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The agriculture sector continues to face a volatile economy, particularly with continued uncertainty around the price and availability of inputs for the 2024 growing season. Consumers continue to pay higher prices for food while margins for agricultural producers remain tight. Meanwhile, development pressures from many different sources threaten the availability of farmland and the Buckeye State’s rich farming heritage.

The 2024 Ohio Agriculture and Rural Communities Action plan provides a blueprint for policymakers and Ohio Farm Bureau members to bolster Ohio’s agriculture industry and our rural communities.

2024 Priority Issues

Promote a strong business climate

Farm Bureau will:

• Engage with the U.S. Congress and the Ohio General Assembly on a tax landscape that encourages a strong farm economy.
• Promote enactment of legislation that helps farmers meet their labor needs.
• Support initiatives and implementation efforts that bring proper infrastructure, affordable broadband and high-speed internet access to unserved and underserved parts of the state.
• Secure resources to rebuild, repair or modernize transportation infrastructure, including rural roads and bridges, ports, and inland waterway locks and dams.
• Support the development of businesses that produce value-added products from locally grown agricultural commodities.
• Promote policies and programs to increase meat and poultry processing capacity in Ohio to make the food system more resilient for farmers and consumers.

Create a responsible regulatory environment

Farm Bureau will:

• Continue to work for a regulatory environment that enables farmers to be productive as well as environmentally and economically sustainable.
• Continue to be the voice for agriculture by ensuring discussions involving water quality are objective and specifically target improving Ohio’s water quality.
• Promote the H2Ohio program that supports voluntary practices that improve Ohio’s water quality and conservation.
• Encourage a transparent and open process when reviewing regulations on essential agricultural technologies.
• Promote agriculturally sourced biofuels that provide savings to both the farmer and the consumer.

Preserve Ohio’s farming heritage

Farm Bureau will:

• Encourage smart growth policies that simultaneously allow for economic development opportunities to promote efficient land use while preserving farmland.
• Lead efforts for additional landowner protections, including eminent domain reform, streamlined judicial procedures and agricultural easement program enforcement.
• Seek stronger requirements for local government use of private land for projects that impact agricultural land, such as rails-to-trails projects.
• Continue to engage in ballot initiatives, judicial challenges and nuisance lawsuits so farmers can freely and responsibly operate their farms for generations to come.
• Work to protect risk management tools via the passage of a new multi-year Farm Bill to help create more predictability and better facilitate long-term planning.

Build healthy rural communities

Farm Bureau will:

• Support the expansion of telehealth into rural communities to provide for critical health care needs, including access to behavioral health care.
• Strive to increase the accessibility of health care services currently lacking in rural areas.
• Focus on grassroots initiatives that engage a wide range of stakeholders to offer prevention strategies for men, women, and youth at risk in agriculture.

Engage in grassroots advocacy and increase engagement

Farm Bureau will:

• Work with members to create opportunities for political education and engagement during the 2024 election cycle, including but not limited to open seat screenings, designating Friends of Agriculture, candidate education and recruitment and Ag Day at the Capital.
• Mobilize extensive grassroots networks to shape public policy at all levels of government.
• Utilize communication and advocacy resources to empower members when speaking with policymakers.