Presidents Podium: Wrapping up 2024

Unbelievably, 2024 has almost come to a close. This will be the last President’s Podium of the year, and I’d like to take this opportunity to recap a few of the many things that have happened over the past year.

Legislatively, we saw some good successes in Santa Fe and Denver. The Land of Enchantment Legacy Fund was fully funded in New Mexico, and our rural mental health bill passed in Colorado. Wyoming legislature was in budget year and thus did not cover many topics important to our members. However, one big step in Wyoming was the assignment to interim committee of Right to Repair. After testimony over the summer, we believe that a Right to Repair bill has a good chance of becoming law in 2025, so keep an eye out there!

Nationally, it was a quiet legislative year. We took a group of members to Washington DC in April in an attempt to gain traction on the Food and Farm Bill. Although a version was passed by the House, it does not look like we will get a new bill in 2024, likely meaning a second year of extending the expired law.

Among our RMFU states, it looks to be another year of good membership growth.  We won’t have final numbers until December 31, but preliminary numbers show what may be a double digit growth percentage. In addition to the two new chapters chartered in 2023, this year the Big Horn Farmers and Ranchers chapter of RMFU was chartered in northern Wyoming! It’s exciting to see our chapters expanding.

County convention season is always busy and the meetings I was able to attend had great attendance and great interactions, with lots of excitement for what RMFU is doing. Likewise, state convention last month in Colorado Springs was full of great energy.  Our staff did a great job of putting together guest speakers and, as always, we had lively debate on national policy, and policy for each of the three states. Congratulations to Sarah and Barb on their reelections to the board, and thank you to Jonna and Kristin for running, it was a close race and good campaign by all.

On the business side of RMFU, we continue to be a financially strong organization. FUSA and our agents continue to grow, both in the existing agents’ office as well as expansion of the number of agents within FUSA. We look forward to the future of our fellow state chapters in Kansas and Nebraska, as we are finalizing the sale of the RMFU share of Midwest Agency, helping them to build their funding for the future. We are also excited to be investing in Farmers Capital Fund with Open Prairie, taking some of our reserves and putting it to work “on Main Street instead of Wall Street” as Jim Shultz says. Look for more information as that relationship builds, we will be sharing the work being done to bring new and existing technologies and products to market, as well as building companies that operate in our rural communities.

We look forward to next year being just as busy and productive!