CLEAR Conversations: Rancher Talks Communications and Leadership in Today’s Agriculture

“I’m actually pretty introverted,” Cassidy Johnston said with a laugh as she settled into her chair next to host Tracy Sellers on the latest episode of the CLEAR Conversations podcast. “This will absolutely wear me out. I’ll go back to my hotel room and disappear.”

It’s a somewhat surprising confession from someone who delivered a standout presentation to a packed room on leadership and communication at the NCBA’s annual event, CattleCon. But as a first-generation rancher, Johnston’s path into ranching has never really followed a predictable script. She didn’t grow up in agriculture. She didn’t show cattle. She didn’t even know what FFA was. She actually grew up in a Denver suburb—closer to Starbucks than stockyards.

And now she splits her time between large-scale ranch production and consulting on communication and strategy within the industry. Her story begins, improbably enough, with an environmental studies degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder. 

“A degree hippie from a hippie school,” she joked. As a junior, she decided to write an honors thesis about the relationship between environmentalists and ranchers. There was just one problem.

“I had never been on a ranch,” she said

So she did what any curious 20-year-old would do. She called her mom. Her mother was a landman and worked for an oil company and reached out to contacts in rural Colorado. One ranch agreed to let Johnston come work for three weeks. She ended up staying all summer.

“I fell in love with it,” she said. “Putting up hay. Learning to ride a horse. Fixing fences. I loved feeling tired at the end of the day.”

She also met her future husband at a college farm while learning the basics. And what began as research turned into a career. After graduating, she returned to ranch work full-time. She and her husband have since worked on large ranches in three states, managing big country and bigger cattle. Today, she balances hands-on production with advisory work focused on communication and leadership.

“So what made you stay?” Sellers inquired.

“I like the tangibleness,” she said. “I grew up where everything felt kind of fake and contrived. On the ranch, it was real. If you didn’t do the work, it didn’t get done.”

There was something grounding about it. Something honest. But falling in love with ranching didn’t mean everything came easily. Johnston describes her early years as a constant stream of questions.

“I was like a three-year-old,” she said. “Why? Why do we do it this way? Why do we sell then? Why are you freaking out right now?”

Too often, the answer was: “That’s how we’ve always done it.”

“That’s not good enough,” she said. “I need a reason.”

Communicating about agriculture

Her outsider perspective became one of her greatest assets. Because she didn’t grow up in agriculture, she remembers what it feels like not to know. That’s shaped how she approaches communication today.

“We say, ‘share your story,’” she said. “I actually hate that phrase. Because it’s not my story that matters. It’s what questions people have. And what questions can I answer for them."

For Johnston, communication isn’t about convincing consumers to eat beef. There are people who want to know about agriculture, and it’s the job of agricultural communications to tell them, Johnston believes. She also pointed out that it’s more about building relationships and answering real questions—whether that happens in an organization or in the meat aisle at Costco. She tells the story of buying prime rib before Christmas when she overheard shoppers debating labels. She stepped in to explain the difference between bone-in and boneless, Choice and Prime.

“There was no social media involved,” she says. “It was just a human conversation.”

She calls it passive advocacy—like passive income, but relational. And she believes it’s more powerful than shouting into the void of social platforms.

“So, the way I like to frame it is, like, there are people who want to know about our industry. We should tell them. But we're not here to educate, but we're here to make relationships and really help people understand what we do and where their food comes from,” Johnston said. “We’re here not to convince them to eat meat or like, ranching, but just to give them more information if they would like it.”

Leadership skills for agriculture: “We need people”

That same clarity drives her work in leadership. At CattleCon, Johnston co-presented with Kim Rounds of Five Rivers Cattle Feeding on what they see as a looming crisis in the beef industry: not a labor shortage, but a leadership gap.

“We hear, ‘Nobody wants to work anymore,’” Johnston said. “But what if it’s a leadership problem?”

The workforce is shrinking and aging. Fewer young people are growing up in agriculture. And those who want in often don’t know how. Johnston knows that feeling all too well.

“I didn’t know what FFA was until I was in my late 20s,” she said. “Why would I? We didn’t have that where I grew up.”

Agriculture, she argues, doesn’t always make space for the unconventional entrant. Tradition is beautiful—but only if it still makes sense. She offers an image that offers a vivid yet truthful thought: loving the industry like a child loves a kitten.

“You squeeze it because you love it so much,” she says. “But if you don’t let it breathe, you’ll strangle it.”

For Johnston, sustainable ranching isn’t just about land stewardship or genetics. It’s about people. About inviting in young workers. About building intentional cultures on ranches instead of letting dysfunction fill the void.

“This isn’t just a job,” she says. “When you work on a ranch, it’s your whole life. Your house, your boss, your community—it’s all wrapped together.”

Her advice to young people wanting in is straightforward: Go get a job. Any job in the beef industry.

“You have value, you just have to find it and then tell people about it,” Johnston advised 

Build skills. Add value. Find mentors in real life—not just online.  Build out your network of people. Understand that your first job won’t be your forever job. And expect it to be hard. Hardship, she believes, builds resilience—but not for the sake of toughness alone. It builds confidence. It teaches you what you’re capable of. “You have to get to the other side of hard.”

Still, even now, she admits to feeling like an imposter at times.

“There may never be a moment where you feel like you’ve arrived. But you can still be helpful," she said.

And that, ultimately, is how Johnston sees that the next generation of farmers and ranchers can find their opportunity in the agricultural sector: figure out how you can help.

Johnston added that, “I will never stop feeling like I have so much to learn about this but that doesn’t mean I can’t be helpful.”

In an industry often defined by independence, Johnston makes a case for interdependence. For inviting people instead of excluding them.

“If you have the ability to reach behind you and grab the next person and bring them up, please do it, because that is the only way this business works,” Johnston said. “And it makes us better.”