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District Discussion & Pre-Survey Results
Presidents Conference
What County Farm Bureau issues keep you up at night (member engagement, Young Farmer participation, the pipeline of leadership into the organization)?
• County leadership succession and getting Young Farmers involved
• Progression / Pipeline of leadership – recycling board members; boards are too big? Sometimes turns into people just filling seats
• Getting the “right” county leaders in place
• Members involvement overall
• YF involvement overall
• YF motivation – how do we get them to host events?
• Member recruitment
• New member involvement – same people doing everything
• Generating new members, new leaders for the future of the counties
• Helping long-time members adjust to change and try new ideas
• Getting active farmers involved in Farm Bureau
• Doing the same activities year after year without trying new activities and engaging new people
• Member engagement, particularly year-round. District is considering appointing year-round delegates and educating them based on relevant topics/interests
• Elevating prestige of position
• Volunteer base
• Generational differences/getting young people involved
• Risk management and dealing with farm stress
• It would be great if CAMs could send individual text messages to a group without having to individually send each one – would like a computer program for that as several board members prefer texting.
• Trying to add value to all membership types for the organization
• What will the definition of a regular member be over the next 100 years? What does the future look like?
• Big discussion on building relationship with Family of Companies, particularly maintaining good relationships with FB Insurance
• Higher age demographics in membership
• Time
• Geographical distances
What agricultural issues are you concerned with in your county?
• CAFOs – regulations, permits, any fertilizer/nutrient source, no manure application, manure storage concerns
• Organizational relevance; educating the public on ag issues before the non-ag perspective reaches them
• Democratic governor in leadership now
• Water availability for farmers, well/aquafer recharge issues
• Roads are muddy, wet, and rough
• Equipment needs to be able to fit into one lane
• General public concerned about ag effect on water quality
• Ag is bad at customer service – are we meeting their requests?
• Food security in our communities
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