Thank you for that kind introduction. I’m pleased to be here tonight. I hope to share with you a little about myself, my Farm Bureau experience and what we’ve been working hard to accomplish for you this year.

As you just heard I am Kalena Bruce, a 5th generation farmer from Stockton. I’ve brought my husband, Billy, and our daughter, Willa, with me tonight. We work together on our farm which is primarily a cow/calf operation. We also help my parents and my sister’s family operate Kenney Family Farms which is an agri-tourism venture bringing people out to the farm for u-pick strawberries and blueberries as well as for a corn maze and pumpkin patch in the fall.

Like many farming families we help each other throughout the year whenever someone needs an extra set of hands along with sharing equipment and each other’s specialized knowledge. I have a degree in accounting along with my license as a certified public accountant. This means that I get to do the majority of the office work for our farm as well as my family’s.

I partnered with my sister eight years ago to open Integrity Tax & Accounting, CPA’s and like many of the farm wives in the room continue with this career to help offset costs like health insurance and provide a little stability because we all know that farming is anything but.

I’ve been a member of Farm Bureau for several years starting out as part of my parents’ family membership. My husband and I have served as county board members for over six years. The opportunity to be the Chair of the American Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers Committee all started as a request from my county president to fill out the Excellence in Agriculture application so that Cedar County could receive enough points for Gold Star status in the YF&R category. From there our efforts to advocate for agriculture and grow Farm Bureau on the local level were noticed and we were asked to serve on the State YF&R committee. One of the main projects for this committee is putting on the YF&R Leadership Conference held in February each year. We were able to meet other young farmers & ranchers across the state and work on our leadership and communication skills a bit. Every two years each state can nominate one person or couple to be considered for the National Committee. It’s an application and interview process that helps the American Farm Bureau President choose who serves on this advisory committee. I was then elected as Chair of the committee by my peers and took my spot as a voting board member for the American Farm Bureau Federation. This is a big deal because now Missouri has two votes as I serve with MOFB President Blake Hurst.

I have extremely large shoes to fill. A few prior chairs consist of Richard Fordyce (prior MO Director of Ag), Chris Chinn (current director of ag) and Glen Cope. It’s a huge honor to have my name associated with these leaders in our industry.

Since I was elected I’ve been on an amazing journey. The last eight months have been a whirlwind of politics, mergers, natural disasters and working towards bridging the gap with misinformed consumers.

I traveled to Canada where I had the opportunity to speak to their Young Farmers Forum and to hear how things work on their side of the border. It’s a very interesting group as their funding comes from their government so they are very limited in what they can do and say. One of the speakers at their conference was a misinformed college professor who talked a lot about the United State’s problem of huge factory farms that are polluting our world and how all U.S Farms were subsidized by our government. My slot was right after his so I scrapped my speech and spent my hour debunking everything he said. This opened up a question and answer session and it was clear that the majority of the Canadians in attendance were eager to understand how our industry operates. We may be close in proximity, but things are very different there. A small farm to them is 1,000 acres. It was great to swap stories and leave them with a glimpse into Missouri agriculture.

I’ve been to several state YF&R conferences to share what we are doing on a national level along with what Missouri YF&R does because we are one of the largest groups in the nation. These states include Kansas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Florida and Tennessee. I had the opportunity to talk to them about the importance of being involved at the county level and how improving our own rural communities should be one of our top priorities. My message usually centered around that by attending leadership conference and bettering themselves they have the ability to take those new skills back and improve their own communities where they can make the biggest difference.

I chaired a special committee on raising funds for young and beginning farmers affected by wildfires out west. We raised over $153,000 that was just recently distributed. What a humbling experience that was for me. I’d like to recognize my amazing husband who coordinated countless loads of hay and supplies and people like you who donated their time, hay and equipment to help make a difference in those people’s lives.

I’ve been out to DC several times, but my most memorable and hopefully the most beneficial to you would be the tax reform working group that I was a part of. I met with staff of the Senate Finance Committee to talk about how the current tax reform blueprint will hurt the ag industry and to try and come up with new solutions. It was a little shaky at first, but when they heard I was a real farmer “their words not mine” they were all ears. I educated a few key staff members of other legislators on some need to know provisions and terms so they could talk responsibly about what we need in Missouri and across the nation. Most importantly that we need to keep cash accounting and the business interest deduction to help mitigate risk and average out taxable income for farmers and ranchers. The loss of the business deduction would be a huge hit to farmers and ranchers. Especially beginning farmers as our loan amortizations are new and the majority of our payments are principal. Not being able to deduct that interest would mean paying tax on income we didn’t really have. The average farmer is 59. We need to focus on ways to break down barriers for young people to get started in ag not put up concrete walls.

I went out to Seattle to be a part of a panel discussing data technology and the food value chain. I was the only actual producer on the panel and once they found who I was it was a rapid fire question and answer series. Companies and organizations like Amazon, Campbell Soup, Rockefeller Foundation, Bill Gates Foundation, Microsoft, Centura Health, and National Academy of Sciences were all represented as well. Conversation veered towards providing health care and basic technology like internet connection to 3rd world countries so they could farm successfully. I took that opportunity to compare Rural America to those same 3rd world countries. We have limited access to good health care, poor health insurance options and slow internet connectivity. Turns out that some of those 3rd world countries are better connected than we are in rural Missouri. I left with several good contacts that I’ve already forwarded to the Department of Agriculture’s office to help with the Rural Broadband Initiative. What an opportunity that was to represent you, farmers and ranchers and Farm Bureau.

Even though I’ve been on the road A LOT these past 8 months I am still devoted to my committee and the work we set out to do back when I was elected in January. One of the important things we are working on is increasing collegiate farm bureau chapters across the nation. We put together a special task for that has built a module to go out to college campuses who are interested in starting a chapter. We’ve also been working on the future of the YF&R program. How are we going to be relevant to the growing diversity of young farmers and ranchers in the next 50 years? It’s a big question and we are working closely with American FB Federation President Zippy Duvall to accomplish this.

You can see I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s been a whirlwind. I wouldn’t have missed any of those meetings because it gave me the opportunity to talk about my passion which is rebuilding our rural communities. Until we have access to good health care, good public schools and are connected to the rest of the world I will not stop advocating. I want our daughter to have every opportunity as a child living in an urban area does. She should have more. She should have the benefit of being raised with good rural Missouri values and still have basic necessities like excellent health care.

As I reflect on the last eight months I’m reminded just how special the people in our industry are. Whether we farm in Missouri or Arizona we face many of the same challenges, but we keep at it day after day. We all have a passion to tend the land and the livestock. To leave our farms and ranches in better shape than when we acquired them. To be darn sure that our children and grandchildren have the same opportunities that we have had. This means continuing to tell our story, being transparent with the every pressing consumer and standing up for our values. It’s been refreshing to see so many farm bureau members working together to take care of those in need and provide boots on the ground in Jefferson City and D.C.

My attitude moving into the last half of my term is comparable to the feeling I have when that 1st spring calf hits the ground. A renewed hope and in turn a renewed effort to continue on just as the 4 generations have before me on the farm and to continue to stand up to the animal activist groups and the misinformed public.

Thank you for the opportunity to be here tonight.