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One of agriculture’s most visible young
faces, Cherilyn Nagel has taken farming
public, narrating CropLife Canada videos
promoting farm technology. Nagel, her
husband David, and their two young
daughters have also appeared with
celebrity chef Michael Smith in a video
love letter to lentils, and Nagel promotes
positive ag stories as a participant in Farm
Credit Canada’s
Agriculture More Than
Ever
campaign.
Though an active industry
spokesperson, much of her work
has been behind the scenes. Just 34,
Nagel has served on ag boards for
over a decade. Past interim chair of the
Saskatchewan Wheat Development
Commission (SWDC), she has also
served as director and past president of
the Western Canadian Wheat Growers
Association (WCWGA) and is an
Agriculture Development Fund director.
“It’s her enthusiasm that impresses
people,” said Blair Rutter, executive
director of the WCWGA. She, in turn,
credits him with helping her navigate the
industry, encouraging her to develop
strong principles upon which to build
policy positions. For example, she is
a firm advocate of transparency and
accountability in the check-off process.
Nagel has just handed the reins of the
SWDC to its newly elected board. The
new producer-led body administers grain
check-offs for Saskatchewan’s wheat
farmers. As interim chair, Nagel was the
natural public face of the fledgling body,
fielding media and producer inquiries.
She delivered a strong sales pitch for
CHERILYN
NAGEL
the application of producer check-off
dollars to variety registration, agronomic
research and market development.
“Producers know that money is
coming back to us tenfold, fortyfold, a
hundredfold in some studies,” she said.
She admits to having been a research
skeptic.
“I went in thinking I was going to shut
some of these things down. It took being
on these boards to appreciate what basic
research was doing.”
One might say that Nagel’s life is
characterized by a 180-degree trans-
formation. Now an industry leader, her
re-entry into farming came about in an
unlikley manner.
“I’m a fi h-generation farmer, but I had
absolutely no interest in farming through
high school,” she said.
Born in Mossbank, SK, where she
now lives, she le the family farm to
study hospitality and tourism marketing.
A er college, she got her dream job as a
dance instructor in the Turks and Caicos
Islands.
“It was on the beaches of Turks and
Caicos that I started to appreciate where
I’d grown up and the lifestyle that I had,”
she said. In teaching country line dancing
to tourists, she would tell them about
her rural upbringing. “Telling that story, I
realized what it was I had back home.”
Returning to Saskatchewan, she was
disappointed by the gloominess of the
ag sector. Shocked by her return, her
parents nonetheless encouraged her
to enter farm life, and her friend Alanna
Koch, now Saskatchewan's deputy
minister of agriculture, suggested she
attend Olds College.
Reuniting with her high school
sweetheart and future husband, she
embarked on a diploma in agriculture
business with a finance major,
determined to find a place for herself
in farming. She thrived in the college’s
open-minded environment.
“I took a lot of cool welding classes,
and it was [in school] that I started to get
involved in ag policy.”
Headstrong, with a love of argument,
she gravitated toward strong, policy-
minded peers.
“They showed me I could really take a
position,” she explained. “My husband
was back home farming, making the
best decisions he could make, but I
could see the government was making
decisions for him that weren’t in his best
interest. I got a bit angry about that, and
decided that was how I could contribute
to farming.”
A decade of policy work later, she
remains a tireless advocate of all that’s
positive in farming, and the constructive
optimism she exudes has taken root in
the industry.
“It’s actually come true,” she said.
“Agriculture’s made such strong strides.
This is a great industry to be in.”
The Nagels are now raising their
children on the farm. The kids happily help
their mother deliver meals to the field and
ride along on the tractor with dad.
“The kids are just as involved in farming
as they could be,” she said. “That makes
me feel really good.”
Spring
2014
grainswest.com
31