Hoosier Ag Today continues its profile of the candidates for Indiana Farm Bureau President.
Wyeth Outlines His Priorities for Farm Bureau Future
Hendricks County farmer Dave Wyeth has a long history ofleadership with Indiana Farm Bureau and a lot of experience in farming, “I bought my first farm when I was age 15. This has been my 32nd crop.” He farms mostly corn and soybeans with some beef cattle. “Both my wife Lisa and I come from multi generational farms, and we have a lot of passion for agriculture,” he stated.
Wyeth is currently serving his 6th year on the Farm Bureau board of directors as a district director. He has been involved in the Young Farmers organization and heavily involved in local Farm Bureau activities, especially on the public policy side.
Wyeth has outlined several priorities in his campaign including membership, “What we need to look at more than anything else is retention. Sometimes it is easy to write a new membership, but it is more difficult to retain them. Over the last 6 years, Farm Bureau has lost over 25,000 members. That should be a wakeup call that we have not been working hard enough to retain members.”
In addition, Wyeth says property tax reform must continue to be a top priority of Farm Bureau along with maintaining a strong insurance company, “The President of Farm Bureau is also the head of our insurance company. Indiana Farm Bureau Insurance has been downgraded twice in the past few years. I think it is very important to our members that we continue to have a financially strong insurance company.”
Wyeth also advocates more relationship building both within and outside of Farm Bureau, “When I talk about team building, I mean team building at the county level but also between other farm organizations in the state. We need to be building bridges with all of Indiana agriculture.”
Listen to the complete interview with Dave Wyeth