Successful Field to the Hill trip

With a packed agenda, over 85 Florida Farm Bureau members and staff visited every member of Congress' office during this year's Field to the Hill trip last week.

Our members spoke with over half of Florida's Congressional delegation in person and visited with legislative aides in the rest of those offices. A record for our Field to the Hill annual visit!

The trip officially kicked off on Thursday afternoon with legislative briefings at the American Farm Bureau headquarters. The briefings covered food safety, the Estate Tax, Clean Water Act and climate change.

Following the briefings we hosted our annual member reception with a new addition to the agenda this year. We felt it was important to honor Congressman Adam Putnam for his decade of service to the state and to agriculture. We presented Rep. Putnam with an engraved token of our appreciation.

Thursday morning our group hit the ground running with an early morning meeting with U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack at the USDA headquarters. The secretary gave a brief overview of his agency's goals and then took questions from members.

Following the meeting members headed for the House offices to meet with their individual members. As I previously noted, these meetings were very successful.

After the individual meetings concluded our members gathered at one the Senate office buildings to hear from both of our senators. Each gave brief comments and took questions from members.

We concluded a very busy Thursday with a reception at the House Agriculture Committee Meeting room in the Longworth Building.

As you can see, I am proud of our members, our organization and the efforts we make to work for good, sound policy for all of Florida agriculture.