Thome will be in FFA Hall of Fame
By Janet Kubat Willette
jkubat@agrinews.com
Date Modified: 04/08/2010 9:04 AM
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ADAMS, Minn. — Peter Thome nominated his father for the FFA Hall of Fame because he said someone as passionate and dedicated to agriculture as his father deserves to be noticed.
His father, Gary Thome, farms near Adams and is a farm business management instructor for Riverland Community College in Austin. He's an alumni of the Adams FFA chapter and was Minnesota state FFA vice president in 1970-71.
He and his wife, Jane, a registered nurse, have four children, two of whom are actively involved in the farming operation.
Peter is a senior at the University of Wisconsin-River Falls and a past state FFA officer.
He said his father showed him, his sister, Sarah, and his brothers, Matt and Pat, the opportunities available to them and listened when they tried those opportunities. He also instilled his passion for agriculture in each of his children.
"There's no doubt he enjoys what he does," Peter said.
His father doesn't put anything on his plate unless he knows he's going to give it his best. He enjoys working with farm families and helping to make those families as successful as possible. He even takes his laptop with him to the cabin to crunch numbers, Peter said.
"It's what he does and what he loves," Peter said.
On April 26, Thome will be inducted into the Minnesota FFA Hall of Fame. It will be the latest in a string of honors he's received.
Thome was named the Minnesota Outstanding Ag Educator for 2009-2010 and Minnesota's Career and Technical Education Teacher of the Year. His family was named the 2010 Minnesota Pork Industry Family of the Year.
Thome said he had to stop the tractor when he received the call telling him that his family was selected the Pork Family of the Year. He had no idea they were even being considered, he said.
The Thome family has been involved in pork production for decades. He purchased a purebred Duroc gilt in 1966 and his three younger brothers followed him into pork production. For 10 years, the family was in the purebred Duroc business.
In 1973, Thome and his father partnered equally in a small hog operation that sold feeder pigs. They also had a flock of ewes.
From 1979 to 1988, the Thomes sold feeder pigs to one farmer. Now, the operation includes co-ownership of sow unit with another family, nursery barns and finishing barns. They also raise corn and soybeans.
Teaching
Thome started his teaching career as a high school agricultural education instructor in Jackson. After one year there, he taught at New Ulm, which then had the largest FFA chapter in the nation.
It was during his tenure at New Ulm that he received the Outstanding Young Teacher Award from the Minnesota Association of Agricultural Educators and set a goal to one day become the Outstanding Ag Teacher.
It was at New Ulm that Thome got his first taste of farm business management. In 1979, he and Jane moved their family to Adams where he took a job as a farm business management instructor with the school district. In 1989, he started as a farm business management instructor through the Austin Vo-Tech.
All the farm business management instructors who were teaching when he came back in 1979 have either retired or passed away, Thome said. It's a whole new group.
"It's a wonderful, wonderful group of instructors in southeast Minnesota," he said.
Fellow Riverland farm business management instructor John Hobert said Thome is recognized as one of the tenured people to go to with questions.
"Gary's, of course, recognized for his expertise in the pork industry," said Hobert, who also nominated Thome for the Minnesota FFA Hall of Fame.
He can bounce a lot of balls at the same time, Hobert said.
"Gary's a well-balanced person," he said. "I know he balances his life with his work, his church and religion, his service to the community and also to his profession in the state and of course working with his people. I think he's figured out the balance."
Thome served as president of the MAAE, which is a three year commitment, including president-elect, president and past president. He's also supportive of his children.
He and Jane do a good job of preparing their kids to participate in activities, said Kevin Brown, Southland FFA adviser and agricultural education instructor. Brown has worked with all of the Thome children in FFA.
"I owe everything to him for my FFA success …," Peter Thome said. "He's my role model. It really makes me proud for him to be acknowledged for his accomplishments."
Farm business management
Farmers who enroll in a farm business management program offered through the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities System pay tuition. That tuition has risen from $200 in 1979 to $1,400 in 2010, Thome said.
There's concern over what tuition will do with state budget cuts.
"Even with the tremendous financial crisis that all colleges are under, I really feel the vice president and the president at the college now are the strongest supporters of farm business management I've ever worked under," Thome said.
The management program has evolved in his 30 plus years of teaching from copying numbers from an account book to be sent to Wisconsin for analysis to immediate answers on his laptop.
He'll spend a day with a farmer to develop cash flow for the year ahead. He gives the farmer his full attention and expects the same in return. They analyze the numbers, develop and outline a marketing plan and prepare for the year ahead. Two or three other meetings are scheduled throughout the year to see how close they are to their projections.
He tells families how he sees things, what's good, what needs correcting and what they may want to do differently.
His families call upon him for aid, suggestions and reinforcement.
The most rewarding part of his work has been the relationships he's built with the people he's worked with.
Thome said he's been fortunate to develop wonderful relationships with fantastic people through the years. He feels strongly that the second most important thing you decide, after you decide who you go to bed with, is who you partner with.
It's hard to put a dollar value on those things, he said.