Katie Brenny was meeting with her college advisor and had what you might call a clarifying moment.
She was on her second career track to become a large-animal vet. Her original plan to become an auctioneer fell through when the auctioneering business was sold.
Okay, maybe being a large animal vet was her third career choice, if you count her early childhood dreams to marry a cowboy with a tall brown horse so she could live the adventurous life way out west.
But the large-animal vet plan wasn't going well so far. She was taking biochemistry, and as she discovered, it was hard for her. Really hard.
If passing sophomore-level biochemistry was this much of a struggle, would she be able to handle the rest of the program?
As Brenny tells it, she was sitting in her advisor’s office in tears. But he saw a way out. As she tells it, he said, “Well, you sure like to talk, and you like people, and this biochemistry thing isn't going to work out for you. Why don’t you do marketing?”
Four years later, she crossed the stage at the University of Wisconsin, River Falls, with a degree in ag marketing and communications.
As it turns out, that professor knew what he was talking about.
Mingling at the U.S. Capitol in cowboy boots
Flash forward to February 2019, and there’s Brenny, sitting on a balcony at the U.S. Capitol watching the State of the Union address in person. She had the honor of being an invited guest of Rep. Angie Craig, a Democrat who represents Minnesota’s second district.
In Craig’s press release announcing her selection of Brenny, she notes that Brenny and her husband both hold full-time jobs so they can afford health insurance and save for retirement. It goes on to say that Craig, who is also a member of the House Committee on Agriculture, is “committed to providing a voice to family farmers in Washington.”
Brenny and her husband, Ted, who she met at the Minnesota State Fair while they were both showing cattle, own a cattle operation outside the town of Mazeppa in southeast Minnesota. He works in finance, and she’s the Regional Sales and Development Manager for Bayer Crop Science, where she coaches and trains field reps in five states.
In addition to coaching sales reps, she’s also a consummate agriculture advocate with a passion for telling anyone who will listen about how food goes from farm to plate, and every issue in between.
She and Ted open their “farm gate” to local and state officials for tours followed by a delicious dinner in the pasture while cattle graze nearby.
She talks to people who know little about farming, from her physician to people she meets in the city.
She discusses everything from the grass strips she and Ted planted to help with water quality to agriculture’s tight margins to the challenges of working with a traded commodity.
But she’s also quick and willing to share the lighter side of the everyday struggles.
She talks of the lack of reliable access to broadband internet in rural areas, which means she sometimes has to relocate her work-from-home station.
“One would think that, living only 38 miles from the front doors of the famous Mayo Clinic, my internet speed would be great,” she says. “However, I end up working in the local park with birds chirping in the background.”
And there’s the matter of balancing work and farm duties.
“When a beef cow decides at 8:45 a.m. she needs some assistance with having a calf, and I have a 9 a.m. conference call, sometimes you do both and appreciate the mute button,” she says.
And there’s also the matter of balancing her marriage to Ted, their family business and her job. To her, date night means settling in Ted on a Saturday night with a bottle of wine and a set of color-coded spreadsheets.
“It’s about being open, and introducing yourself to others,” she says. “Ted and I want to be a resource, and people ask a lot of questions.”
So going to Washington, D.C., was a no-brainer. This was her chance to talk ag with policymakers.
After the president’s speech, she worked the floor in her cowboy boots, mingling with senators and representatives from New York to California and everywhere in between, both sides of the aisle, discussing a wide range of agriculture topics they wanted to know more about.
She talked about fake meat, gas emissions, sustainability, climate change, organic versus nonorganic. And if she didn’t know the answer, she knew which resources to point them to.
“To me, they’re people. A lot of them don’t know what they don’t know,” she says. “They want to know the answers to their questions, because they need the information to make informed decisions. I’m not shy, so it was fun just to answer questions.”
Perhaps her ability to talk with partisans of all stripes boils down to a simple truth.
“Food impacts everyone, regardless if you like farmers and ranchers or what your position is. That’s the really cool part about agriculture. We all have to eat.”
What would her old college advisor say if he could see where that frustrated former student ended up?
“I think he thinks I’m still crazy,” she says with a laugh. “He saved me a lot of time and a lot of money, though!”
Including all the stakeholders
Brenny was one of three farmers invited to the State of the Union address, and the only female farmer. With two in five farmers and ranchers being women, Brenny is among the growing ranks of women who are taking on roles as leaders and key decision-makers in family operations.
Still, she notes, some have some catch-up to do when it comes to acknowledging the women in the room, even if they are hanging back.
Early in her career as a seed representative, Brenny learned that women were the quiet decision-makers of these operations. Yet, the company offered customer perks like knives and caps, things that skew more toward male sensibilities.
“I realized, ‘You know, no one ever rewards the women in this deal,” she says. “Men may be the face of the operation, but you have to be nice to the female at the head shed who signs the checks.”
So Brenny’s approach was to include women in the sales process. One year she hosted a dinner in the pasture and another, she organized a fun night out to the Chanhassen Dinner Theatres.
And she chalks up her success in meeting and exceeding her sales goals to that philosophy.
She believes attitudes have evolved over the past decade. Still, a sales rep recently showed up at the farm. Though he was standing in front of Brenny, he asked to speak to Ted.
“I said, 'Here’s the deal. We both have full-time jobs. Make an appointment.'”
When he returned for the appointment, things didn’t get much better, because the young rep focused solely on Ted, even when Brenny asked questions.
So after he left and it was time to decide, Brenny was a firm no on buying from the rep.
As she explained to Ted, “It might be a good product and the price isn’t that bad. But he paid no attention to me, so I don’t care. I write the checks in this house.”
What these stories boil down to is this: “You have to make sure you’re including everyone at the table,” Brenny says. “Because once you leave, who makes the decision?”
While Brenny’s original plans for pursuing an ag career didn’t materialize, it just goes to show that if the passion is genuine, agriculture can still take you to some amazing places.
Dream big, work hard and see what happens.
“Agriculture was and is the backbone of people coming together through food,” she says. “What an opportunity to find the solutions together for everyone to win as one.”
