An advocate for farming

Nov. 18--The headquarters of the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation in Goochland County looks like almost any other suburban office building, tucked away in a wooded area in the West Creek office park.

When visitors step inside the headquarters lobby, however, they immediately should have no doubt what the organization is all about.

Guests see a 6-foot-3-inch bronze statue of a farmer, wearing overalls and with shirt sleeves rolled up over muscular arms, standing in a field of early corn and gazing to the horizon as if contemplating the weather, or the future.

The statue was installed three years ago as a tribute to Virginia's agricultural history and to send a clear signal about the core mission.

"Anytime anybody from the public walks into this building, we want them to know we are an agricultural organization," said Wayne F. Pryor, who has been president of the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation for seven years.

Established in 1926, the Virginia Farm Bureau has long been an advocate for farming interests in the state.

The nonprofit, with its 67 employees, serves as an umbrella organization for the Virginia Farm Bureau's numerous other ventures and its advocacy and educational programs. For instance, it operates an insurance business with hundreds of employees.

Although the number of people working on farms in Virginia -- and nationwide -- has been on the decline for decades as the economy shifted toward manufacturing and then a service-based workforce, the significance of agriculture in the economy has not declined, Pryor said.

"A lot of people don't realize it, but agriculture is the largest industry in this state," said Pryor, who works daily as the full-time president of the Virginia Farm Bureau but also remains an active production farmer, raising cattle, wheat, corn and hay on his farm in Goochland.

Agriculture and forestry are a $78 billion industry in Virginia. "And there is nothing really close to it in second place," said Pryor, a farmer since 1971 whose father also was a farmer and worked as an insurance agent for the Farm Bureau.

In the past year, the Virginia Farm Bureau has tackled one of the most publicly visible missions in its history -- as the new owner and operator of the State Fair of Virginia and the Meadow Event Park in Caroline County.

That might be the main way that Virginia residents know the Farm Bureau name these days, but the organization has an impact on the state's economy and politics in many other ways.

The Farm Bureau:

--is a major insurance provider in Virginia;

--wields significant influence on government policy-making at the state Capitol through its own lobbying team that has a voice in issues ranging from property taxes to environmental regulations;

--operates a warehouse in eastern Henrico County that sells tires and farm supplies to farmers and other members;

--publishes magazines and newsletters focused on agriculture and economics;

--runs an agricultural education program that offers resources to public school teachers to help children understand farming;

--partners with state universities, such as Virginia State University and Virginia Tech, to help train young farmers;

--operates a commodity marketing department that provides information on crop prices; and

--offers financial risk management services for farmers, grant writing services, and grain marketing.

A diversifying insurance business

By far the largest of the Farm Bureau's businesses is insurance.

In all, the Virginia Farm Bureau has about 950 employees, the majority of them working for the company's insurance businesses, which include property and casualty and health insurance.

The insurance business is an outgrowth of the Farm Bureau's founding as an organization to serve farm families, said Darlene Wells, an 18-year Farm Bureau employee who is executive vice president and general manager of the mutual insurance company this year.

Historically, Wells said, rural homeowners and farmers had more difficultly obtaining insurance.

Today, the Farm Bureau has a small share of the overall insurance market in Virginia, but it is the largest writer of farm-related insurance products in the state, such as farm property insurance.

The Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co. is a property and casualty insurer with about 250,000 policies in Virginia, and about $236 million in written premiums.

The company is different from other insurers in several ways, Wells said.

As a mutual insurance company owned by its policyholders, it puts its profits back into the business and does not have the same bottom-line pressures as publicly traded firms, she said.

Its agents also are Farm Bureau employees -- about 380 of the Virginia Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance Co.'s 660 employees work at the company's 105 field offices across the state.

"We have captive agents, which is somewhat unusual for the insurance industry," Wells said, adding that the Farm Bureau has maintained that network because of the importance of relationships with its customers.

"We have those agents to create a bond with our customers," she said. "We have policyholders, but we refer to them as members."

Right now, the Farm Bureau's policy numbers are in "a slight declining mode," Wells said.

That's mainly because of the severe weather that struck Virginia in 2011 and 2012, causing widespread farm damage and draining about $75 million from the insurance company's surplus fund, which the Farm Bureau is now trying to rebuild.

"Being a single state operation, we were hit pretty hard in 2011 and 2012 by the storm activity that came through the state," Wells said. "We realized we had a little bit more property exposure concentrated in the state than what we really should have for a company our size."

Because of the need to spread its geographic risk profile, the Virginia Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance bought Syracuse, N.Y.-based Countryway Insurance Co. in 2011. It was the first time the Virginia Farm Bureau acquired a property and casualty insurer outside Virginia.

Countryway offers farm, home and auto insurance and has about $36 million in written premiums in 10 states. The acquisition was a good fit because Countryway has agricultural roots, too, having been created as a way for farmers in rural New England to obtain insurance, Wells said.

"We are having a fantastic year in 2013 in terms of building our surplus back up," Wells said. "The weather has been kind this year. We expect to add about $10 million in surplus."

"It is going to take us a couple of more years to really build back what we lost, but we are on our way," she said.

At the same time, the Farm Bureau Mutual Insurance and the larger organization have made efforts to reach beyond the traditional, core customer base in rural Virginia.

The company has undertaken some marketing efforts in suburban and urban Virginia, such as buying naming rights in 2011 to the Virginia Beach Amphitheater, a 20,000-seat concert venue, and renaming it Farm Bureau Live at Virginia Beach.

A voice for agriculture in lobbying

The Farm Bureau has a team of six employees who work on legislative issues, including lobbying at the General Assembly on matters ranging from taxes to rural land preservation to water quality.

Pryor said the Farm Bureau Federation's prowess on public policy arises from the fact that its policy positions are crafted by its members in the 88 county Farm Bureaus across the state.

"The Farm Bureau has a strong grass-roots, county presence," said Todd Haymore, Virginia's secretary of agriculture and forestry. "You can go into a county and meet with the elected leadership of the Farm Bureau, and you can pull together very quickly 10 to 25 people that have very strong knowledge on an issue."

"They are a very effective organization," Haymore said.

That grass-roots base includes 135,000 Farm Bureau members in Virginia, most of whom are associate members -- not active farmers -- who pay a $40 annual membership fee to utilize Farm Bureau services. About 37,000 are producer members who are actively farming.

Among the public policy issues that the Farm Bureau has influenced in Virginia in recent years include the rollback of the state's estate tax.

"Farmers pay real estate taxes," Pryor said. "Most of us spend a lifetime paying for (land), but when it is being passed down to the next generation, the estate tax sometimes makes it such that some of it has to be dissolved and sold just to pay that tax.

"If you spend a lifetime paying taxes, why should you have to pay taxes on (a farm) again, to keep it in production?"

Pryor said the "signature" public policy matter for the Virginia Farm Bureau in recent years was the approval of a state constitutional amendment that makes it harder for the government to take private property for commercial purposes.

Stewards of the State Fair of Virginia

In its first year of sole ownership and management of the State Fair of Virginia, the Farm Bureau put more emphasis on the fair's agricultural roots, bringing back some of the livestock competitions that had gone absent in previous years.

It even brought in high school agriculture students to plant several plots of field crops as a demonstration of the many types of crops grown in Virginia.

About 229,000 people attended the fair this year, not a record number but still an improvement over 2012's attendance of 160,000 to 180,000.

The Farm Bureau acquired the State Fair of Virginia and the site where it is held, Meadow Event Park in Caroline, in March. In 2012, the Farm Bureau had been a partial owner of the fair along with Universal Fairs LLC of Cordova, Tenn., a private company that bought the fair and the property at a bankruptcy foreclosure auction in May 2012.

Farm Bureau officials said they had been approached several times by interested parties about taking an ownership stake when the fair was in financial trouble.

But the organization "was very cautious about getting involved" at first, said Jeff Dillon, the Virginia Farm Bureau's treasurer, who also is serving as president of the State Fair.

Only after careful exploration did the Farm Bureau decide that investing in the fair was the right decision, he said.

"As time went on, we realized that we do have a vested interest in the fair," Dillon said. "The fair is important to agriculture, and we need to be part of that."

The Meadow Event Park, with more than 300 acres, is best known as the birthplace of legendary Thoroughbred Secretariat.

Dillon said the Farm Bureau has plans to expand the number of events held there.

This year, for instance, the Farm Bureau acquired the Equine Extravaganza, a three-day equestrian festival and expo held at the Meadow Event Park in late October. The Farm Bureau also plans to hold the Mid-Atlantic Hot Air Balloon Festival and several concerts, food festivals and light shows there in 2014.

Changing demographics

When Pryor started farming in the early 1970s, there were about 30 dairy farms in Goochland County alone.

"Now there are two," he said.

The trend of fewer farms has been happening all over the state and nation, and not just in declining numbers of dairy farms.

There are fewer farmers overall, working on larger farms. Productivity has increased on the typical farm.

Virginia has about 46,200 active farms now, down nearly 3,000 from 20 years ago. Farmland acreage also has been under development pressure, and the Farm Bureau has supported efforts to keep more rural land in farm production.

"The average farmer is getting older," Pryor said.

Although fewer people are working in agriculture compared with generations past, Pryor expressed optimism about the industry in Virginia.

The Farm Bureau has a program that seeks to support young farmers just starting out. Some 200 young farmers are members of this program.

Starting a farm is an enormously expensive venture, but Pryor said he sees opportunities for young people who can find ways to gain entry into the business.

"I think there is an absolute golden opportunity for a young person going into farming, with the world population growing like it is," he said.

"Anybody that can get into farming -- whether it is family operation or however they get started -- I think for the next 25 years will have an excellent future."

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