ARA: Making Noise On Behalf Of Ag Retailers
It is hard to believe that summer is behind us, and many of you are in the midst of another harvest season. The Agricultural Retailers Association (ARA) has picked up a lot of its face-to-face activities, and like so many of you, we at ARA are grateful to have some things feeling more and more like business as usual.
The ARA team hit the road to represent its membership at several trade shows and industry events in the past few months. At these events, ARA highlighted the work of the association as well as the importance of the ag retailer to the agriculture industry. ARA senior leadership has visited with members across the country to witness firsthand some of the issues and successes of the past 18 months—from labor shortages to fuel price increases and from devastating weather conditions to bountiful harvests.
Through it all, one thing has not changed, and that is ARA’s dedication to the ag retailer. ARA strives to ensure that ag retailers worry less about burdensome regulatory and legislative updates from Washington, D.C., and worry more about serving America’s farmers. By acting as your eyes and ears on Capitol Hill, ARA empowers your team to invest in leadership development by taking advantage of ARA’s various in-person and online programs.
ARA Crisis Management and Media Training
In August, ARA held the Crisis Preparedness Workshop, the first in-person Professional Development Pathway event since early 2019. The workshop was held in partnership with FMC and included timely information on the COVID-19 response and new cybersecurity measures relevant to the ag industry.
Participants sat down with a subject matter expert to review and improve their companies’ location management and crisis response plans. The media training portion of the workshop focused not only on how to best respond once a crisis has occurred but also how companies can proactively engage their local media in a positive way so that trusting relationships are already established should a crisis occur.
To help members with the seemingly daunting task of proactive media and community outreach, ARA developed a Community & Media Relations Toolkit. This toolkit is equipped with social media best practices, news release templates related to events such as a First Responders Day and more resources to build up your company’s reputation within your community.
ARA on the Hill
The work on Capitol Hill never stops. As you might imagine, some policy pursuits of the current administration have presented challenges to the industry this year. ARA continues to educate and advocate on behalf of its members at the federal level as it has done for decades.
ARA staff and members have taken action and led efforts on several fronts such as the following:
- Protecting estate tax policy for family-owned businesses;
- Increasing investment for climate-smart ag practices;
- Including the Surface Transportation Reauthorization Act in infrastructure legislation;
- Supporting administration nominees who have working knowledge of the ag industry;
- Modernizing the seasonal ag CDL program to keep up with changing weather and other challenges;
- Supporting a Rail Customer Coalition report to the Surface Transportation Board regarding increased competition per an executive order;
- Opposing countervailing duties on imports of farm inputs in trade agreements; and
- Improving the EPA’s risk management program.
Take Grassroots Action with ARA
ARA makes it easy for anyone to take action and make their voice heard with its easy-to-use online grassroots advocacy tool. More than 180 grassroots messages have been sent from ARA’s online tool this year to advocate for ag-friendly tax policies, paraquat’s safe use, relief from the driver shortage, infrastructure and more. Current grassroots advocacy campaigns aimed at Congress that are open and ready for your participation include:
- Supporting the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (H.R. 3684),
- Preserving agribusiness tax incentives and
- Urging to develop modernized reforms to the “seasonal ag CDL” program.
If the above issues impact your business, then join ARA and your industry peers by sending a message to your elected officials by going to www.aradc.org/take-action.