It's Time to Grow New Leaders from Rural America
Expanding progressive leadership everywhere is the key to a hopeful and abundant future.
Petie looking at the morning sun out of our barn at Coyote Run Farm. Photo by John Davis.
Sometimes, when I consider the future, I’m filled with confidence that in the coming decades rural Americans like me will help create solutions to some of our biggest global challenges like climate change. We’re ready to help move the world into an abundant and hopeful future.
At other times, like the day after the election in November, I’m profoundly aware that the future might not be as bright as I dream.
Enormous investments are at work in our political landscape driving people apart and undermining our ability to work together. The outcome of last year’s elections shows how much work is needed to create the solutions demanded by our moment in history.
Growing New Leaders: Perspectives from Coyote Run Farm will focus on telling stories of hope and opportunity from rural America. In being honest about that hope, I’ll also be sounding uncomfortable and critical warnings.
Some stories will be grounded in Coyote Run Farm near Lacona, Iowa. Founded in 2005 by my husband Patrick Standley and me, the 110-acres on our farm were purchased by the first non-Native Iowa family in the mid-1800s. We’re the fourth family of European descent on these acres. Historically, central Iowa was the homeland for the Ioway or Baxoje nation. In the 1840s, the land now being cared for by Coyote Run Farm was taken by the United States government from the Sauk and Meskwaki.
At other times, inspiration will come from the farm I grew up on. My parents operated a conventional commodity farm near Anita in southwest Iowa. They started farming in 1970. The Russell Ranch grew into a 1000 acre operation until my dad started his very slow glide into retirement in 2017.
That glide hasn’t finished yet. As long as Dad can leave the house, he’ll be heading out to the 240 acres of our family’s land to do some work. That might be helping the neighbor who rents the row-crop acres. Or it might be working with another neighbor who has stepped up to help him with the cattle.
For all but eight of my 54 years, I’ve gotten mail at either Coyote Run Farm or the farm I grew up on.
Many stories will come from my 25-year career in agricultural leadership. That includes time at Catholic Rural Life, Iowa Citizen Action Network, Drake University Agricultural Law Center, and USDA in the Obama, first Trump, and Biden-Harris administrations. I’m also a member of many farm groups and have served in leadership with some of them.
Then Vice President Joe Biden and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack in November 2019 on a visit to Coyote Run Farm.
As a child of the 1980s farm crisis, I wasn’t originally planning to have a career in farming and ag leadership. I spent my 20s in ministry with the Catholic Church. On my way to priesthood, I got within a year of being ordained a deacon before my discipleship called me in other directions.
Ministry continues to shape how I see the world. I’m still called to help make that world a better place. All my posts will focus on the values our nation stands on when America shines the brightest.
For nearly a decade, I’ve been focused on the transformative power of investing in farmers as innovators and leaders. In 2019 I wrote an op-ed with Robert Leonard of Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture for the New York Times: ‘Our Small Towns Are Toppling Like Dominoes’: Why We Should Cut Some Farmers a Check. In 2021 we wrote at Ag Insider: Opinion: How farmers can be at the forefront of the climate solution.
In the shadow of the 2024 elections, I realize we must invest in all kinds of new leaders across the American landscape.
Like crops, new leaders don’t simply appear. You gotta grow’em.
Farmers and ranchers know we don’t succeed simply on our own. We are always dependent on and responsible to a larger community. Together, rural progressives are going to need to work with all Americans in every state, congressional district, county, and precinct to grow new leaders.
Around Iowa and throughout rural America, you can still find the shared values that will help move our nation forward. Although increasingly under attack, these values are critical to elevating new leadership in communities of all sizes.
We must celebrate the importance of smart government, like supporting public schools.
Democracy provides the primary way to expand power and elevate the best ideas.
Diversity is the cornerstone for all resilient natural systems and must be celebrated as a necessity to advance human progress.
We have a responsibility to support freedom for all, especially when “all” includes people beyond who we might think of as members of our own groups.
The powerful glow of these deep American values, promising a hopeful and abundant future, isn’t getting brighter right now. Until we build a stronger team to advance these shared values, that light will continue to dim. To build that team, we must unleash the power of progressive rural Americans. We also need to expand that leadership.
Growing New Leaders: Perspectives from Coyote Run Farm will dive deep into agriculture and rural leadership. However, while focusing on rural America, I also intend to impact and include everyone.
Even if you don’t farm, we all participate in agriculture as we buy, use, and make public investments in what American farmers and ranchers raise and grow.
Even if you don’t live in rural America, we all need to build the literal and figurative bridges that will bring us together. Growing a team of new progressive leaders across the entire American landscape is the work ahead for all of us.
Expanding progressive leadership everywhere is the key to a hopeful and abundant future.
Thank you Matt! It doesn’t surprise me that you have been thinking about and now launching your new project. I appreciate the work you have done over the many years I have known you - sheesh, we go along way back! There are many of us seeking a way to make it to the bright side again. Love your metaphor.
Thank you for sharing Matt. I value and respect your opinion and vision. It helps to know there are people like you out there doing the work, asking the right questions, and answering the call. Thank you.