Stay Informed

Indiana Farm Bureau’s top legislative priority for 2020 will be expanding the health benefits that are available to farm operations of all sizes.

The issue has been a consistent topic at county and district Farm Bureau meetings and in conversations with individual members, noted Katrina Hall, INFB director of public policy. To learn more about member health benefit needs, INFB conducted a survey in August and September, and nearly 2,000 members responded.

“INFB’s list of legislative priorities focus on the things that can impact our members the most,” Hall said. “When you look at the health benefit survey and other input from members, it’s clear that health care costs are significantly impacting our members.”

Seventy percent of the survey respondents indicated that the cost of health care significantly impacts their bottom line, Hall noted, adding that it’s particularly difficult for sole proprietors to find affordable health benefits.

“It’s as important to young and beginning farmers, who find that the options through the Affordable Health Care Act are too expensive because many of them don’t qualify for government subsidies,” she said. “A lot of spouses are working to provide health insurance. As we work on this legislative proposal, members will be asked to join INFB advocacy efforts and to contact legislators with their health care benefit stories.”

The other priorities for the 2020 legislative session identified by the board of directors are:

Limit referenda that burden landowners. As referenda become increasingly common in Indiana, their impact on landowners across the state continues to grow. In the past, referenda were mostly used for capital improvement projects, such as building new facilities. They are used more and more frequently to fund operating expenses, Hall explained.

“They are a problem for farmers in two ways,” she said. First, they impact only landowners, making them an inequitable way to raise money for public projects. Second, when landowners own land in a county they don’t live in, they have no voice in their taxes since they can’t vote in those elections.

Implement land use planning that protects farms and farmland while promoting rural economic growth. “Conflicts over land use seem to be escalating, and those conflicts seem to be experienced more broadly across the state,” Hall said. Farm Bureau wants to make a statutory environment that allows farmers and farmland to grow and that promotes rural economic development, she added.

Protect property rights and local control. Throughout its history, INFB has always prioritized landowners’ property rights and supported the concept of having local officials make land-use decisions, she noted.

Continue expansion of rural broadband. “Expansion of broadband in rural areas is critically important to farmers,” Hall said, “but it’s also important to those communities.” A 2018 study by the late Wally Tyner, professor of agricultural economics at Purdue, found that every dollar invested in broadband returns nearly $4 to the economy, she noted.

Improve assessment uniformity across the property tax base. “This is important,” Hall said, not only for real and personal agricultural property but also for commercial and industrial property. The primary focus will be on assessment uniformity.

“Now that the legislative session is about to begin, members are being asked to tell Farm Bureau’s story at the Statehouse to secure legislation that positively impacts agriculture,” she added.

“It’s important to show legislators how these issues are impacting Indiana’s farmers by sharing real examples,” she said.