2009 FB Meeting-Grassroots
Farm Bureau meeting in Idaho Falls reflects membership. The headline coming out of the 2009 Idaho Farm Bureau meeting was that the policies and programs of the Idaho Farm Bureau are developed from grassroots recommendations that come from members. What does that mean…grassroots. A formal definition of a grassroots movement is one driven by the politics of a community and implies that the creation of the movement and the group supporting it are natural and spontaneous, highlighting the differences between this and a movement that is orchestrated by traditional power structures. Grassroots movements are often at the local level. In other words…listen to the people. Well, Brian Searle is an Idaho Farm Bureau member who attended the meeting and listen to what he said: “I don’t think there’s anything better than the Farm Bureau for listening to the people that’s doing all the work, they have all the issues, rather than being regulated from the top down. There’s very few if any organizations that will listen from the bottom and come up. Everybody has a voice and a say and they come and if it’s something everybody agrees on then we carry that through and there’s nothing better.”
