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Illinois Farm Bureau aims to diversify membership

The Illinois Farm Bureau is working to diversify their membership through an organizational member strategy.

During his Presidential address at the 2022 Illinois Farm Bureau Annual Meeting in Chicago, Rich Guebert shared that the organization currently has more members over 90 years of age than under 35, and by 2040 Illinois is projected to have almost half the farms it had in 2020 due to consolidation.

He tells Brownfield those are alarming statistics. “And so we need to figure out a strategy going forward to determine how we not only engage and activate the members we have today, but also the members of tomorrow.”

He says they plan to communicate with members and non-members of all ages to determine what programs and activities they want to see at the local and state farm bureau levels. “We need to find out what value they want to see in a Farm Bureau membership.”

Guebert reviews other highlights of his Presidential Address in this interview with Brownfield’s Rhiannon Branch: