Surrounded by the concrete jungle of Chicago, it can be tough to fathom that some of the U of C’s finest come from much less urban locales. In fact, many UChicago students hail from quite the opposite, including second year Lauren Riensche, an established farmer from Jesup, Iowa. Last year, Lauren was awarded the American FFA Degree, an incredibly prestigious honor from the Future Farmers of America, the largest youth organization in the United States with more than 256,000 members. Impressively, less than 2% of members receive the award.
Lauren’s family owns and operates the Blue Diamond Farming Company in Northeast Iowa, where she worked to accomplish the requirements for the award. “In order to achieve the American FFA Degree, I worked 3,000 unpaid hours in an agricultural profession, earned $7,500 through agricultural entrepreneurship, and kept an hour-by-hour record of my activities, earnings, inventory, and expenditures,” Lauren shared. She worked for six years to meet these qualifications.
When asked what she liked about farming, Lauren said it was in her blood. “I have been helping on the farm since I could walk and have come to love the hard work and dedication running a family farm takes,” she explained. She also says she “holds a deep appreciation for farmers, as they must be an expert of many professions. Farmers are their own accountants, their own mechanics, their own human resources coordinator, their own machine operators, and their own CEO, among many other things.” Lauren says she appreciates the fact that “the agricultural industry is full of hard-working, dusk-to-dawn men and women who are able to raise families and produce enough food to feed the US and other countries at the same time.”
Lauren’s farm has been a part of her family’s history for so long, it makes sense she picked up the trade so quickly. She is the sixth generation to live and work on the farm, which was founded by her ancestors who moved to the US from Germany seeking fertile farmland almost 150 years ago. Lauren’s family farms the same land they staked claim to in the 1800s and, in present times, has grown the operation to include 12,000 acres.
In the future, Lauren plans to dedicate her life to, as she says, “becoming an unstoppable advocate for agriculture.” At UChicago, she is majoring in Sociology while supplementing her education with UChicago Careers in Business (UCIB) and taking classes at the Booth School of Business. She hopes to combine her passions for marketing and agriculture to halt false claims about the farming industry. “It saddens me to see people make assumptions about farmers and farming that are wildly incorrect. I want to do my best to educate the public about the truths of agriculture, [spending] my life promoting the agricultural industry in a good light,” she said, asking, “Did you know organic agriculture is even less sustainable than non-organic? Did you know that GM (Genetically Modified) crops allow farmers to use less chemicals on their fields? Did you know that there are dozens of ways farmers contribute to conservation every day?” Lauren’s expertise in the field at such a young age is incredibly evident and so admirable.
In her free time, Lauren is active in the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority, where she is serving her second term as Secretary, markets for local and campus organizations through The Mark, UChicago’s marketing RSO, and serves as Snell House’s Social Chair (Fun fact: Lauren is the first Social Chair ever elected in house history!) She also is a Scav captain for Snitchcock’s Scav team, arguably one of the best Scav teams on campus, since it has won more than half of all Scav competitions since its creation in the 1980s. While in Chicago, Lauren also maintains the Blue Diamond Farming Company’s Facebook page and works as an independent marketing consultant to promote clients’ products. And, of course, as Lauren said, “I make sure to take the time to Snapchat my mom, Facetime my dad, Skype my siblings when they need help on their homework, and play Ruzzle with my friends.”
At the end of the day, Lauren loves what she does, and her own words sum up her farming accomplishment quite nicely. She said, “I am proud to be an American Degree recipient!”