News

Semler retires as county agent in Bottineau County

By Scott Wagar

04/03/2012

Bottineau County Agent Tim Semler has made the decision to retire after educating individuals in agriculture for the past twenty and a half years.

“I had this goal that when I reached 60 I was going to slow down and do some other things,” Semler said this past week. “That time has now come and I feel that it is a good time to step down.”

Semler has spent his entire career educating students and farm producers in agriculture. He is a 1970 graduate of Willow City High School and earned his bachelor’s degree in ag education from North Dakota State University in 1974.

After graduating from NDSU, he accepted a position at Drake High School as the district’s ag educator.

“I was recruited into NDSU extension service a year later as an associate county agent in Minot,” Semler said. “It was a training position I held for a year and a half under Dennis Egge, who was actually from Omemee and a graduate of Bottineau.”

In 1976, Semler accepted a position in Towner as a county agent for McHenry County, which he did for three and a half years before moving back to Willow City to farm with his father in 1979. At the same time he was farming, he also did agricultural financing for the USDA’s Farmer Home Administration for McHenry and Bottineau County.

“Working in ag financing gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people in these counties,” Semler said.

In December of 1991, he was offered and accepted the county agent position for Bottineau County at the Bottineau Courthouse.

During his time as the county agent in Bottineau County, Semler stated that numerous changes have taken place in his office.

“Farm members have decreased substantially and farm size has increased, which has made a difference in how I approached educating and agriculture,” Semler said. “Technology has also changed in the equipment that the farmers use, the technology they are using to run their equipment and manage how they run their businesses. There are also advancements in machinery, the size of machinery, as well as equipment like Global Position Systems (GPS) for direction, along with computers that run machinery, home computers and the internet. Things are certainly different than when I first started.”

Semler added that communication has changed as well.

“Communication, by in large, has to be the biggest advancement since I started in 1991. Cell phones were not heard of, and we are just beginning to get mobile phones. So, most of my conservations with farmers when I first started came when they got home or to their shops. Some producers at that time had commercial radio phone systems, which were really scratchy and had blank spots when people talked on them, making a conversation hard at times,” Semler said. “And, depending upon the time of the year, I would either get a lot of phone calls or no phones. If farmers were not in the field, they would call, but during field work I didn’t get a lot of calls.

“Then came bag phones, and now cell phones, and farmers now can call at any time, which has advanced farmers in agricultural education,” Semler continued to say. “And, the young farmers who now have Ipods and whatever else they are using can go to the internet to get information. Today, things are moving at lightening speed.”

With retiring, Semler stated that he is going to miss working with the local ag producers in the area.

"I’m going to miss dealing with all the good people out there. Over the years I have met many fine folks in all the counties that I have served in,” he said. “The people have been terrific to work with. So, that contact will be missed.”

Semler added that the ag producers of north central North Dakota are also some of the greatest farmers he has ever seen.

“They are some of the best producers in North Dakota and in the United States,” Semler said. “They have skills and abilities to manage difficult growing conditions for both crops and livestock, along with the diversity of crops and livestock we have up here.”

Although Semler is retiring as a county agent, he is going to be busy operating his farm in Willow City and providing some farm management consulting in the area.

“I won’t be dropping out of sight,” Semler said. “I will be around and people will still be seeing me.”