By Blake Hurst
As I write, we still don’t have a President-elect and several Senate races across the country are still undecided, but we did learn a few things from this week’s elections.
In Missouri, it was a great night for incumbents and an even better night for candidates endorsed by Missouri Farm Bureau. All 16 of our endorsed candidates won, proof, if any proof was needed, that Missouri Farm Bureau has its finger on the pulse of rural Missouri. We elected folks who understand agriculture, support our industry, and have a special place in their hearts for the small towns of rural Missouri. That’s good news, and we look forward to working with our friends over the next several years.
In a major upset, Missouri voters approved Amendment 3. We worked hard for the amendment’s passage. We were outspent by out-of-state opponents who poured millions of dollars into our state with the hope that they would control the outcomes of Missouri elections for decades to come. Missouri voters put the brakes on the radical redistricting scheme passed in 2018, returning the all-important process of redistricting to a bipartisan commission. Farm Bureau stood strong for rural Missouri and communities of all sizes in our state. Passing Amendment 3 is one of the most important victories in the proud history of our organization.
In national elections, the results of the election will mean that the Green New Deal is a dead letter. That’s good news for agriculture and our pocketbooks. We lost the chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, and although his replacement isn’t known, we can be sure that the next farm bill will put more emphasis on environmental goals and nutrition programs, with traditional farm programs under threat. Farm Bureau will continue to support the traditional safety net programs that help smooth out the challenges agriculture faces from volatile weather and markets, but we’ll have to be creative in dealing with a changing climate on Capitol Hill. We learned that the rural voting bloc is solid and is a force for common sense all across the nation. We also learned that polling is about as likely to be wrong as right, and that polls and weather forecasts are a lot alike.
We also learned that grassroots activism still matters, and money isn’t always the deciding factor in elections. That’s very good news for an organization like Missouri Farm Bureau.
Blake Hurst, a farmer from Westboro, Missouri, is President of Missouri Farm Bureau, the state’s largest farm organization.
