A typical day for the 2022 Young Farmers & Ranchers Excellence in Agriculture winner, Alex Deason, sees him moving from field to field…putting in moisture censors here, consulting with farmers on crops there. All to find that goal of getting the best out of each piece of land.

“It goes back to one of the things my grandfather said, ‘If you’re gonna do it, do it to the best of your ability,’ and you can ask anybody the way that I operate is I’m not going to go in and do things halfheartedly,” Deason said.

You’re going to find Deason relies on the wise words and example of his grandfather often and in many areas of his life, but especially in agriculture.

“My grandfather always told us that we will always be tied with agriculture,” Deason said. “No matter if you live in the big city, if you live on the East Coast, West Coast, live in the Mississippi Delta, you’re tied with agriculture and don’t ever forget that.”

Deason, however, took a winding road from his Neshoba County roots to work as an agronomist in the Sunflower County Extension office. Firefighting was his first love, but later studied ophthalmology and forestry in college.

“Plants came back up, and so that’s when I started pursuing more of the agronomy side of things; and that’s where I found a home,” he said. “I love it. Getting involved with Extension was more of a professor mentioning, ‘hey, I think you, with your multitude background, would be a great fit for it because it’s well rounded and you’re able to relate to a lot of people.’”

So, for the last nine years, Deason has worked to relate to everyone he meets, especially with farmers.

“Everybody wants the information related to them,” Deason said. “So taking something that’s very technical and putting it in terms where a producer can actually utilize it and understand it is something that I pride myself in cause it, it is kind of an art, cause you can have the highest of degrees, but if you cannot relate the information to somebody that can retain it, you’ve done no good.”

Deason takes pride in doing the most good in his community – a trait he said he picked up through Boy Scouts. He was named Emergency Responder of the Year, he coached the Indianola Academy girls’ soccer team to the state championship, was awarded the Agricultural Extension Education Award by MFBF, and holds his pilot’s license. But Deason said, he’s still got more to achieve and room to grow.

“Everybody’s got a different term of success and still to this day, I don’t think I’m successful, but I don’t know how I define success yet,” he said. “I hope that when I’m 60 and able to reflect back, I can change and say, ‘okay, I was successful then.’ But as long as I’m making an impact, I’m moving toward that goal of being successful, so I’m always chasing it.”