Andersons receive 2021 Lexington Area Farm Family Award

Andersons receive 2021 Lexington Area Farm Family Award
Courtesy/ The Rob and Natalie Anderson family of Lexington received the Lexington Area Chamber of Commerce 2021 Farm Family of the Year award Friday night during the group’s annual banquet. From left: Joelly, Rob, Natalie and Camille Anderson.
June 14th, 2021 | Barb Bierman Batie


Rob and Natalie Anderson and their family were named the 2021 Lexington Area
Chamber of Commerce Farm Family of the Year during the chamber’s annual banquet Friday.
They are the third generation of the family to receive the designation, with Rob’s
grandparents, Florence and Harlan Anderson receiving the award in 1983, and his parent’s,
Kerry and Marion Anderson, honored in 2003.


Rob is the fifth generation of Andersons to farm in Dawson County starting following his
college graduation in 1992. His great-great-grandparents, James and Mary Ellen Anderson
homesteaded here in 1878. While that land is now under present day Johnson Lake, Rob and
his brother, Scott, still farm ground James purchased in 1880 near the Platte River.
Rob is the president of Anderson Feedlot, Inc., and manages the books and labor for a
2,000-acre diversified grain production farm/custom farming operation that produces corn,
soybeans and alfalfa.

Rob and Natalie are the parents of two daughters, Joelly and Camille. Joelly is a 2020
graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) who is currently at UNL working on a
master’s degree in Speech Communications and Disorders with plans to graduate in 2022.
Daughter Camille will be a senior this fall at UNL and is pursuing a degree in Spanish
Secondary Education with hopes of studying abroad soon.

The Andersons are active in the Lexington community where Natalie served as a past
president of the Minuteman Fine Arts Association and is a mentor to first-generation college
students. Rob is a member of the Lexington Optimists Club, was active in founding and funding
the Orthman Community YMCA, is the current chair and member of the Lexington Regional
Health Center board of directors and also sits on the Lexington Community Foundation board of
directors.

Cropping systems and technology have changed during the nearly 30 years Anderson
has been farming. “We have gone from conventional tillage, through various forms of ridge
tillage systems and now a strip tillage system on both our pivot and gravity irrigated ground,”
Anderson said. “A major change has been conversion of gravity irrigation to center pivot
irrigation. Our conversion to GPS was simultaneous with a change in planters. It was more than
a little unnerving that first year without markers,” he said.

One of the biggest challenges facing the ag industry is the growing disconnect that the
general public has with agriculture, notes Anderson. “It used to be that someone had
connections within a generation or two. That isn’t the case now. We have to do a better job of
relating to the public.”

Natalie shared advice that any young farm family can take to heart. “Get involved,
establish relationships. Organizations need people and we all need that face-to-face
interaction. It is so helpful to meet people who know what you are going through.”

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