Stay Informed

2020 was the year COVID-19, social distancing, mask etiquette and virtual meetings became familiar concepts to nearly everyone, including Farm Bureau staff, officers and members.

But it also was the year that INFB fulfilled a long-time objective and began offering health care benefits to its members.

Expanding health benefits to farm operations of all sizes was INFB’s top priority during the 2020 legislative session. Hundreds of members lobbied for the passage of the bill that would allow INFB to offer more affordable health care benefits to its members.

On March 11, the bill passed after receiving overwhelming support at every stage of the legislative process. Beginning then and continuing into the fall, INFB established the new Indiana Farm Bureau Health Plans, which opened for enrollment Oct. 1. Coverage took effect Jan. 1, 2021.

Just a few days after this great legislative victory, the world turned upside down. COVID-19 was declared a pandemic as nations across the globe went into lockdown and a national emergency was declared. At INFB, nearly all meetings in 2020 were held virtually.

Listed below are some of the activities, events and initiatives that INFB, its staff and its members worked on in 2020.

Advertising campaigns

In addition to its regular membership campaign, INFB rolled out a separate advertising campaign in the fall to promote INFB Health Plans and to grow membership through this new member benefit.

• The membership ad campaign generated nearly 11 million impressions for the year. The goal of the ad campaign was to drive people to INFB’s website. The number of users reached through paid search was up by 133% from 2019 while the number reached by display ads increased 39% over 2019.
• A key analytic in this digital campaign is “conversions,” which in this case refers to the process of converting website visits into memberships. There were 1,334 such conversions in 2019, but in 2020, that figure jumped to 3,243, an increase of 143% year-over-year. Overall, INFB saw a 34% increase in website visitors and a 79% increase in pages viewed per session.
• For INFB Health Plans, the goal was to drive people to the plans’ website, which launched on Sept. 1, 2020. The campaign generated 8.8 million total impressions, and more than 25,000 users visited the website during the last quarter of 2020. Paid media channels drove 43% of all web traffic to the website.

Advocacy

• INFB’s top priority for the 2020 legislative session was health care. Because the session concluded before lockdown, members could participate in the lobbying effort through Statehouse visits along with emails. With the goal of encouraging the passage of Senate Bill 184, the bill that would allow INFB to offer health care benefits to its members, more than 270 members visited the Statehouse. Members also sent 1,600 emails to legislators through VoterVoice. It passed the Senate on a 49-0 vote and the House on a 94-2 vote.
• “Advocacy days” were organized by Farm Bureau for three special groups: women, Young Farmers & Ag Professionals and FFA.
• INFB’s other priority issues were to limit referendums that burden landowners; implement land use planning that protects farms and farmland while promoting rural economic growth; protect property rights and local control; continue expansion of rural broadband; and improve assessment uniformity across the property tax base.

Collegiate Farm Bureau

INFB sponsors collegiate chapters at Purdue, Vincennes and Huntington universities. All three met regularly on a virtual basis. The program also hosted the Collegiate Farm Bureau Learning Series, which featured professional development sessions focused on relevant ag topics for college-aged members. It also hosted the first virtual Collegiate Discussion Meet, which had 28 participants.

Convention and conferences

• A total of 541 unique participants logged in to the INFB Virtual State Convention, held Dec. 11 and 12. The convention included breakout sessions, the delegate session, the Young Farmers & Ag Professionals Discussion Meet, the president’s annual address, and speeches from Gov. Eric Holcomb, Lt. Gov. Suzanne Crouch and American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall.
• The resolutions committee conducted its business through a combination of virtual meetings and socially distant, in-person meetings. The August delegate session, however, was entirely virtual, and 233 farmers and agribusiness professionals from across the state met and discussed issues that included permitting, broadband, transportation and infrastructure, the impact of COVID-19 and the ag economy.
• Indiana Agricultural Law Foundation’s 2020 Estate and Succession Planning for the Family Farm workshop was held virtually over three days, with 230 attendees on the first day, 130 attendees on the second and 180 attendees on the third. In contrast, 115 people registered for 2019’s in-person estate planning workshop.
• The INFB Drainage School also was presented virtually with 177 participants, an increase of 58% over 2019’s registrations.

Educational outreach efforts

• A total of 108 Indiana volunteers – a slight increase from 2019 – participated in Agriculture in the Classroom. Nearly 40,000 students were reached through the efforts of these volunteers.
• Like other INFB workshops, the AITC workshop changed to a virtual format. Three sessions were held over three days, collectively drawing 459 volunteers and educators.
• An offshoot of AITC was INFB’s new Adopt-A-Classroom program. Forty classrooms across the state have been matched with AITC volunteers since this program began in fall 2020.
• The 2020 Book of the Year was Popcorn Country: The Story of America’s Favorite Snack. Sixty-seven counties participated and helped to distribute 1,648 copies of the book to schools, libraries and elsewhere.
• The cancellation of the Indiana State Fair meant that the Women’s Leadership Committee couldn’t present Taste From Indiana Farms, a popular annual event in which samples of foods grown in Indiana are given to thousands of state fair visitors. The committee instead hosted a virtual campaign known as Taste Tidbits. This series of social media graphics designed for Facebook, Twitter and Instagram provided fun facts about several different commodities. The campaign’s 10 Facebook posts reached more than 28,000 people, and there were more than 265 shares. For Twitter, the 10 posts earned 8,564 impressions, while 3,422 people were reached via Instagram.

Indiana Ag Law Foundation

INAgLaw, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization established by INFB in 2005, had its most successful donation year ever, raising more than $180,000. The funds were raised via an INFB donation match program approved by the INFB board of directors and through the generosity of county Farm Bureaus, family farms, individuals and agribusinesses.

Two important cases in which INAgLaw was involved were the Himsel case, which reaffirmed Indiana’s right-to-farm law, and the Light case, which involved zoning. Both concluded in 2020 with clear victories for Indiana farmers.

Indiana Farm Bureau Health Plans

Even before Indiana law was changed to allow INFB to offer health care benefits to its members, the organization had begun working on implementing the program so that it would be ready for roll-out on Sept. 1, 2020, and for open enrollment on Oct. 1.

To reach this ambitious goal, INFB worked closely with Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance, whose marketing associates and agents are the first point of contact for many of INFB Health Plans’ potential customers. A separate company, Indiana Farm Bureau Members Health LLC, was formed as the legal entity.INFB also built a dedicated website where folks can get quotes and apply for coverage and developed an advertising campaign to promote the health care products. And the organization hired Patrick Williams for a newly created position, INFB Health Plans manager.

From Oct. 1 through the end of December, 1,502 applications were received, and 901 of those have been approved. In November and December, more than 20% of the applications were submitted by new members.

Indiana State Fair 4-H Livestock Competition and Project Showcase

INFB had already decided that 2020 would be the year that the organization ceased its long-time practice of staffing the Farm Bureau Building during the Indiana State Fair and instead devoted its resources and energies to something new. Then along came COVID-19 and the cancellation of the fair.

INFB was one of the sponsors of a modified event called the State Fair 4-H Livestock Competition and 4-H Project Showcase. The organization sponsored the exhibitor experience and the Supreme Drive, awarding show boxes to the champions of dairy heifer and cow, breeding gilt and breeding ewe. INFB also awarded luggage bags to champion division showmanship winners across all the species and belt buckles to the supreme showmanship grand and reserve champion winners.

Media outreach/coverage

• INFB secured 420 news stories in 2020. The topics most covered include COVID-19’s impact on agriculture, the legislative session, INFB Health Plans, the market basket survey and state convention.
• Sixty-seven stories featured INFB members representing 48 counties.

Member involvement

One of the major challenges in 2020 was ensuring that members had plenty of opportunities to stay involved. Virtual state-level events were part of this effort, but a lot of activity occurred at the local level, too – thanks to members and to INFB’s regional managers, who act as liaisons between county Farm Bureaus and the state organization. Regional managers were the main point of contact for many functions, including:

• Virtual ELECT and AgELECT candidate interviews. Nine candidates for U.S. Congress were endorsed along with 84 candidates for the Indiana House and Senate.
• Virtual auction to benefit AgELECT. A total of 131 members and counties donated items for the auction, which raised more than $15,000.

Other virtual local events included county annual meetings, county board meetings, tool shed meetings with members of Congress and pre-legislative meetings.

Membership

INFB ended its membership year with 263,623 members, an increase of 725 from last year. This is the fifth year in a row that INFB has surpassed the previous year’s total membership. Voting membership ended at 68,986 members, a decline of 1,021 members from the previous year.

Publications

INFB continued to publish The Hoosier Farmer, a monthly newspaper mailed to all voting members; My Indiana Home, a quarterly magazine mailed to all members; and a monthly electronic newsletter, the FB Feed. But there were some changes to other publications:

• The Public Policy Dispatch, a legislative and regulatory update that comes out weekly while the General Assembly is in session and biweekly the rest of the year, is sent electronically to around 1,900 people. In 2020, the mailing list was expanded to all voting members to help keep them updated on the important issues affecting agriculture due to the pandemic.
• A new monthly publication called The Pulse was introduced specifically to keep insurance agents informed about INFB Health Plans. Its first issue came out in December 2020.

Website, social media

• INFB’s website underwent a complete redesign in 2020. The updates were made to increase functionality and improve engagement. In addition to design changes, the updated site has new features including rotating homepage content, featured news articles and INFB program highlights.
• Several of INFB’s social media channels saw significant growth in 2020. From January through December 2020, likes to INFB’s Facebook page increased by 16% and the number of Instagram followers increased by 22%. With an increased focus on video content, INFB’s YouTube channel audience grew by nearly 250%.

Young Farmers & Ag Professionals

• YF&AP Conference was the only one of INFB’s statewide events that occurred prior to lockdown and could be held in person rather than virtually. There were 294 attendees and 85 first-time attendees, 20 of whom were new members.
• Twenty people participated in the virtual Discussion Meet, won by Nathan Bush of Johnson County. The winners of the two other major YF&AP awards were John and Abby Michel, Gibson County, who won the Excellence in Agriculture Award; and Kyle and Leah Musselman, Miami County, who won the Achievement Award.
• The YF&AP State Committee wanted a way to make a positive impact on their communities. The result was a statewide philanthropic challenge with the goal of raising $20,020 by the end of 2020 for nonprofits such as INAgLaw, ag-related charities or hunger-relief charities. In the end, $37,613 was raised.