Retiring extension expert Allan Vyhnalek helps farmers, ranchers and their families live better lives

LINCOLN – The woman was desperate.

Now in her late 50s, she was suddenly named power of attorney for her family after her father died and her mother was placed in a dementia unit in a nursing home.

The woman called Allan Vyhnalek, an extension educator for farm/ranch succession and transition statewide, based in the Department of Agricultural Economics at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

“That daughter was the oldest child. She hadn’t lived on the farm for 40 years, but now she had to decide how to handle the tenant’s lease for the upcoming year,” Vyhnalek said.

The woman learned that there was no current lease for that tenant. ”Her parents had operated on a handshake or verbal agreements,” Vyhnalek said.

The woman’s mother had never told her anything about the farm lease or any other business issues involving the farm. “She never told her anything after her dad passed away. Her mother felt that the farm was her business alone. She never told her anything,” he said.

Situations like that are what make Vyhnalek’s work so critical. He has been dispensing advice to farmers and ranchers for 34 years.

“That daughter never called me back. This is the kind of story I tell to prove a point. These are the mistakes people make when they think they’re communicating,” he said.

As he prepares to retire early this spring, Vynhalek looks back with satisfaction on his career, which also includes eight years of teaching in high schools and post-secondary schools.

“Extension education has always been making people better at whatever they’re doing so they can live a better life,” he said.

For the last 10 years, Vyhnalek has been a regular presenter at the annual Women in Ag conference in Kearney. He doesn’t use a textbook.

“I teach what I’ve observed for the last 45 years,” he said. “After my presentations, women tell me, ‘Oh, you’ve described my entire family. I feel validated about what’s going on.’”

One of his favorite workshops is “So you’ve inherited a farm – Now what?” He tells new owners about land values and rental rates, family communication, future goals for the land, land ownership options and rental considerations.

He also helps people understand the importance of having a farm or ranch succession plan in place. These plans involve business, family, tax and legal issues.

One of the biggest problems he encounters is communication, or the lack thereof. “If I can get people to start talking to each other and share information, that’s half the problem,” he said.

Many central Nebraska farmers are from German, Czech or Polish families, he said. “It’s a European thing. These farmers felt that their business was their business alone. They held the mantra that they shouldn’t have to share it with anyone, not even their own family,” he said.

Vyhnalek strongly urges people to create a written lease if one does not exist. “We owe it to our children to have things written down,” he said.

Talking to agriculture lawyers and bankers, he has learned that barely half of farmers and ranchers have an estate plan or one that’s up to date.

Born on a farm near Dorchester in Saline County, he expected to run the family farm when he grew up, but his brother planned to do that, and there wasn’t room for them both, so Vyhnalek followed his mother’s advice and headed to college.

He graduated from UNL in 1977 with a degree in agricultural education so that he could do extension work. He was inspired by Jim Novotny, an extension educator in Wilber in Saline County. “He was so kind to me and showed me how the extension field worked and how he came to be successful,” Vyhnalek said.

First, however, he taught agriculture education at Neligh and Elgin high schools. He also earned a master’s degree from UNL. In 1981, he joined the faculty of the Nebraska College of Technical Agriculture.

Vyhnalek then did extension work in Grundy County, Iowa, for 13 years and in Columbus for 16 years. There he was an extension educator and unit leader.

For 25 of those 30 years, he was in charge of the extension office budget. His biggest challenge was educating the public and public officials about the value of extension work, and having adequate funding, which comes from the country, the state, the USDA and grants and contracts.

He said people he met were “gracious and very nice, by and large.” But not always.

For several years, he facilitated a required course in pesticide training for farmers. “Half of them didn’t want to be there. They felt like it was an imposition, especially if they’d had a bad training session in the past,” he said.

“But if I did a decent job, some of them relented and said, ‘To be fair, this was OK. We got good information.'”

In 2017, he moved to his current role in Lincoln and continues to speak at the Women in Ag conference. One attendee, in her 90s, comes every year, sits in the front row and does her knitting as she listens, he said with a chuckle.

This year, he talked about issues involving leases between female landowners and male farmers. “This shouldn’t be a problem, but there is a strong minority of male farmers who won’t respect a woman if she has any information about managing the farm. These guys can be a bit of a problem,” he said.

“Most of the time, these guys don’t want to talk, so you have to break them down to have proper communication. Just keep talking,” he said.

“Increase communication and prove you are listening to them. Farmers often think nobody pays attention to what they’re thinking and doing. We need to stop and show proper appreciation,” he said.

As he cleans out his office, he’s grateful for his career and the people he has met along the way. “It has been very satisfying,” he said.