Vacation break pays off for Discussion Meet winner

VERONA, Ill. — For Austin Granby, a decision to end a fun-filled vacation early, in favor of hitting the books, paid off.

“It was in July. I was on vacation in Lake of the Ozarks,” he said. “I was going back and forth, do I go and do it or do I stay and have fun here?”

Granby made the decision to end that 2017 vacation early. He headed home to compete in the Illinois Farm Bureau Young Leader Discussion Meet for District 5, which includes Grundy, Kendall, Cook, DuPage and Will counties.

“I thought, well, I go and do it. I said I was going to and I think it’s a pretty good idea. I came home, studied the whole way home and was ready to go that night,” he said.

Granby was successful in the District 5 event and went on to represent the district that year in the IFB Young Leader Discussion Meet at the annual meeting in December in Chicago.

He has competed every year since then, except for a year he couldn’t attend due to illness. That tenacity and the experience paid off this year when Granby won the IFB Young Leader Discussion Meet.

Granby will represent Illinois at the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Discussion Meet at the AFBF Annual Convention & Trade Show next month in Salt Lake City.

“It was such a relief. I felt really confident. I felt really good that, win or lose, I felt like I did my best,” Granby said.

“To realize that, on that particular day, my best was good enough, that was a good feeling — that was a really great feeling.”

The final question, regarding how Farm Bureau can welcome and engage diverse agricultural communities, was right in Granby’s wheelhouse.

His family owns and operates Granby’s Greenhouse, in rural Grundy County, near Verona.

“We raise flowers and vegetable plants for big-box stores and landscapers in the Chicagoland area,” he said.

Granby graduated from Seneca High School, Joliet Junior College and the University of Illinois. He returned to work in the family business. He and wife Kelsey married in September 2020.

During the planning for their wedding, the couple decided to diversify further. Kelsey started Without A Hitch Event Decor Company, which supplies decor for weddings, parties and other events.

The couple is also fixing up a barn and building a wedding and event venue near Grand Ridge. Centennial Farm on the Ridge just opened reservations for 2025.

“We will have our grand opening in 2024, but we don’t know the exact date of that yet. We will be having events there to welcome people and give tours and show off the property and get people excited about it,” Granby said.

All of those experiences helped him discuss the final question. He also took a different approach to preparing this year.

“This year, I really dug into Farm Bureau programming, not only what we do at the county level, but what’s going on at the state level, then taking a good look at the policy book, where we stand as Farm Bureau, as well as what the resolutions were and trying to get a feel for what the current state of the members was, the important topics they wanted to discuss, ideas they’d like to see in the policy book or ideas they’d like to see changed in the policy book,” he said.

Granby said he combined his own experiences with ideas from other Farm Bureau members.

“I was able to use a lot of personal experiences and some ideas that we’ve come up with through the Young Leaders in the county to really come up with some personal idea that I have seen help and that I thought, over the years, could provide benefit,” he said.

Granby said he wouldn’t call himself shy and has always found it easy to communicate with others.

Even so, one big benefit he sees in the Discussion Meet program is the ability to learn how to communicate, especially with others who have opposing viewpoints.

“I think easily the biggest benefit is learning how to have good conversations that actually come up with a solution. Sometimes, a lot of times, we lose that. Especially now, with how polarizing everything seems to be anymore, to be able to sit down and have a conversation and maybe not agree 100% at the beginning or the end of the conversation, but being able to talk about the issues, maybe compromise a little bit on your ideas, come up with a solution for whatever you’re talking about, I think that is so important,” he said.

“Just being able to sit down and talk, I think that is something my generation has lost, compared to previous generations.”

Another benefit is gaining confidence. Granby said that helped him get to know others within Farm Bureau, even within his own peer group.

“The first year I competed in Discussion Meet in Chicago, I only knew four or five people up there and they were from my county. Other than that, in those situations, I felt reserved, I felt a little intimidated,” he said.

“You have these people that you’ve looked up to, but had never met, some who were peers as far as age, but they felt miles away. I felt like I couldn’t reach them.”

By competing with and talking to those people, Granby realized that they weren’t as far away as he originally thought.

“By taking part in this with some of those people I looked up to so much, it really helped me realize that everybody is human. You can go up and talk to them. I have really applied that to my life in general,” he said.

“In the last six years, I haven’t put anybody so far out of reach that I can’t go and have a conversation with them. I think that has definitely helped me.”

One thing Granby would like to see on the Discussion Meet stage, whether it’s at the district level or at the state event, is more people competing.

“I think it is so important that we increase the numbers of young people who are participating. When I first started, in 2017, it was probably 25 to 30 people competing at the state level. This year, we had 18 who made it to the state level and 17 people competing at the state level. That number should be much higher,” he said.

“We really need to encourage our young farmers, our Young Leaders, who are eventually going to take over this organization and lead it into the future. We all need to be able to have conversations and come up with solutions that are going to benefit everyone. That is exactly what this competition promotes.”