Young Farmers Conference

Elaine Froese (pronounced ‘phrase’), CSP is a certified professional speaker, certified coach, and author. She’s a go-to expert for farm families who want better communication and conflict resolution to secure a successful farm transition.

As a farmer and mother to the successor of their farm, she understands the culture of agriculture intimately.

Her superpower is helping families find harmony through understanding.

Her expertise is to discuss what she calls the Undiscussabull™ – the bull in the middle of the farm family that no one wants to talk about.

She is an award-winning author who’s written 5 books over the past 25 years.

Faith Today magazine has dubbed her “Canada’s Farm Whisperer”. She was awarded the Farm Management Canada Wilson Loree award for excellence in Farm Business Management, the 4-H Canada First Most Distinguished Alumna award from a pool of 350,000 alumni, as well as the Manitoba 150 Women Trailblazers award.

Elaine’s passion is to share simple, practical and actionable tools with farm families so they can talk about tough issues and get traction in their farm transition. Her topics are a catalyst to courageous conversations and conflict resolution. Expect her to WOW your audience by bringing clarity with workable and practical tools.

She’s on a mission to guide farm families, across North America, to get unstuck, communicate better, find harmony through understanding, and secure a profitable farm legacy. Elaine’s goal is for everyone to be rich in relationships.

Learn more about Elaine. 

Carl Dickinson is President and Chief Executive Officer of Central Valley Ag (CVA) cooperative. As CEO, Carl is always focused on delivering value to the owners of the organization by reinvesting in assets, growing people and returning cash to the membership.  

He has served in management positions for 29 years in three different states within the cooperative system giving him a unique perspective on the roles of the local and regional cooperatives.  His career began in 1993 at Battle Creek Farmers Co-op. In 2009, Carl was named CEO of United Farmers Co-op in York, Neb., which unified with Central Valley Ag in 2014. Further unifications with FCC in Hinton, Iowa and Farmway Co-op in Beloit, Kansas followed. More recently acquiring Laurel, Neb. and unifying with Henderson Co-op in Henderson, Neb., and Farmers and Ranchers Co-op in Ainsworth, Neb. to bring CVA to what it is today.

In addition to serving as President/CEO of CVA, Carl also serves on the Land O’ Lakes Board of Directors and has served on that board since 2020. Carl also serves on the Nebraska Cooperative Managers Association. 
 
Carl grew up in Marquette, Neb. on a hog farm. He and his wife Dawn have two grown daughters, Cassie and Alexandra. His hobbies include enjoying time with his granddaughter, hunting, music, golf and fishing.

Scott Ahlvers is a Crop Insurance and Marketing Consultant for AgMark LLC. 

He has grown up around agriculture through his family’s farms and has been working in the grain industry for over 20 years.  He specializes in helping producers manage their risk through combining grain marketing strategies and crop insurance products. 

Scott started out originating and merchandising grain and 14 years ago, added the crop insurance services as a licensed crop insurance agent. Along with producers, Scott has worked with lenders and other company origination teams to understand using crop insurance as a risk management tool. 

He graduated from Kansas State University in 1996 with a bachelor’s in animal science. He currently serves on an agent advisory committee for a crop insurance company and is a past board member for Leadership Mitchell County and past member for the advisory board for the Beloit FFA Chapter.

Outside of work, Scott is involved in his church and other community organizations and activities in Beloit, Kansas.  He is married to his high school sweetheart Angie, and they have two kids, son Tate and daughter Allie. Hobbies include hunting, woodworking, and attending sporting and dancing events.

Luke Beckman is the Grain Sales Manager for Central Valley Ag and is responsible for leading the grain origination team at CVA. Beckman grew up on a diversified crop and livestock farm near Elgin, Nebraska and graduated from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 2011 with degrees in Ag Economics and Agronomy. He is a licensed commodity broker with FCC Futures, Inc which is an introducing broker with Stone X. While at CVA, Luke has held roles in commodity risk management, origination, and sales management. He is a regular contributor to UNL’s Market Journal program and AgriTalk with Chip Flory, a Farm Journal broadcast. He is an alumnus of Nebraska LEAD Class 37, an ag leadership development organization with UNL. When he is not engaged with CVA, Luke is involved in his family farm’s operation where they grow irrigated corn, soybeans, and feed market hogs. He currently lives outside of Elgin with his wife Ashley and three children: Eleanor, Kate, and Thomas.

When agriculture's leaders seek superlative insight and expertise in new and emerging technologies they turn to Chad Colby. Chad is the founder and principal of Colby AgTech, where he works with progressive farmers, leading companies and government agencies to provide deeper understanding of new technologies and recommendations on its practical applications. He is one of the industry-leading advocates for the use of unmanned aerial systems in agriculture. Twitter's Commercial Drone Industry named @TheChadColby as of the "20 People to Follow on Twitter," where he landed in the number six spot.

Chad Colby grew up on his family’s Central Illinois farm; he says he was always the tech “geek,” and that has not changed. Chad spent several years in Los Angeles working with an aviation construction company that designed, developed and built airport hangars across the U.S. It was during this time that Chad earned his pilot’s license and grew his passion for aviation. Recent he spent the last few years as the general manage Case IH dealership group in Central IL.

Chad Colby developed AgTechTalk.com in 2013 to provide ag technology experts and enthusiasts with on-time information about the latest in technology advances. This provided a platform for him to share his insights and knowledge at meetings and conferences, as well as through media programs, around the world. He is also featured weekly segment "Colby AgTech" on This Week in Agribusiness, hosted by Orion Samulson and Max Armstrong.

In 2015, Chad established Colby AgTech to further reach and inform agriculture’s most progressive farmers, companies and organizations. To date, Chad has provided information and demonstrations at a majority of U.S. agribusiness company and organization meetings, presented at hundreds of conferences and meetings, such as speaking on Capital Hill in 2018, National Association of Farm Broadcasters, National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, Commercial Drone Expo, Commodity Classic, Australian Summer Grains Conference, InfoAg and Farm Progress Show, and conducted hundreds of media interviews, including CNBC, This Week in Agribusiness, WGN Radio, RFDTV Market Day Report, XM Satellite Rural Radio, Iowa Public Radio, and TV program Market to Market. Beginning in 2018, he has hosted a “Colby AgTech” segment on This Week in Agribusiness featuring a weekly report on the latest technology on the farm.

Chad resides in Deer Creek Illinois with his wife Jacqueline and family.

Connect with Chad on Twitter: @TheChadColby, by emailing him at colbyuas@ gmail.com