More than 700 local, state and federal policy recommendations were submitted for the Indiana Farm Bureau resolutions committee to review at its meeting, slated for the end of July.
The recommendations came from the county Farm Bureaus, the state policy advisory groups, the State Young Farmer and Ag Professionals Committee and the Collegiate Farm Bureaus.
“We appreciate all of the members of the resolutions committee for taking time away from their farming operations and other places of work to do their part in crafting Indiana Farm Bureau’s policy positions for approval by our delegates,” said Katrina Hall, INFB’s director of public policy. “Our grassroots system relies on policy submissions at the local level, deliberation at the resolutions committee meeting and final determinations of policy positions at the delegate session.”
The INFB delegate session will take place on Saturday, Aug. 24. The session will once again be held at the Hendricks County Fairgrounds and Conference Complex in Danville, Indiana. Each of Indiana’s 92 counties will be represented by voting delegates, the number of which is determined by the size of the county’s membership. During the session, voting delegates will vote on INFB’s 2020 policy and craft Indiana’s recommendations for changes to American Farm Bureau Federation policy.
Those AFBF policy recommendations are reviewed by all state Farm Bureau presidents and then finalized during the delegate session at the AFBF convention, which will take place in January 2020 in Austin, Texas. At that meeting, all 50 states and Puerto Rico will be allotted a number of voting delegates based on membership.
During the Aug. 24 policy meeting, delegates will select four members of the resolutions committee to represent INFB during the AFBF policy session.
“The INFB board will determine the organization’s priority positions for the 2020 legislative session later in the year,” said Hall. “Those priorities will be the focus of members’ advocacy efforts at the Statehouse in 2020.”