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Coming out of the Indiana Farm Bureau state convention, the legislative focus is clear for members and leaders of the organization. INFB president Randy Kron says they’re energized to tackle issues in early January when the General Assembly convenes, and two of those rise to the top.
“Water is one of them that we’ve got on the front burner right now,” he said. “The other one is a lot of proposals on tax reform we’ve actually put a task force together for both of those which is unusual to have two in one year like that but they’re both so important and long-term precedents what happens in the impact on agriculture could be tremendous.”
The LEAP project in Boone County, which wants to withdraw water from the Tippecanoe County area, has been a catalyst for water quantity discussions.
“We’re going to start with the task force,” he said. “We’re bringing in some thought leaders and trying to sort out and understand the policy. The leap district is what kind of kicked this off, but we understand there’s water shortages other places around the state and if you start piping water, what’s going to be the policy, what’s the precedent, what happens if in 10 or 15 years there’s a shortage where they’re doing it. How do we change, what’s the policy going to be, who are the winners and who are the losers really. So we want to make sure we get policy in place that, I would hope there’s never a water crisis in Indiana but if there is we’re not set in a policy in the middle of the crisis, we’ve got the framework to decide up front.”
Kron shared with HAT he never dreamed years ago there would one day be water quantity concerns in Indiana.
“We’ve talked the quality side quite a bit, but when you have somebody wanting to pump 100 million gallons a day from one watershed to another, it makes you kind of set up and say okay what’s the policy around it and how are we going to deal with it. And that’s what I’ve charged the task force to look at. We brought some outside experts and hydrogeologist in to help us understand this so we know what we’re dealing with. And part of what I think is going to be key is monitoring when they’re pulling this water out to make sure if we’re not recharging aquifers, we need to make decisions early, not when we’re at a point of a crisis.”
Indiana Farm Bureau will host the Legislative Forum to kick off the session in January. County leaders will have a chance to meet with Indiana House and Senate legislative leaders on January 9th at the Indiana Roof Ballroom.
Kron was happy to tout membership growth last week at the convention. It has now increased eight years in a row.
“It’s been a slow, steady increase and that’s what we’ve talked about,” he said. “Let’s just be steady and work at it year after year and we’ve been able to accomplish that. Proud of our volunteers and what they’ve done there, our staff and also the insurance team plays a very important part of the membership puzzle. So we thank all of them for their hard work.”