News and Events

By Maria Woldt for WCO

It’s that time of year again! We are excited to host the 2025 Forage Symposium, February 17-19 again at Chula Vista Resort. The event follows President’s Day weekend which seems to be popular as many kids are off school, and attendees bring their families to enjoy the water park.

The WCO Education Committee works all year on topics for the Symposium. They gather feedback from members, pay close attention to emerging trends and attend other industry events for speaker ideas. Increasingly, other groups book our speakers for their own events after hearing them at Symposium. We love it when our speakers gain exposure from our event and our fellow organizations can preview excellent speakers.

As of November, we are a short four months from the event, and WCO has all our topics chosen – including two high impact keynotes for the whole group to enjoy – plus those in the “WCO room”. Like previous years, the WCO board feels strongly tabout investing in excellent speakers for Symposium, even if it requires additional funds.

On Tuesday morning, we are excited to welcome keynote speaker Amanda Radke, a fifth-generation rancher from Mitchell, SD. Alongside her husband, Tyler, and their four children, they operate Radke Land & Cattle, an Angus seedstock operation. A former National FFA Extemp Speaking Champion and National Beef Ambassador, Radke has spent nearly 20 years on the road fighting to keep agricultural families on the land, rural main street businesses thriving, and an abundance of food on the dinner table.

Amanda is an entrepreneur at heart and wears many hats, in addition to being a ranch mom. Amanda will speak to the large group about dealing with stress, navigating pitfalls, and generational conflicts. Later in the WCO room, she will speak about ag storytelling, advocacy, and promoting agriculture in your own way.  

On Wednesday of Symposium, we will continue with our “forage harvesting around the country/world” theme with Matthias Siegrist from Siegrist Harvesting in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Matthias was born in Europe and will share his experience of moving across the world, starting a business, and what keeps Siegrist Harvesting going. He’ll touch on some similarities with US farming trends as well as dramatic differences with Canadian agriculture. Matthias will answer all your equipment questions based on his fleet.

More information will roll out in the next month, and registration opens in December, so watch your mail and email. We can’t wait to see all of you in February for these and other exciting speakers.