Have you ever summited Mt. Everest? I haven’t but Lance Fox has. He is a technical service veterinarian for Alpharma, and his successes both in his job and in his personal life have trained him to become a natural role model for children across America as part of the Reach Teach Learn ag educational program.

“My role is to educate students and make them more aware of agriculture and agribusiness and share some of my personal adventures and experiences,” Fox told AgWired during the Ag Media Summit.

Climbing to the top of Mt. Everest was a 12 year dream for Fox and he has some great advice for our future leaders, “If you have a dream pursue it. Pursue your passion. If you work hard everything is possible.”

In its second year, the Reach Teach Learn program is designed to provide youth with the information they need to ensure that honest, educated decisions are made. The program consists of two main initiatives including a college student video contest and a high school student essay contest. College students will be able to use imagery to depict current ethanol agricultural practices while for the first time, younger students will provide their perspective writing of an essay on agriculture based on the book, “The Man Who Fed The World.” As far as you know, I’m not a high school student but I will be providing my insights about the book as well.

I was also able to chat with Jeff Mellinger, Global Leader – Sales & Marketing for Alpharma. “What we’re really trying to do is reach out to young people in the U.S. is to get them to understand the agriculture industry because they will be the spokespersons in the future. We want them to be more informed in making positive choices and viewpoints because they’ll be the future leaders in developing views about agriculture.”

Mellinger also noted that the ag industry is seeing a lot more public opinion that is not accurate and that they are trying to bring accuracy to the conversation. Agriculture, he says, is a positive industry and still important to the United States.

More than 12 states have signed up to participate in the essay contest and others are welcome to join. You can learn more about Reach Teach Learn on their website. BTW – in addition to my essay on the book, I’ll be submitting a video as well, right here on AgWired.com. Now this you won’t want to miss.

You can see all our pictures from the Ag Media Summit in the IFAJ/AMS 2009 Photo Album.

You can listen to my back-to-back interviews with Jeff Mellinger and Lance Fox here.