Of u. S. Worker is 39. The average age of the u. S. Farm operator is 55. There are not young people going into farming and we have to ask why. We need young people to enter into the farming industry. We need farming to be economically viable for young people and to supply restaurants like me the stuff that i need because what happens at my restaurant ultimately filters out to the rest of society. If you look at this chart, im not going to go into all the details of it, but you basically have a very small triangle which represents the family farm and on the other side the large part of the triangle which represents commodity agriculture. You need both. Obviously you cant be the entire world on small family farms, but to me, this chart represents something that is out of balance. We need to figure out a way to raise up family farms. We need to make farming attractive. We need to make it sexy. We need young people to understand this is something they can do as a viable job. We need food transparency. We need, i think the biggest thing we need right now is food democracy and understanding that food is a vehicle for democracy. Its a vehicle for social justice and there are many companies, theres a Company Called hope and way for example that has and a credible job connecting the family farm to urban poor. We need to find more chefs, people in our community who have great ideas, bring them to a table and consider their ideas because its the way we are going to figure it out and solve problems for the next generations. The last thing i want to talk about is what weve done at my restaurant, and i am very focused on job development. We are 700 billiondollar industry and i want our industry to keep growing and Getting Better and we need staff and people. There is a labor shortage in the Restaurant Industry. What i have seen is that in every city i go to there is usually an urban poor neighborhood. Those neighborhoods have anywhere from 15 or 20 or 30 unemployment unemployment in these neighborhoods. Im looking at an industry that is needing labor and i look at the urban community that needs jobs. I want to try to connect them. Ive started this program where we are trying to get young adults right out of high school, kids who cant afford college and want to join the workforce. I want to bring them into our system and teach them how to be productive members of society by teaching them the Restaurant Industry and having them respect and honor what we do. So, if we continue to do that, we will be able to see more restaurants that will be able to purchase more farm product and then we will see more farmers create more farms. I think at the end of the day for me, i dont really see the necessity for more food, i see the necessity for better food. What we are trying to do is create a culture where we understand the necessity of, whether its food waste or all these issues that are sort of hitting home for the Food Industry right now, we want to see Better Things happen, not just more. Thats part of what were doing but the program that we have right now with these kids is in its infancy. Its only a year and a half old but we saw for Young Students go from being unemployable and no one would give them a job to a year and a half later they are all salaried people who work in my restaurant. The next phase of that is opening another restaurant in louisville, kentucky to run it as a Mentorship Program so they can work and become productive members of society. Thats one of the things i want to thank you very much for having me, i hope hope we can see the next generation of chefs and farmers take this to an even bigger level. Thank you very much. Shepley. Mac i think you can see that he is very much a visionary entrepreneur that has a great social conscience and is making a difference in this world. Thank you for sharing your story and your experience with us and your vision for where you want to go. Now it is my great pleasure to introduce our next two speakers. Two people i know very well. Kim reynolds serves as our Lieutenant Governor in the state of iowa first elected in 2010 and reelected in 2014. Fourteen. She works tirelessly to promote them the stem efforts have gone to one of the leaders in the country here in iowa. She cochairs the governor Stem Advisory Council for the state of iowa from the beginning when it was started in 2011. She is also chairing the development and implementation of our statewide energy plan which will continue i was leadership in the Renewable Energy front and position iowa for continued Economic Development success. Economic development and promoting i was trade are key issues for the Lieutenant Governor. Since 2011, she has helped attract more than 12 million to the state. She continues to promote iowa exports and encourage investment in our state. This fall she will lead a trade mission to uruguay and argentina. On the National Front front sheesh serves as the chair of the national Lieutenant Governors association, she is a native of charles iowa where she grew up on a farm, and she is proud of her smalltown roots. She and her husband are the proud parents of three daughters and eight grandchildren. The speaker will follow her is no stranger to iowa or iowa agriculture. Tom bill back is our nations 30th secretary of agriculture. He connects farmers with the supply chain. He also is chair of the president Obama White House role counsel and is engaged with First Lady Michelle Obama lets move initiative. Prior to his role as sec. Of agriculture he served two terms as governor of iowa, served in the iowa senate and was mayor of mount pleasant, iowa. He and his wife have two grown sons and four grandchildren. Governors, please join me and giving a a warm welcome to our next two speakers. Kim will start. Thank you. [applause] thank you and thank you governor branstad. I was telling someone when i walked in the room, you certainly know youre in the midwest and in iowa when you walk into a Conference Room and it smells like bacon. We proudly on that. I had the honor of having secretary bill vilsack serve as my mayor. We have known each other as quite some time. We go back quite a ways. Really, i think its impossible to underestimate the importance of the ag and Food Production across our nation and including iowa. Chef lee just highlighted the Economic Impact that restaurants and culinary artists play in communities all across the nation. I loved your story in your journey and especially that all great food comes from the farm and you cant do your job without small farms. It really is a food tourism that were trying to build across the nation. I appreciate that and the governor indicated right down the street is the des moines Farmers Market. Its a great example of a Farmers Market that has grown since the inception not that long ago. What i thought i would do this mornings build on governor branstads comments on how agriculture, Food Production and the biosciences really shaped the iowa economy and how the focus on education and training needed to grow that Human Capital pipeline to ensure that we have the talent to do what we need to do to feed a growing world population, and really to solve the Public Policy challenges that we face. Now more than ever, its vital that our students and teachers are trained to meet the demands of a fastchanging world, and as we see Technology Continue to improve and our populations grow, we must focus on education and training that really will give us the tools we need to solve the problems and the challenges that we face. We know, and all of you know that highquality Science Technology and math education, or stem, is of vital importance. A major component of honing precision agriculture so we can better utilize the resources like fertilizer and chemicals, stem will help us advance farming and what we have seen in iowa is because of that technology and we are seeing a lot of our young people move back to the farm and the small communities across the state. It helps us develop the hybrids and the yields and especially help us address a very important issue of water quality. I am really proud to say that iowa is a National Leader when it comes to Stem Education and that really is because of the vision and commitment of governor branstad and 47 iowans and members of the Advisory Council. It is a tremendous bipartisan effort. I cant think the legislature enough for their support. They have actually appropriated significant funds every year to allow us to do what weve been able to do by getting programs in the hands of students across the state. We have broken the state into six regions and we have dynamic regional managers that have been champions as well as Advisory Boards in each one of those regions. The educators have embraced the opportunity to participate and utilize the high scale, high quality stem program that we have. Businesses and nonprofit leaders have been instrumental from the very beginning. They sat on the executive board and are on the Advisory Board in the regions across the state. It really has brought business and academia together. We found they were operating in silos and we want business and industry sharing with us what their expectations are and what they want their workforce to look like we have a dynamic executive director that lives and breathes them and he does it 24 7 and doesnt 365 days a year. We are seeing exciting initiatives make a difference but probably the single biggest focus that we have is the high quality Stem Education program. These are programs that have to apply through an rfp process to be selected. Weve had from 9 14 different programs and afterschool programs where teachers and educators across the state can apply to utilize the program, and really the goal of the Advisory Council is and was and continues to be to increase Student Interest and achievement in stem and make sure no matter where they live in the state they have access to these Great Programs, all the while tying it to Economic Development. We had Great Programs happening but it was in pockets. I wanted to make sure kids in southwest iowa had the same opportunity as the kids in the larger districts. Its been fun to see it grow in the enthusiasm, just excitement to participate. Theres a lot of organic growth that has happened with the exposure. We started with 40,000 kids having the opportunity to participate in the program and last school year we were able to reach, that were counting, that we were able to account for, 100,000 students. We are seeing great growth and im really proud of that. We are not point a pointed stop. We will keep expanding across the state. Those Education Programs range from preschool to engineering opportunities in k12. We look to keep it fresh and we just implemented what we refer to as the council stem best program and that stands for business engaging students and teachers. That really is creating new school to Business Partnership that, as we talk about industry playing a very Important Role in this, it really it really is engaging students in realworld learning experiences in stem. Two years ago, i also had the opportunity at a National Level to join Dupont Pioneer president in promoting them nationally. It really was an opportunity to talk about all of the opportunities that are available in agriculture. Food processing, biosciences so we can talk about how to engage the youth so they understand the opportunities available and how critical that is to us meeting our obligation of feeding a growing world population, and then then how do we communicate that better . How do we grab them and get them excited about being part of the industry . We have seen results so its all about accountability and measuring to make sure we are doing the right things and we have seen the Stem Initiative and those high quality stem programs are providing results. Students that have participated in the program, we have seen theres scores increase six Percentage Points in math and science. An unexpected increase that we didnt expect was that we saw five percentage point increase in reading so that is compared to their peers that do not have the opportunity to participate and weve measured that through standard test. Providing more equitable access to great Stem Education, opportunity is critical to increasing Student Interest and achievement. Im very pleased to report that the share of minority students participating in the stem program mirrors the share of minority students that are involved in the total enrollment. That has always been one of the number one priorities which is increasing the under representative and underserved in the Stem Initiative. We are working diligently to make that happen. Another metric we have worked hard to fill is that we are in almost every Single School district in the state. We have some exposure in every district and now we are waking on ways to scale that so children have an opportunity in preschool, kindergarten, first, second, third so its not hit and miss. Nationwide state leaders are moving Stem Education to the forefront, and just last month, for example, governor hutchinson announced a new program to increase access and interest in Computer Science and stem careers. He was highlighted in a panel for the great work that he has done. With a focus on aligning the States Education and Career Training system workforce needs, another great example is governor ansley ensley. He established a multi sector Stem Education alliance. Great things are happening in washington. Population growth and rising income in developing nations, pressure of productive agriculture and demand for the quantity and quality of food in that agriculture and Bio Technology industry requires the best problem solvers to help us address those issues. Thats why governor branstad and i are proud that we selected another program, and hopefully you will get a chance to witness that, but its the curriculum for Agriculture Science Education that we refer to as case. Case provides an inquirybased handson problem problem solving approach to helping students understand how agriculture can change the world and the vital role they can play in doing that the case Program Supports case teachers so professional development is a big part of that. That is part of the program, peer mentoring as well as other external support systems. It is also a great example of a public and private partnership providing education that directly aligns the needs of agribusiness and industry. Really it is a Publicprivate Partnership so we have been able to support, with support from the stem counsel as well as the private sector with Companies Like john deere, Dupont Pioneer, carpio, we have teachers that have taught almost 35,000 students this year so we are working to build that out across the state. Ffa, the kids are right over here, in iowa they have added almost 3000 members over the past three years and josh, the executive director of the program, would tell you that he believes the case curriculum has played a role in the growth of the kids participating in ffa. I think theyve added 15 new chapters over the past three years. We have nearly 15000 students participating in ffa, so it is a Great Program and we love seeing the growth in that. With us today, the case students are going to demonstrate the activities in the program with the introduction to agriculture, food and natural resources. The entry level course includes identifying u. S. Commodities and their cost to consumers, determining soil texture and content through a sediment test and examining the spread of nutrients through points and nonpoint sources. Case offers a total of nine forces nationally. It has the progression of complexity including highlevel research, and a lot of kids will tell you it is more rigorous than some of the other classes they are taking in school. The rigor component is exceptional. Its been exciting to see the momentum and the energy and i indicated from the Stem Advisory Council, but just the organic programs that are taking place across the state of i will. You all know this but stem provide students with the knowledge and confidence in pro