A Life Plan

There are a number of success stories in America's Heartland. And a lot of them impact the kinds of choices we make when we head to the grocery store. Well, for one farm family, success depends on energy, innovation and a look to the future.

Scott Moore knows that it takes much more than just seed and rain to create the basic ingredient for that loaf of bread on your dinner table. Raising wheat is a year round effort. His farm makes up just a fraction of the one and three quarter million acres planted in Nebraska. Working alongside his father, Stan, Scott counts on everyone's help to get the crop to market.

He says, "Hard work's great. It's been a struggle in certain points and I'd like the kids to not be able to have to struggle as much as Carla and I have. But I don't want complacency to set in either. Then it's easy, it's too easy."

Scott, a third generation farmer, is helping his kids, 9-year-old Katie and 12-year-old Zack, learn the farming business on land where his grandfather started back in the 1920's. Over the years he and his father have amassed a seven thousand-acre spread that includes corn, soybeans, winter wheat, and 350 head of cattle. Stanley Moore says, "There is no greater compliment to a farmer than to have his son come back on the farm and work with him. We work together with each other ultimately about 365 days a year."

Running a farming operation these days demands attention to not only crop markets but energy costs, environmental concerns, sustainable farming practices and machinery issues. As Scott works the land, his wife Carla works full time 30 miles away as an agent for a farm insurance company. And when that work day is done she's back home with another set of obligations and challenges for the farm and her family.

Scott says, "She get parts picked up in town, runs after us all the time, helps me irrigate, helps us work cattle, does about everything possible that she can do. Couldn't handle it without her…"

Carla says helping her husband has become second nature. She explains, "We can drive down the interstate from here to Lincoln and he can tell me what was planted in every field along the way for the past two to three years. Just the agriculture stuff that he has, it's in his brain it's how he's wired."

To improve his soil and forestall erosion, Scott has implemented a "no-till" approach on his fields: Planting as he plows under the remains of last year's crop.

Recognition from your peers is important in confirming that your efforts have made a difference. That recognition came recently as Scott and Carla were picked as the best of Nebraska's Young Farmers and Ranchers, a nod to their efforts in the past and to their plans for their family farm in the future.

Carla says, "To put your operation up against other people in the state and for that panel of judges to say, "Yeah, I think you're the number one this year." It's a great ego boost, but it's just an amazing honor to be recognized.