BLOOMINGTON, Ill. – The greatest characteristic defining American agriculture is change, according to Orion Samuelson, renowned agribusiness director of WGN and Chicago’s “Voice of Agriculture” since 1960. More than 350 area business leaders turned out to hear Samuelson speak at the spring Illinois Wesleyan Associates Luncheon on Tuesday, April 17 at the IWU Shirk Center Performance Gym (302 E. Emerson St., Bloomington).
“The word I hear more often than any other today is change: the change in your land and in my land, in your profession and in my profession, in agriculture and industry and education,” said Samuelson. “And as human beings we resist change. We tend to fight change and be comfortable with the status quo.”
In his lecture titled “From Reaper to Satellite,” Samuelson spoke about the transformation agriculture has faced over the past eighty years, from the introduction of the tractor in the 1920s to today’s globalization of the market, which provides food for 300 million Americans and millions more overseas. “Think for a moment of the change you and I have seen over our lives,” he said, adding that what happens in agriculture affects us all. “If you eat, you are involved in agriculture.”