North Dakota
North Dakota State University Extension agent has passion for passing along agricultural knowledge
LANGDON, N.D. — Bailey Reiser’s rural upbringing inspired her to share agricultural knowledge through the generations.
The 26-year-old North Dakota State University Extension agent for agriculture in Cavalier County, North Dakota, taught agriculture education at Mount Pleasant School District in Rolla, North Dakota, for two years before accepting a position with NDSU in 2022. In her Extension position, she teaches children, teens and adults about a variety of agricultural topics.
Young farmers and ranchers
According to the 2017 U.S. Census of Agriculture, the average age of American farmers that year was 57.5. Only 9% of farmers were under 35 years old, according to the Census. Agweek and other Forum Communications’ newspapers are highlighting young farmers and ranchers in the industry to look at what the future holds for agriculture.
Reiser’s passion for agriculture comes from her immersion in it at a young age and being nurtured by her high school agriculture education teacher.
During Reiser’s youth on her parents’ hobby farm near Carrington, North Dakota, she was the caretaker of a variety of animals, including horses, cattle and goats. She learned about production agriculture by spending time with her father, Doug Retzlaff, who worked for a farmer and sold crop seed. She got hands-on exposure riding in the combine and on the tractor with him and watched him interact with farmers during his seed sales.
Reiser’s interest in agriculture grew at Carrington High School where she took agricultural education classes and was in FFA and 4-H.
“I did crop judging and all of the other judging, but crop judging was where I found a little niche,” Reiser said. “I really got inspired to do agronomy or something along those lines.”
After graduation from Carrington High School in 2015, Reiser attended NDSU where, during her senior year, she decided to become an agricultural education teacher.
She wanted to give youth the same opportunities that her high school agricultural education teacher had offered to her. Besides crop judging, that included volunteer work, fundraising and attending state and national conferences.
Contributed / North Dakota State University Extension
Reiser’s high school crop judging experience helped prepare her for her college agronomy classes.
“It gave me that really good base,” she said.
After she graduated from NDSU in the spring of 2020, Reiser taught agriculture education for two years at Mount Pleasant School District in Rolla, North Dakota. She was at the NDSU Extension office in Cavalier County gathering weed pesticide guides for her crops judging students when she learned about an opening for the agricultural agent position.
Contributed / North Dakota State University Extension Service
Reiser applied for the position and started working for Extension during the summer of 2022. Her background teaching high school students helped prepare her to give agricultural presentations to farmers and communicate with them during events such as pesticide applicator training, Reiser said.
She also continues to teach agricultural education in her role as NDSU Extension agent for agriculture in Cavalier County through her work with first through eighth-grade students at St. Alphonsus School, a private school, and eighth graders at Langdon Area Schools, a public school.
The two schools don’t have an agriculture education program so her work gives them exposure to a broad range of topics including plant and animal sciences.
“Being able to add agricultural aspects to daily lessons is really good,” Reiser said. For example, in January, one of her lessons at St. Alphonsus was on dairy so she taught the students how to make butter.
Reiser hopes that her agricultural lessons will spark an interest in students to learn more about agriculture. A couple of students at Langdon Area High School have expressed interest in learning more about agronomy so she plans to connect them with NDSU Extension specialists in the field.
Reiser plans to use her teaching skills to introduce more Extension programs for farmers, such as Annie’s Project, an agricultural leadership program for women. She recently offered a session of “Stop the Bleed,” a farm safety program, which was well-attended and plans to schedule additional sessions.
Contributed / North Dakota State University Extension
She enjoys the day-to-day work with farmers during the growing season when she heads out to fields to help them with diagnosing crop disease and insect problems. If she doesn’t know the answer, she has a wide variety of resources in Extension who assist her.
The farmers appreciate her work, which she finds rewarding.
“I really like what I do, and you get the excitement and joy from the reactions you get, ‘Thank you for helping me out with this,’” Reiser said.
She looks forward to implementing additional agricultural programs during the next year.
“I learned the ropes this last year — now it’s time to implement some,” she said.
Ann is a journalism veteran with nearly 40 years of reporting and editing experiences on a variety of topics including agriculture and business. Story ideas or questions can be sent to Ann by email at: abailey@agweek.com or phone at: 218-779-8093.