Name: Bryan Allison
In The Country: Bryan is a fifth generation farmer on land that his family settled in the mid-1880s. The family farm is near Flemington, Mo. They run beef cattle, have some crops, harvest fescue seed and put up hay.
In Town: Bryan is the Vice President/Branch Manager at the Bank of Bolivar in Bolivar, Mo. He oversees the West Branch and manages eight employees. He mainly works with commercial ag lending. He’s been working in banking since Sept. 8, 1997.
Family: Wife, Tracey; Father, Gary Allison and his wife, Sonya; son, Spencer, 16; daughter, Miranda, 11. “If it wasn’t for (my dad) I wouldn’t be here. He’s been farming all his life and I don’t know how many hours I’ve worked with him, tilling the land, working cattle, castrating pigs. I’ve been very dependent on dad to help me get going.” (Bryan said when he was younger his family had over 1,200 hogs.) Bryan’s mother passed away in 1997. She was 50. He said it was a pivotal moment for him. “I decided to find something more financially stable then. She drove the family. She was the leader, the one you would turn to.”
How do you make farming and a full-time job work?
“In the wintertime I spend most of my time feeding after work, in the dark. My son is 16, and if it weren’t for him I’d be in serious trouble. The farm is a family deal, my sister, my dad. When we’re harvesting fescue we use four to five combines and run for about two weeks non-stop. That's my vacation. I spend two weeks and sometimes more than that at the farm.”
What would your number one improvement at the farm be?
I would improve a lot of things, but to me, the main thing is I want to have the farm ready for my son or daughter to take it over. I want to get rid of the debt and have it ready to go for them.”
At your farm do you do anything different from other farmers?
“I don’t do rotational grazing, I don’t have time, it wouldn’t work for me. My edge is I’ll graze about half the farm and the other half I’ll fescue seed. If you get that grass grazed off early and continue to graze it, it will produce larger volumes of fescue. Then I put Nitrogen on it in January, and as long as there are no army worms or wind storms it will do all right."
What do you say to young people wanting to get into farming?
“To succeed I think you have to have parents already involved, or you need to have someone experienced who is willing to help you out.”
By OFN Staff
