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Young Farmer and Rancher program life-changing for new chair
Southwest Missouri farmer Kalena Bruce was elected in Phoenix to chair the American Farm Bureau Young Farmers and Ranchers (YF&R) program. She tells Brownfield her leadership role is in an organization that has been life-changing.
“Oh, gosh, for me this program has been like none other,” Bruce told Brownfield Ag News Monday at the American Farm Bureau Convention in Phoenix. “I was 23 when I first got started in it, so just basically out of college. I met my husband, we have a daughter now, all of these things have happened through the YF&R program, so honestly I can’t enough about it.”
She and her husband Billy have a cow-calf farm and agri-tourism enterprise in Cedar County, Missouri. Bruce describes the YF&R program as preparing its 18 to 35-year-old members to lead, and to create policy in the Farm Bureau.
“We’re a grassroots organization, so it’s important to us that we educate on the local level so that they can continue to bring issues from the bottom up,” she said.
Kalena Bruce is one of four young Missourians to lead the national YF&R program in the past several years, including Missouri Directors of Agriculture Richard Fordyce and Chris Chinn, and southern Missouri cattleman Glen Cope.
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