In this episode, I sit down with Shannon Douglass, the first female President of the California Farm Bureau. Shannon shares insights into her non-traditional farming background and the inclusive, grassroots nature of the Farm Bureau, where policies are driven by local county boards. She outlines her key advocacy focuses, including the farm bill, mill assessment increases, water issues, and the insurance crisis affecting farmers. She explains the ongoing legislative efforts to address insurance challenges and improve availability and affordability through better forest management. During our discussion, we emphasize the disconnect between California's support for local, small farmers and the regulatory environment, emphasizing that these challenges push smaller farms out of business. Shannon also highlights how well-intentioned regulations can have unintended negative consequences, such as the significant investments and logistical adjustments required for switching to electric forklifts. Despite these challenges, her passion for agriculture advocacy is driven by a desire to ensure future generations can continue farming in California. Shannon views tough times as opportunities for innovation and improvement, sharing how difficult periods force farmers to make decisions that ultimately lead to better practices. Join us as we delve into the world of agriculture regulations and how to remain optimistic for the future.
In this episode, I sit down with Shannon Douglass, the first female President of the California Farm Bureau. Shannon shares insights into her non-traditional farming background and the inclusive, grassroots nature of the Farm Bureau, where policies are driven by local county boards. She outlines her key advocacy focuses, including the farm bill, mill assessment increases, water issues, and the insurance crisis affecting farmers. She explains the ongoing legislative efforts to address insurance challenges and improve availability and affordability through better forest management. During our discussion, we emphasize the disconnect between California's support for local, small farmers and the regulatory environment, emphasizing that these challenges push smaller farms out of business. Shannon also highlights how well-intentioned regulations can have unintended negative consequences, such as the significant investments and logistical adjustments required for switching to electric forklifts. Despite these challenges, her passion for agriculture advocacy is driven by a desire to ensure future generations can continue farming in California. Shannon views tough times as opportunities for innovation and improvement, sharing how difficult periods force farmers to make decisions that ultimately lead to better practices. Join us as we delve into the world of agriculture regulations and how to remain optimistic for the future.
Shannon Douglass - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shannondouglass/
California Farm Bureau Federation - https://www.cfbf.com/
This episode is sponsored by UnitedAg, one of the largest association health plans to offer healthcare to the agriculture industry of California and Arizona.
Kirti Mutatkar, President and CEO of UnitedAg.
Reach me at kmutatkar@unitedag.org, www.linkedin.com/in/kirtimutatkar
UnitedAg website - www.unitedag.org
Episode Contributors - Shannon Douglass, Kirti Mutatkar, Dave Visaya, Rhianna Macias
The episode is also sponsored by Brent Eastman Insurance Services Inc. - https://brenteastman.com
Blue Shield of California - https://www.blueshieldca.com
Elite Medical - https://www.elitecorpmed.com
Gallagher - https://www.ajg.com/
SAIN Medical https://sainmedical.com/
MDI Network - https://www.mdinetworx.com/about-us
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:00:04] Good morning Shannon. How are you?
Shannon Douglass: [00:00:06] I'm great. How are you this morning?
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:00:09] Good, good, good. So I as just for the, uh, audience listening to this, I am Keerthi Mutatkar. I am the CEO and president at United AG. And Shannon, you are the first female president of California Farm Bureau. And that is the first time this has happened in its history, right?
Shannon Douglass: [00:00:29] That is. Yes. That was in December when I was elected. It was a bit of a new day for us. I would say it's a in some ways, one of the first times we've had a Farm Bureau president without a mustache, let alone one who's female. In Farm Bureau, we tend to have a lot of multi-generation farmers and members. And so for me, it's been interesting for a number of years, there was this phrase I would hear, particularly in other states. It wasn't a common in California, but people would talk about, this isn't your daddy's farm Bureau, right? That kind of a phrase? Uh, things are things are different. This is this is the same way it was for your dad. And I would always chuckle a bit because I thought, well, my dad wasn't a farmer, much less a Farm Bureau member. Uh, and so for me, that is part of what's different. And not everybody has come, of course, from a long line of Farm Bureau leaders. To be clear, we we do have that. We've had a couple that are third generation presidents, even in different counties, which is really neat. So that's wonderful and that's valued. But I think at the same time, there's also opportunity for someone like me who was not raised in agriculture, was not raised in a Farm Bureau family. I didn't grow up going to Farm Bureau meetings and seeing how this elections and this dynamic took place. This was new to me, but there was still space here for someone like me. And I'm I'm really pleased that we have a Farm Bureau that's willing to do that.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:01:58] What does your presidency look like? What would you like to achieve?
Shannon Douglass: [00:02:03] Yeah. So one of the biggest things that is a big change and that is was very directed by our members. And I think one of the things it's important to clarify to the way Farm Bureau works, we are a grassroots organization. So everything from us starts at the local level in our counties. So across the state we have 54 counties. And in each of those counties we have boards who are elected from their local membership, who have, of course, their local interests in mind and then advocate those issues kind of up the chain, so to speak, to bring them to California Farm Bureau, where perhaps there's a local issue or issue that's going to become wider spread advocate on those. Our state organization is part of our national organization. So we have this kind of interesting layers to the work we do at Farm Bureau. But all of our policies are defined by our members. And so when our estate decides to evaluate certain types of policies. So maybe it's, you know, where do we stand on a particular, uh, whether it's a taxation or whether it's looking at the use of ag inputs, we have a written policy book that has been adopted in the revised many times over 105 year history.
Shannon Douglass: [00:03:21] Yeah. And so our delegates make those decisions. So some people ask about, you know, what are your policy priorities? And you know, what direction do you hope to change. But our members really dictate that. So we do update and we have different focuses and things. But really so much of this is driven by our members. But one of the biggest changes is that our members asked for a bit of a different model in how we are organized and how our leadership works, and so they a special committee worked last year at Farm Bureau to redefine who the lead employee at our organization should be as far as what that should look like. And so, frankly, the first six months of my presidency has been working on implementing that and getting in place a new COO. So we will have a chief operating officer who starts in just a couple of weeks. And the process of hiring that person, who also will look a little bit different than what we've had before. We've typically had our organization led by someone who was very heavy on the advocacy side, someone who had been a lobbyist or had more of a legal background, and we are bringing in someone to lead who who was never a lobbyist and who does not have a background in law, but someone who has more of a background in management, in people and, and frankly, in, in the marketing side as well.
Shannon Douglass: [00:04:51] So we're we're really excited for that to happen. But that has been the biggest lift of the first six months and I'm just so thrilled. So the gentleman we're bringing in his name is Dan Durheim. He comes from the Midwest, but with a long history in Farm Bureau, and more recently he's been working on the insurance side. But we are just really pleased to have him join our team here in just a few weeks. And I'm really excited. One of the arguments from our members and our delegates over the last couple of years really had been that if you had someone leading who was so heavy on the advocacy side, then maybe you didn't get the balance on the other parts of the organization. But with someone like Dan there, we don't change anything about what Chris Reardon leads our advocacy efforts downtown, and it's really just going to provide more support for Chris to do his job better and not have someone who's getting pulled away on other issues.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:05:51] So what are the things that you are right now focusing on from an advocacy standpoint?
Shannon Douglass: [00:05:57] Yeah, I think that our core issues don't go away. For one. So sometimes what we're focused on day to day shuffles a little bit. This year though, and then this cycle I guess, would be appropriate to say statewide. Of course, nationally there's focus on seeing what we can get to happen with farm Bill if we're going to get a farm bill passed at some point. Uh, that's kind of been the never ending story, I suppose. But stateside, we've had a lot of time this year talking about the mill assessment and increases to that, which would basically provide an additional increase in costs being passed on to the farmers from for their agricultural inputs. We've been working a ton on a pretty wide variety of water issues. I always tell people that farm here, we're not just working on water quantity and access to that. It's really a combination of water quantity, sometimes working on the conveyance part of getting the water moved around, but also on water quality and environmental issues. So we really cover the gamut in those. But of course, insurance has continued to be a real big issue for us this year. And and I mean, it's just not going away. Of course, you know, whether someone is a consumer of insurance in California, whether they're just a homeowner or maybe they're just a vehicle owner. You don't have to own a home to be feeling the insurance pinch right now. Uh, but we know that the lack of availability of insurance and the price increases on insurance have been really challenging for our members up and down the state, uh, particularly in the foothill counties.
Shannon Douglass: [00:07:46] But really, I would say it's about everywhere. My example continues to have been that even my mother, who's very much in the valley in a non-fire impacted zip code, you know, she's now had two companies in a row that have dropped her just because they left California. Yeah, and this insurance market is tremendously challenging. So we have a we've done a ride of things on that front. One of them this year is years we've got a bill where we have worked with Senator Alvaro Gil to basically collect the health impact data from wildfires. And by collecting this, health impacts things like emergency room visits that increase during a wildfire event. We're hoping to have some additional justification for why we have to continue all of the fuel reduction work and the forest management work, and showing that this isn't just an impact to the landowner and to the homeowner if their house burns. This has an impact to the whole community, and it's in all of our best interests to improve this situation as best we can so that we hope, you know, if we have better welfare and fuel reduction management work happening, that's going to lead to a better insurance environment overall. So those are some of our real key areas. Of course, we've had a ton of issues on the animal ag front. That would be a whole nother interesting podcast for you to do about the challenges they're having over in Sonoma on that. But we are very busy all the time on the advocacy work, and I am so thankful we have such a great team working downtown for us.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:09:28] And as you were talking, when you look at agriculture, our farmers and growers, right. The price takers. So that whole concept and all this that you're talking about, insurance, other regulatory issues, all that is going to add to the cost and ag being a low margin business and the impact on that, that's going to be really something impactful. Any thoughts on how this all impacts from pricing and what that means to our growers and our industry?
Shannon Douglass: [00:10:03] Oh, absolutely. We're actually working with an economist right now on collecting some data, in particular on some input costs and how those rising costs do impact the farmer, because we know that as people move to negative margins, makes it hard to keep doing what you're doing right. And we certainly understand that. But sometimes people from an outside perspective think, well, gosh, we have all this land and there you have to be making money. And there's certainly a whole lot of people that are not in a money making situation right now, uh, really pretty, pretty widely spread across our industry. So there's really a lot of interesting pieces of that one piece I always highlight. And I'm sure you've you've seen it before. And so most of your listeners probably have. But there was a great study done, I think it wrapped in about 2018. And it was, uh, that Cal Poly San Luis Obispo did, uh, actually some of our farm bureaus in fact helped providing some, some funding for the second part of it. But they did two pieces. They had looked at regulatory costs back in, I believe it was seven. They looked at him again in 17. So ten years later, what did these regulatory costs look like? And what they found in that ten year span is that the regulatory costs for a very moderate sized California farmer on the Central Coast had increased by 795%.
Shannon Douglass: [00:11:28] And I think that's such an important number to share, because often people think, in fact, I had a reporter probably a year and a half or so ago now who had called me about the perception, and I'm making my own little air quotes when I say this, the perception that it's tough to do business in California and people are moving. And with this reporter, I had to say that's not a perception here. Let me provide you some data on the fact that it is like, especially when we talk about who we're competing against and somebody's selling, whether it's strawberries or tomatoes or nuts. In California, we're competing against other countries, even, but definitely other states who don't have the same regulatory environment and other countries where they don't have the challenge, they're not meeting the standards that we're meeting as far as from a environmental perspective and from a, you know, labor perspective, etc.. And yet we're still having to face these increased costs and try to fight into that market. And that does make it tremendously challenging. And one of my frustrations with our state, when you talked earlier about that disconnect from our elected officials and from others, of course, too.
Shannon Douglass: [00:12:41] But I feel like California is the state where. And if you look at the bills and things that pass and where they send funding, we want farmers markets. So we we love having farmers and we want them selling their products in the communities. Right. That would I think we could assess that as one of our values. If you look at where our state government is spending time and resources and money, you know, there are staff at Cdfa devoted to trying to connect more local farmers with school food service, actually. So there's so much of that happening. But at the same time, so they they want lots of farmers, they want small farmers, they want beginning farmers, all of that. But then we're in this regulatory environment that says, actually, here's a whole lot of extra work for you and makes it really difficult to be a small farmer and stay in business in California. So on one hand, we've got the state saying, yes, we want all of this local farmer, small farmers, yes, we want this. But then by the actions that are taken from a regulatory perspective, and we talk about increasing regulatory costs by almost 800% in one decade, right.
Shannon Douglass: [00:13:48] They're very much saying, nope, little guys, it's going to be hard for you to stay in business. And they really have pushed by their actions to these larger scale farms. And of course, we want farms of all sizes and shapes, but it's just a really interesting environment to be in where, again, that disconnect, where they don't seem to understand that all of these regulations that you pass in these water requirements and permitting, etc., those are going to impact who's going to be able to go to a farmer's market for so many years now? And as someone who was a first generation farmer, I've been really frustrated with this notion that, oh, if only more people wanted to become farmers, and if only we taught them how to be farmers, we would have plenty of people coming into agriculture. And I always tell people that they don't believe that to be the case at all. And in fact, if you look at some of the organizations that are doing work, try to connect retiring farmers and beginning farmers. We have no shortage of people wanting to come into agriculture who want to be farm owners and business owners. Their challenges are not that, gosh, if they only knew how to farm, well, maybe they would want to do this. Their challenges are the particularly the regulatory burdens to get into AG. So it's an interesting spot to be at.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:15:10] That is true, right? We usually um, say, oh, we need to do something to attract talent or we need to do something to do that. But you're saying that is not the deeper issue. The deeper issue is how do we manage around this 800%? Right. That's like crazy in ten years And is the whole thing with insurance costs right now happening and the other things that are that you have to deal with. How does the farmer exist? Right? I mean, that's like you. And one of the things when you said the reporter was saying that people are moving away, other industries, it might be easier to do that, but California is the place where that it has the natural resources to grow all this, right? I mean, where would you move? You move and take it somewhere where it snows eight months of the year. That's going to be hard to do. So it's very interesting. And then some people say, oh, that's what's a big deal. You'll just pass it on to us as consumers, right?
Shannon Douglass: [00:16:13] Yeah. No, I think that is such an interesting thing because again, from a consumer perspective and from, you know, electeds like you're saying, they're like, well, you know, just make your products more expensive. Well, it doesn't work that way for us, because when you go to the grocery store and you can choose to have buy blueberries that were grown in California, you're also going to have the option of blueberries that were grown in Mexico or in South America. And they're going to be cheaper, right? They had to go a little further, but they are going to be cheaper. And those are farmers who are not dealing with clean fleet standards and converting their forklifts and trying to find charging stations. Those are not things that they are having to battle with. And yet that is the competitive environment that we are in. And you're so right. Just up and moving is is very challenging. We know that. We've had certainly a number of dairies that have left and other farms as well. But you're right, it's just not as easy. We can't take the soil with us and we can't take the climate with us. And for many of us, while it is challenging to farm in California, we do really like this place. We like the lifestyle that we lead, and we like being able to really grow a great product that people can enjoy. And there's something really tangible from the work that we do, and we take a lot of pride in that. So we want to do this work. We'd just like it to be an environment of it is a little friendlier to allowing us to do that. And I would say that's really the the focus of what we do at Farm Bureau.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:17:40] When you think of the legislators and having all these regulations and maybe they have a certain intention, and when you're thinking through this, the intention could be good just on paper, but not spending the time or not having people in the industry as a part of the process. When you're putting these together has an impact that's actually the opposite of what you intended to do. So it's like, yes, I mean, we see that in labor all the time.
Shannon Douglass: [00:18:09] You're so right. I mean, that's one of the great examples right now. And we've done some promotion about this recently. But is this moving clean fuel standards. And I don't think that as a whole we're against going to making those changes. Right. But we don't number one have the capacity to do it. But things that get confusing. So if you want to switch from your, you know, you maybe you have a forklift truck, you might have a real old forklift, frankly, that's still on, that's still coarse fuel. But when you switch to an electric forklift.
Shannon Douglass: [00:18:41] One of our things sort of explain to Electeds has been when we make that shift, it's not a one for one. You don't just replace that with one electric forklift because of the batteries and the loads. And, you know, there being some additional challenges when they're lifting heavy things. It requires three forklifts because one forklift that can only run for roughly eight hours, and then it has a cool off time period and then a recharge period before you can use the darn thing again. So if you're, you know, maybe you're only open, you know, 16 hours a day or something in a, in a warehouse, and perhaps you can get away with just two. But switching to electric means that one forklift you have had before, you actually need two now. And not only is it a huge cost but also logistics. So did we just need another, uh, charging station? And we needed. You know, the additional all of the elements that went into building that first forklift. So yeah, we and sometimes there might be benefits in some things to us where Oh well we'll consider that. But it can be not one for one in cases like that.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:19:50] Yeah that's true. The challenge with all this, we've talked about the challenges that we have, but you continue to look at your when When I hear you, you have that passion and the drive. So what brings you joy? Why do you do what you do?
Shannon Douglass: [00:20:07] Yeah, the why we do this work at Farm Bureau is and why I am involved in it. I actually just worked on a a little project to remind me of this. Frankly, recently in the last two weeks or so, I've been working on. And really, for me, it comes down to our ability for the next generation to do this. And I believe very wholeheartedly that the work that we do today hopefully impacts us soon. And we want to, in our lifetimes, of course, have things better or preserved, perhaps, depending on your perspective. But I have a son and my son wants to be a part of agriculture. That's what he wants to get to do with his life. And I think that we have a responsibility to try to make sure we have those opportunities for the next generation, because the work that we'll do today again, hopefully it'll help us. But really my hope is that it helps him and it helps his peers and the young men and young women who are going to be the next generations of farmers in California and want to make sure that they have that opportunity. And for, heck, even my grandkids and great grandkids being in California, I want to make sure that we're still a state where we're growing the amazing products that we have. But to do that, it requires, frankly, it requires someone who really cares that much because we have to want to make sure it's going to happen. It has to be about a greater purpose, I believe, to really come with the the passion we need. But that's really the vision is that long term we've got to work on it today if we want it better for them in the future.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:21:42] That is so awesome. That's true because we want to leave this place in a better place than we started, right? Absolutely. For our just the next generation coming in. And how exciting is that? Anything else that I missed, Shannon?
Shannon Douglass: [00:22:01] No, I think that we're just really it's an exciting time. While it's a challenging time, I think that one of the things that I have been reminded of is I have a friend who's been a sheep rancher for a long time. And as we went through the last drought, and of course, it was really challenging, he would often provide some really good reminders. He's really active on social media of things like when times are tough, it is really challenging and it's really frustrating and it's sad in many ways, right. But at the same time, when things are tough is when we're able to make things better because we're forced to make decisions and do different things and try things that we might not have otherwise. Our animal ag example always is when you have this bad drought is when you are forced to cull frankly. So it's when you have to decide, gosh, I, I can only keep the best 200 sheep. I can't have 300 anymore or something along those lines. And they have to say, man, you make the you make the hard decisions. And so while we are in these really tough times and it is really challenging to be a California farmer right now, that also lends itself to opportunity. And that's the area where I'm really choosing to lean in, is the opportunity for how do we make things better when we really are being forced to. And I've definitely been reminding myself of that as often as possible, because that's going to be really critical guiding light moving forward.
Kirti Mutatkar: [00:23:29] That is true. So true. When tough times leads to innovative times, that is so true. That's where innovation happens. So this has been a great conversation. Thank you so much and I look forward to our next conversation.
Shannon Douglass: [00:23:46] Absolutely I can't wait. Thank you.