Pat Butler’s guide to membership recruitment starts with a succinct sports analogy: “If you’re scouting a baseball team, you look at where the weaknesses are.”
As the top Farm Bureau membership volunteer for 2025, it’s evident the Calhoun County leader — board member, past president, policy development chair — found some soft spots and unturned stones worth flipping.
“We want regular members: farmers, landowners, retired farmers, ag facility employees,” Butler started. “So who haven’t we touched? Where haven’t we gone?”
Plenty of places, it turned out.
“I went to Voyce’s Elevator and they’ve got five full-time employees. If they’re ages 18-35 we can write ‘em for half price — Calhoun does that for Young Farmers — so then I started looking elsewhere: Who else has employees?”
More places, it turned out.
Butler found prospects aplenty at farm-friendly retailers like Family Farm & Home and Tractor Supply — employees whose involvement with agriculture easily fit Calhoun’s criteria for regular membership. (Remember those criteria can vary from one county Farm Bureau to the next.)
“There’s this gal I’ve sold hay to — she raises a few beef cattle,” he cited. “Another guy sells sweet corn and raises vegetables; he has some cattle, too.”
When the membership year closed Aug. 29, he’d added 14 new regular members to Calhoun County’s rolls. Some were misclassified as associates; others just didn’t know there existed a local organization capable of providing even small farms with practical support.
“Several started out in the industry but are not regularly farming now,” Butler said. “They don’t understand what’s available to them, especially if they’re retired.”
What’s next?
Still untapped are agricultural operations operating outside the usual food-fiber-fuel categories — especially nurseries and greenhouses focused on ornamental landscaping plants.
Call it a to-do list for Butler, who as a retired public servant — 35 years a firefighter — finds the drive to serve others as energizing as ever.
“I think I just get the interaction with Farm Bureau — attending meetings, developing policy, all the friends I’ve made — I’ve operated this way all my life.
“I don’t know any different. My parents were very good teachers.”
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