McGlinch draws from past, looks to future

Sub­mit­ted Photo
Greg McGlinch, 32, of Ver­sailles is pic­tured with with Farm Credit Mid-America staff Hart Fled­der­jo­hann and Angie Otte. McGlinch recently won the Excel­lence in Ag award at the Ohio Farm Bureau Con­ven­tion and is the recip­i­ent of this John Deere Gator.

VERSAILLES — For Ohio Farm Bureau Excel­lence in Agri­cul­ture win­ner Greg McGlinch, 32, of Ver­sailles, a pas­sion for agri­cul­ture comes pretty nat­u­rally.
“I’m the fifth gen­er­a­tion of our fam­ily on the farm, so you might say it’s just tra­di­tion,” said McGlinch. “It’s some­thing I’ve always enjoyed and some­thing I want to share with our kids. I also want to do what I can to let every­one know what’s going on in agri­cul­ture.”
The award, which McGlinch won at the recent Ohio Farm Bureau Con­ven­tion, rec­og­nizes suc­cess­ful indi­vid­u­als, 35 or younger, who are involved in pro­duc­tion agri­cul­ture, but for whom farm­ing is not their pri­mary occu­pa­tion. The Excel­lence in Agri­cul­ture Pro­gram, which is spon­sored by Farm Credit Mid-America, rec­og­nizes farm involve­ment as well as par­tic­i­pa­tion in Farm Bureau and other com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions. McGlinch will com­pete with other state win­ners for national hon­ors at the Amer­i­can Farm Bureau Fed­er­a­tion National Con­ven­tion in Nashville, Tenn. that begins Jan. 13. For win­ning the Ohio award, McGlinch received a John Deere Gator, com­pli­ments of Farm Credit.
McGlinch is a grad­u­ate of The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity with a degree in agri­cul­tural edu­ca­tion. In his posi­tion as a manure
and nutri­ent management/urban tech­ni­cian with the Darke County Soil and Water Con­ser­va­tion Dis­trict, he works with live­stock pro­duc­ers and crop farm­ers to develop best prac­tices on their oper­a­tions. Increas­ingly his role includes edu­cat­ing them about emerg­ing con­ser­va­tion prac­tices, such as cover crops. He also advises munic­i­pal­i­ties on storm water man­age­ment and related prac­tices. McGlinch is cur­rently work­ing on a master’s degree in agron­omy from The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity.
In addi­tion to his SWCD respon­si­bil­i­ties, McGlinch and his wife Janet farm with his par­ents, Gary and Sharon McGlinch. The farm pro­duces corn, soy­beans, wheat, rye and clover, but McGlinch also uses the farm as a lab­o­ra­tory of sorts to try dif­fer­ent cover crops and con­ser­va­tion prac­tices. This helps him in his SWCD respon­si­bil­i­ties to be able to assist other farm­ers from his own first­hand expe­ri­ence.
In addi­tion, McGlinch raises hogs for freezer pork, as well as chick­ens and eggs for local cus­tomers, and uses the oppor­tu­nity to teach non-farm cus­tomers who like to buy local about today’s agri­cul­ture.
“It brings peo­ple closer to the farm, and we tell them what we’re doing on our oper­a­tion, explain how we use GPS and other tech­nolo­gies, and even give an occa­sional trac­tor ride,” he said. “It really helps them con­nect with agri­cul­ture.”
McGlinch has been active in a num­ber of com­mu­nity activ­i­ties, Farm Bureau being pri­mary, where he has been a board mem­ber.
“Farm Bureau has been a real help to me,” he said. “As a result of Farm Bureau, I have a net­work of con­tacts across Ohio and the nation, which is a great resource to me in my work.”
Angie Otte is a finan­cial ser­vices offi­cer with Farm Credit’s Ver­sailles office, and she said that she and McGlinch fre­quently find them­selves at the same farm events, with McGlinch work­ing the soil and water aspects, and she, ag finan­cial ser­vices.
“Greg is very deserv­ing of win­ning this award for excel­lence,” she said. “He’s a great resource to farm­ers in this com­mu­nity.”
While McGlinch has a pas­sion for agri­cul­ture, con­ser­va­tion and edu­cat­ing others—both in and out­side of agriculture—he has some sig­nif­i­cant other rea­sons for the things he does.
“We do a lot of con­ser­va­tion prac­tices on our farm, and part of that is because that I want to pro­tect our resources for future gen­er­a­tions,” he said. “I want to leave our farm in bet­ter shape than we found it so that our kids (he and Janet just had their fourth child) can look for­ward to a good future.”

Posted by Ashley Fritz on Feb 3 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.