Stay Informed

One of Farm Bureau’s most important functions is providing opportunities for farmers, agribusiness people and others involved in agriculture to learn from experts and from each other.

That is the goal of Hancock County Farm Bureau’s Winter Farmer Luncheon, an activity for which the county won a County Activities of Excellence award at last year’s state convention.

“Our objective with this event is to partner with other organizations to allow for networking, broadening members’ knowledge base, reaching more producers and providing a more convenient and purposeful event to our members,” said Chris Muegge, Hancock County Farm Bureau president.

For 2024, the event was a third-house meeting with local elected officials. In 2023, the program focused on the global supply chain and its local effects.

Hancock County brought in industry experts to speak and provide farmers with more information when making input decisions. They also worked with the local Extension office to combine the meeting with a private applicator (PARP) credit program so farmers who do their own chemical applications could complete their yearly credits.

Muegge encouraged counties considering a similar event to find partners to make the event more inclusive and to decrease the cost. Hancock County partnered with Extension as well as Indiana Corn and the Indiana Soybean Alliance, which enabled the county to offer the event at no cost to members.

The event ran from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., which included a lunch break. In total, the speakers talked for around two hours.

“Two hours is about the max – it’s hard to keep everybody’s attention for longer than that,” he added.

Muegge said timing is an important factor to keep in mind when planning such a meeting.

“It seems like if you want to do any meetings in ag, they need to take place in January, February or March,” Muegge said. “Summer can work out well, too.”

A toolkit providing specific information about how to organize a similar event can be found on INFB’s website, www.infb.org/toolkits.