UPDATE: This story has been updated to clarify the bylaw amendment vote totals.

On Dec. 9, 331 Illinois farmers spread across the Grand Ballroom of Chicago’s Palmer House to debate policy and set the future direction of the Illinois Farm Bureau, without ever formally addressing the expulsion of the organization from the American Farm Bureau Federation, its pending litigation against the national group, or the membership requirement change for insurance.

Early in the session, Adams County delegate Ben Hugenberg moved to amend the agenda to remove President Brian Duncan and Vice President Evan Hultine and hold new elections for each position. That motion kicked off more than two and a half hours of debate, maneuvering, parliamentary procedures and legal consultations.

The motion had to be separated into independent motions, so Duncan recused himself; Hultine presided over the initial question of amending the agenda to remove the president. He cited the Illinois Not-for-Profit Corporation Act, which says written notice of the removal vote of a director has to be provided 20 days in advance. That decision of the chair was quickly appealed on the grounds that the officers were elected to lead the association and they weren’t just board members. Hultine explained they are ex officio board members.

“We're not asking for you to be removed from the board,” said JD Suddeth, delegate and past Sangamon County president. “These motions are to debate and have an election on whether to remove the president and the vice president. Therefore, we do not believe that you are protected by the rules of the removal of the board member.”

BOARD OR NO? Sangamon County, Ill., farmer JD Suddeth (yellow tie) later asked for legal clarification about whether the nonprofit law applied to the motion to remove the officers.

Hultine called on Nancy Sylvester, a certified professional parliamentarian, who cited Robert’s Rules of Order on “ex officio” and said removing the president would remove him from the board.

That meant the 20-day notice would apply, according to outside legal counsel Paul Winters, nonprofit attorney from Wagenmaker & Oberly, Chicago.

After further debate, legal counsel, parliamentary counsel and a call to take a standing vote, the body ultimately found themselves voting by secret ballot about whether to take a standing vote to appeal the chair’s decision to dismiss the amendment to the agenda. The body voted against a standing vote but were largely confused by the wording of what they were voting for and against. Hultine clarified by presenting the following two options for the secret ballot:

The motion passed, which meant a majority of the body agreed with the chair’s ruling that removing the president could not be placed on the agenda. Hultine did not share the percentage breakdown of the votes.

The delegate session immediately returned to the approval of the agenda and the remainder of the meeting.

Late in the day, at the end of the session, delegates voted on two bylaw changes, which would have compensated the vice president as an employee of IFB, and would have created one-year terms for officers. Both measures failed, by 62% for vs. 38% against on the first and 34.5% for vs. 65.5% against on the second. Neither received the required two-thirds vote to pass.

Farmers react

To no surprise, tension across the delegate room ran high all day and spilled into hallways, where folks spoke in small, cordial groups, despite their deep divisions. Back on the debate floor, Milledgeville farmer Brad Smith was one of the few who spoke up during the agenda debate. 

“I understand there's a lot of people that are upset over what has happened, but if you want to do this scorched-earth campaign, do it in the light of day,” Smith said. “Campaign all next year where I can look you in the eye. Don't do it at the eleventh hour here. Let's go on with our business at hand, and we will talk about these things next year heading into the election.”

Those who hoped to see the president and vice president removed wanted exactly the opposite.

“I just wanted there to be the discussion,” said Bret Parr, Mason City farmer and former Mason County Farm Bureau president. “Through the whole process of this deal since September, there has been a lack of communication, a lack of open discussion and a lack of allowing members to voice their opinion and be heard.”

Parr is a third-generation Farm Bureau member and a second-generation county president, but he’s concerned this situation will turn off young farmers. His 20-year-old son has finished college and returned home to farm, and Parr said he’s asked a lot of questions about the Farm Bureau situation.

“My son said to me, ‘Why do you want to be involved in it if it frustrates you that much?’ And I said that I don’t want the next generation to be frustrated.”

Parr fears IFB has lost its grassroots way. “This is a mess. We’re missing out on an opportunity to allow our membership to cast a vote. We can go in any direction, but it should be the membership’s decision,” he said. “And what happened Monday morning was a whole lot of legalese and lawyer speak. That’s not what Farm Bureau is about and it’s very disappointing. I think we’ve lost our way.”

Another perspective

Lee County farmer Jim Schielein felt the delegate session was transparent. “You hate to air dirty laundry out in public, but at least the way it was done on Monday morning, it was transparent. People had an opportunity to weigh in to air their grievances,” he said.

He acknowledged it was a “little odd” that delegates never discussed the insurance, AFBF or lawsuit — or as another farmer said, the most-talked-about thing at the meeting that wasn’t talked about.

“We all know what the elephant in the room is. Did you hear any of that discussion today? No, and that’s why I think we’re not done yet,” said Schielein, a longtime friend of Duncan.

AGENDA DEBATE: Shown here consulting with legal advisers during the early agenda motions, IFB President Brian Duncan told reporters later in the day that he thought “delegates were super engaged and had a lot of really good discussions about issues important to agriculture.”

Schielein served on the IFB board of directors from 2000 to 2010 and said this is the third time IFB has tangled with AFBF:

Schielein said AFBF’s method of counting voting delegates is “bogus — and that’s being charitable.” AFBF determines how many voting delegates each state gets by membership, including all nonfarmer members, which means states with big insurance programs have more delegates. Today, he said, the eight states of the southern region hold a majority of the voting delegates, at 60%.

“They only need to pull one, maybe two, states to have a super majority,” Schielein said. “How do you develop a national farm policy from a general farm organization with that kind of skewed representation?”

At the end of the day, Schielein believes it was not appropriate to call for the removal of the president and vice president. And while some delegates were itching to talk about the insurance and AFBF situation, perhaps in an executive session, Schielein said it wouldn’t have been appropriate to talk about Country business in the delegate session.

“Does that rise to the level of legal and illegal? I don’t know, but it definitely would’ve been inappropriate because that was a management decision,” he said.

CHAIR: Bureau County, Ill., farmer Evan Hultine was elected vice president at the 2023 IFB annual meeting and presided over the early agenda portion of the meeting.

Back to grassroots

Franklin County delegate Kelly Robertson knows there are probably insurance topics that can’t be discussed, due to confidentiality or propriety information, but taken to the extreme, it results in a lack of transparency.

“Getting louder and stomping your feet doesn’t make transparency better. It just makes people distrust you even more,” he said. Overall, he feels ignored as a grassroots member.

“This whole thing that's gone on for the last four or five months is a complete, total waste of time and resources, effort and energy,” Robertson said, adding that if the membership change had been brought to the delegates and members, members would have been more at ease. “We would’ve had discussions and disagreements, but we wouldn’t be where we’re at today on the delegate floor.

“And there's a whole lot more important things facing agriculture and farmers right now than the stupidity we saw today.”

Still, Robertson said his most revealing conversation was with a state legislator in attendance. The legislator’s response to what he saw? “It looks familiar.”

Robertson was aghast. “That’s the most insulting thing you could say — that we look like the state capital. How embarrassing is that? We’re farmers. We’re supposed to be better than that.”

In the middle of impassioned debates, Parr has tried to maintain perspective.

“In the grand scheme of things, this probably doesn’t affect me personally in the long run. I will pivot, I will move on, and my life will go on and I will be happy,” he said. “But sometimes you’ve just got to fight the good fight.”