick up. And look for me and say hello. I’d love to see you!

Feel the Love

Have you seen our latest Leader magazine yet?
Every quarter, we put out a member publication, called the Leader. It’s full of stories about leaders in our area—men and women who have overcome obstacles and established successful ag businesses in our area.
You can find our latest issue at www.mafc.com. But let me give you some highlights: this month, the theme is all about love, from the heart-shaped wreath on the cover to the members that we know and love and feature inside the pages.
You’ll read about Al and Jennifer Cassinelli, who had a dream of owning their own vineyard. They moved from farm to farm—finally ending up on their current property in Queen Anne’s county—before they found the right soil and the right place for their beloved grapes to grow.
And who can think about wine without thinking about a nice slab of cheese to go with it? Not me…which is why I enjoyed the story on Wakefield Dairy in Peach Bottom, PA. I don’t know a whole lot about cheese-making, and enjoyed learning about “cheese cave” that they use to age their tasty product.
Cheese isn’t the only dairy product we featured this month—there’s a great article on Kilby Cream, a dairy farm based in Rising Sun, MD. They make amazing chocolate milk, and people line up for their ice cream, even in the coldest weather.
Speaking of the weather, I know I’m like a lot of you, dreaming about when it’s going to get warmer and finally start greening up. If it’s too grey for you, too, it’s a great time to visit a local nursery. We featured one on page 8 of the magazine, Weber’s Nursery in Winchester, VA. Seeing all of the colorful blooms is a great reminder that Spring is just around the corner.
With Spring, comes our annual stockholder meetings. I hope you can make it to one of them. If you want more information, just stop by any of our offices and ask for an annual meeting information statement—you’ll have all the info there that you need to sign up for one of the five regional meetings we’re planning. They start April 5, and end the 13th…so you’ll still have time to get out in the fields!
In the meantime, enjoy the longer days and try to carve out an hour or so to flip through our latest Leader. I think you’ll love it.

We have a plan

We begin a new year. A fresh start in many ways. From an accounting standpoint we start a new period. We start a new budget and a new business plan.

While the budget and business plan are new, the environment we’re in and the foundation we’ve laid are not. We’ve come through two (and some might argue three) years of economic difficulty. Our customers have been tested and are being tested. As they’ve been tested, so have we. At times it’s been challenging, frustrating, rewarding, emotionally draining and exhilarating. It’s tempting to look back with the selective vision of what might seem like the good old days when we first came together to be MidAtlantic. Credit quality was 99% acceptable and hardly a loan was denied. Non-accruals were shrinking to the point that we wondered what might happen if and when they all went away. We shoulda known, and on some level we did know, that those times would not last. We knew there would be tougher days ahead and we needed to be prepared. So we did. And we are. And our results show it.

I’m as excited as I’ve been in anytime since I’ve been here about where we stand. We’re on solid footing and are planning and working to make it even more solid. If you read our business plan…that’s what it says. I am as excited as ever about our potential. Our marketplace faces special challenges, is changing and we’ll be there with it changing as needed to meet those challenges. The Farm Credit System continues its evolutionary change and we’ll be active participants in that process. The financial services industry is changing locally, regionally, nationally and globally. We’ll be working to make sure that we keep pace. Farm Credit will be a player in the market place not because of tradition, motherhood and apple pie but because we’re relevant, vibrant, steady and reliable. Our business strategies and actions are intended to make that a reality.

We’re on a good track….a steady solid track. I’m looking forward to what we do this year to continue the momentum and to deliver good things for our customers. Happy New Year!