SharkFarmer: Ag influencer brings wisdom to FFA students

SPOKANE — Never give up and never get dragged back down. That was the message for the Future Farmers of America members assembled for the keynote speech at the Spokane Ag Show Feb. 6. “On the east coast where they catch crabs, they have little plastic pots that they fill up, and when they fill them up that much, the crabs can actually crawl out,” said Rob Sharkey, known nationally as The SharkFarmer. “But as soon as the crab starts to crawl out, the other ones grab it and pull it down. Farming can be like that. When you try something different, when you’re trying to succeed and lift yourself up, sometimes the people closest to you are going to be the ones that are going to try to pull you down the hardest.” Sharkey presented a talk called “Everybody Thought I Was Crazy” at FFA Day, to an audience of FFA students from all over Eastern Washington, then recorded an episode of his SharkFarmer podcast with two students in the exhibition hall. Sharkey is a fifth-generation grain grower in Illinois who, with his wife Emily Sharkey, parlayed their struggling farm into a radio, podcast and TV presence connecting with farmers across America and showing the rest of the world just what it is that farmers actually do. Emily Sharkey is also from a farm family, she told the group, but didn’t grow up on the farm herself.