Indiana Farm Bureau Sets Priorities for 2024 Legislative Session

Indiana Farm Bureau has laid out their priorities for the 2024 Indiana legislative session set to begin in January.

Rural viability returns to their priority list, focusing on providing a “spark” to rural communities through seeking dollars for broadband deployment, infrastructure upgrades, quality childcare options, and preserving farmland.

Another Farm Bureau priority will be taxation and fiscal policy. After passing a two-year budget in 2023, this upcoming session will be a short one for legislators. Indiana Farm Bureau Executive Director of Public Policy Andy Tauer says they’ll take this session to really lay groundwork for the ’25 budget session.

“We heard a lot of conversations last year during the budget talks about concerns of increased property taxes for homeowners, well, our agriculture property taxes, as well, went up percentage-wise about the same percentage basis. And so, as we look to that next buying-in budget in 2025, do we need to take another look at the farmland formula? Are there some tweaks that we can be making there as folks look to shift the tax burden around that we protect farmers? As well as looking at maybe some potential overall state and local tax reforms.”

With more than 80% of land in Indiana devoted to farms, forests, and woodlands, Farm Bureau will prioritize land use and property rights as they say those continue to be threatened by development. Tauer says they’ve focused in years past on water quality, and farmer members have done a great job with that, but this year they’re going to focus more on water quantity.

“And yes, absolutely. This LEAP project in Boone County and this conversation about water withdrawal from the Tippecanoe County area has risen this to the top. But as we’ve started talking to members, this water quantity concern is much more widespread than, quite frankly, I think we all had a real appreciation for. And so this is another area we’re going to be working with a group of members to really dig into this, to help us think about, long-term, what type of water, whether it’s regulation guidance, those type of things that we in Indiana need to have for the future of Indiana, not only today, not just five years, maybe 10, 20 years down the road.”

Tauer goes into much more detail on each priority in the full HAT interview below. He also gives a preview of the Indiana Farm Bureau State Convention coming to Fort Wayne Dec. 14-16.