by Mike Orso
5 Quick Things to Know About Faith (Lois) Pierson
1. Favorite band or performance artist: Cody Johnson
2. Favorite sports team: Green Bay Packers
3. Favorite crop or livestock I raise: Corn
4. If I wasn't farming I'd be: In human nutrition
5. The one thing most people don't know about me is: I played two years of college basketball out West.
As a former NCAA Division I basketball player, Faith (Lois) Pierson has charted her fair share of hours in a gym. The 32-year-old farmer spends more time these days on the concrete of her warehouse in rural Harvard – or walking farm fields across northern Illinois – than dribbling up and down an arena hardwood floor.
“I was very involved with the farm growing up, was required to do chores, work on weekends and spent my days in the summer working while fitting in my basketball workouts,” said Pierson. “It wasn’t until I moved 2,000 miles away to school that I thought I would actually come back or want to be involved in a deeper facet of agriculture.”
Pierson and her younger brother represent the 7th generation to be raised on a Burlington, Wis. farm. She now owns and operates a seed business near Harvard, and grows corn and soybeans with her husband Trent, near Elburn. In September, she joined some other farmers recently elected to the McHenry County Farm Bureau board of directors.
“I think I have a pretty good pulse as far as what’s going on in our industry and of some of the things that might be changing,” said Pierson. “I think I can provide a different voice as a young person.”
During college, she played basketball for two years at the University of Nevada-Reno. She then transferred to Western Illinois University (WIU), where she also competed on the court. During her senior year, she accepted a position working for a seed sales representative, and in 2015 achieved a degree from WIU in agriculture business with a minor in agronomy.
“I really liked agronomy and I wanted to still get my hands dirty, be in the field, but also be customer-facing quite a bit,” said Pierson. “I always put my customers first. I like working with them and a lot of times their children to preserve their legacies for years to come.”
Typical workdays at or around Pierson’s warehouse depend on each season. In spring, she’ll treat some of her farmer-customer’s seed with things such as fungicides, insecticides and biological products to help improve their performance, and deliver seed to farms. Summers consist of walking the fields of her customers to see how seed has germinated and how resulting plants have grown, and to scout for plant diseases and pests. Each autumn, she evaluates plant performance and yields and ramps up seed sales for the following year. That continues into winter which also includes holding and participating in educational seminars and other learning opportunities with and for farmers. The Harvard-area warehouse, built in 2021, even doubled as a venue for her wedding reception in September.
“In agriculture, whether the business side or actually farming, it is hard to separate yourself from it," said Pierson. “It is not a 9-to-5 job. A lot of us are very consumed with our work.”
Asked what she likes most about what she does, Pierson focuses on results, with a personal touch.
“I like seeing my customers be successful and knowing that I played a very tiny part in that,” she said. “I also have a lot of customers that are fairly young with a lot of small kids and being able to see them grow up the way I grew up in agriculture has been awesome.”
As a farmer-leader, Pierson welcomes opportunities to share what’s taking place on McHenry County farms with others.
“I would just like to challenge people and invite them to ask us why we do things that we do, to have a conversation,” said Pierson. “We’re people just like everybody else and we’re trying to do the best we can with what we have.”
Faith (Lois) Pierson, 32, was recently elected to the board of directors of the McHenry County Farm Bureau.
Faith (Lois) Pierson takes a short break during fall harvest on the porch of her Infinity Ag Solutions office and warehouse in rural Harvard.