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Community impact Brannon's impact extends far beyond the realms of B&G and the farm equipment business. He served 10 years on the school board, helped with the World's Fair, is the music director at his church and works charitably as often as possible. "Tim also buys livestock at the fairs to help the farm children," Larry Brannon says. He goes on to detail the scholarship Tim and his brother, Tony Brannon of Murray State University, started to help students continue in agriculture. "His motto always has been 'Take care of those who take care of you.'" Brannon believes in the power of knowledge- sharing, recently participating in a dealer panel at the 2025 Farm Equipment Manufacturers Association's annual convention. He also contributes a regular web column for Rural Lifestyle Dealer — "Equipment Dealer Tips, Tales and Takeaways" — with the goal of sharing experiences and lessons with fellow rural equipment dealerships throughout North America. While he has and continues to work hard to help advance the next generation of agriculture, he says he has just as much to learn about what's ahead as what's already in place. "The technology increases are just mind- boggling," Brannon says. "And no one could have had that idea from 1965 or '66 except those people in engineering that dared to go out and break new ground and say, 'This will work.' And when it didn't work, they'd say, 'I like the concept, how can we make it work?' And they did." He acknowledges that embracing those changes becomes harder the older a person gets, but connecting with younger people at events like the annual Precision Farming Dealer Summit is humbling and inspiring. "These guys are using technology to do things I never dreamed about, and hats off to them," he says. Experience to school board Brannon's tenure on the school board presented several unseen opportunities to help future generations with access to modern facilities and technical coursework, an area that continues to be a growing topic of discussion today. "I'll be honest, the reason I got on it — and the statistics show that anybody that runs for a school board is there for one issue — and that was something that hit a hot button," Brannon explains. "I got on the school board because we were going to have to consolidate schools and we were going to have probably a huge tax increase and I didn't want the property tax increase to come in and I didn't think the schools needed to be consolidated. "However, when I got on the school board and you looked at all the facts, another farmer who was on the school board called me at 1 o'clock in the morning and he said, 'You know what we've got to do?' And I said, 'I do, but do you have the guts to do it?' And he said, 'I guess we'll find out together.' So as a result in my 10-year tenure, we consolidated four schools into two and renovated a high school, and we did not have one cent of property tax increase. "We used some of the techniques we use in farming with balloon payments and some leases and using that type of strategy was able to wrap some debt around what the county had. And so everybody was happy not to have had a tax increase. And we have all modern, beautiful schools." Brannon also says they brought in colleges to bring some college-level courses back down to their high school and were also proponents of technical education — still an important initiative today. For the love of agriculture Although the tea leaves are still yet to be determined for the years to come, Brannon can confidently say helping others will always be most fulfilling for him, and that stems from his love for God and love for agriculture. "Agriculture is what feeds the world," Brannon explains. "When I was with the company, we built the equipment that helped feed the world. Then at the dealership, we provided the equipment to farmers to help feed the world and make a living doing it. "It is almost a religious experience to realize that what the good Lord created he's put us in charge of to maintain and use to feed our fellow man." He remains deeply humbled to be inducted into the Farm Equipment Dealer Hall of Fame, as well as to have had the honor of working with other great names in the industry all working toward the same goal. "Life is a series of battles. You have to choose which ones you fight, and you have to win them keeping in mind that it is not going to be the last battle you win. The field of farm machinery and farm equipment dealerships is a tough profession, but it is something we have to have." 17 OLD ALLIS NEWS