Depending on the industry you’re in (and the amount of money you’re spending, I suppose) you get a wide range of conferences to attend.  Being in technology, I’ve been to great big ones in great big cities, and I’ve been to small ones in great big cities.  One of the best of all of the conferences is right here in Lexington, Kentucky!

Now, if you’re going and looking for “vendor swag” to clutter up your office or home, then this may not be your conference, but if you’re looking for a real experience, something to get you excited about opportunities and the future – specifically in agriculture, but generally applicable in other industries – then One: The Alltech Ideas Conference is the one to visit.

Dr. Pearse Lyons has headed this up for years, and I first visited in 2013 or 2014.  That man had vision.  I attended once; the following year, the technology tracks were essentially the same, so I skipped, but I came back a couple of years later and was blown away by the scope of the thing.

It was the displays, the experiences, the invitations to our local area, and the speakers that made it so astounding.  I couldn’t justify, to my current employer, the need to go to a number of the “interesting” topics.  When you’re curious about everything, everything is interesting!  However, there are topics of interest to businesses that aren’t ag-related.

Two years ago, I was blown away by the water presentation given by Seth Siegel.  I bought the book and it, of course, scared me to death and at the same time, gave me some hope that the challenges around water aren’t impossible to overcome.

I watched a seemingly innocuous talk about something called AT-001 (yeast? what!?) and ended up having my whole family on it as a preventative for Alzheimer’s.  If you’re interested, read more here, but you can also just buy it!

The thing is, the talks are great, and the keynotes are always fantastic, but then the years before the 2018 conference, they had an immersive, future of agriculture experience that was phenomenal.  Of course, here I am talking about it late, and the best pictures I could drudge up were from someone’s Flickr.  They didn’t have it last year, and I was somewhat disappointed there wasn’t something similar.  In its stead, there

How do you get folks excited about a market they’re not even interested in – because that’s the boat I was in – VISION.  It was clear at this, and every other, One Conference I’ve been to.

Whether you’re in the agricultural industry, or not, please make time to visit this experience.  Not only will you get some insight into the future of how we take care of our planet, but also how and what we eat, how we keep ourselves healthy, and things we can do to participate and share our own ideas.

That sharing of ideas may be the best bit.  Yes, it’s somewhat self-serving on the part of Alltech, but I don’t blame them.  If someone’s willing to give them a great idea that they can turn around and implement, more power to ’em.  They’re doing great things and I can support that!