By Bill Spiegel, Byline Editor
When you come to Kansas City next month for the Ag Media Summit, you should say hello to Julie Deering.
Not only is Julie a long-time ACN member, past president and leads the Professional Improvement Foundation, she also is the steering committee chairperson for the 2024 AMS. Suffice to say, Julie has given a lot of time, talent and energy to ACN and its members, and she has loved every minute of it.
Julie grew up on a diversified livestock and crop farm in Shelby County, Indiana, and attended Purdue University. Like many new college students, she was unsure of her career path, until she chanced upon a meeting with the advisor of Purdue’s Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow organization.
“She said, ‘have you ever thought about agricultural communications?’ And I said, I’ve never even heard of it. So no, I haven’t thought of it. But I’m willing to try it,” Deering recalls. A few days later, the advisor had enrolled Julie in a couple of courses.
As it turned out, the major was a perfect fit for Julie’s interest in lifelong learning, and helping others.
“Journalism allowed me to dig into issues and help clarify things that might be confusing, or research that’s just coming out. How does this impact production agriculture? What can we take away? And what can we learn? And so those were the things that really fascinated me and got me going,” she says.
The major led to post-college careers at the Indiana Department of Agriculture and Purdue University Extension, before fate stepped in at, of all places, Ag Media Summit. It was there she met Mike Deering, the man she would eventually marry.
“We were kind of running in the same circles, and after we dated a few years, decided to move to Washington, D.C. where he worked at U.S. Grains Council and I took a job as director of communications with the American Seed Trade Association,” she says.
After some time working in Washington, D.C., Julie and Mike decided to marry, and moved to his home state of Missouri, where they have grown roots with their careers and three children: sons Charley and Henry, and daughter Margaret. She is a contract communications consultant for the U.S. Soybean Export Council, while Mike is the executive vice president at the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association.
Julie became president of ACN in 2018, serving the organization during a period of transition from American Agricultural Editors Association to The Ag Communicators Network. More than a change in name, the group aimed to cast a wider net on all ag communications professionals, not just those with the title of editor. She considers it a success, given the number of new faces and organizations now involved in ACN.
Involvement, she continues, is what ACN is all about. “I think this holds true for probably any organization. You get in what you put out,” she says.
One of the board chairs she worked with at the American Seed trade Association explained it this way: “‘If you want to be up on it, you’ve got to be in on it,’” she continues. “So get involved. Get involved in the committees; get involved in the special interest groups. Dedicate time to it. And I promise you, you’ll get a whole lot more out of it than what you put in, and you’ll make friendships that will last a lifetime.”