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A few years back, I traveled to every county in the state and asked members directly: What do you want from YOUR Farm Bureau? What could we do to bring you the most value and not just in a monetary sense?

What you told me was instrumental in the creation of our Value Proposition and the four pillars within it. From access to policymakers to resources to keep your farm competitive, keeping up with trends and finding ways to grow personally and professionally, you gave us a clear direction of where Farm Bureau needed to be to show true value to members.

The first pillar, Shaping Policy, continues to be our bread and butter. We have seen terrific accomplishments in this space recently through work with our partners at Nationwide, Ohio State College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences and Ohio’s commodity groups. Those endeavors include the new Multi-Species Animal Learning Center at CFAES, the new Ohio Department of Agriculture Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory and massive new improvements coming to the Ohio State Fair and Ohio Expo Center.

With the second pillar, Leveraging Trends, Farm Bureau is constantly tracking trends and issues and sharing them with you in new ways. This work has already begun with a series of educational and legal guides, including our Technology Intelligence Report, the Labor Intelligence Report and our ever popular and now revamped Landowner Toolkit plus the new Trucking Guide. These resources were created exclusively for you, our members, as a way to stay ahead of the ever changing and ever challenging trends in agriculture.

The third pillar, Advancing On-Farm Business Solutions, allows Farm Bureau to continue to offer many of our widely used programs that help your business succeed, including Ohio Farm Bureau’s exclusive Small-Scale Food Business Guide and Health Benefits Plan, Nationwide’s Land as Your Legacy for retirement and succession planning, and access to professionals who can help you identify potential gaps in your insurance coverage, to name a few.

The fourth pillar is Creating Opportunities for Growth. You value networking, growing as professionals and as leaders and building relationships across the ag industry. In this area, we will evolve and continue many popular programs that help you grow as industry influencers, including Ag Day at the Capital, our Washington, D.C. legislative trips, the AgriPOWER Leadership Institute and our Young Ag Professionals program.

You spoke and we listened. Now, the value is easy to see for any Ohio Farm Bureau member who is ready to take themselves and their business to the next level.