For Sacramento Valley farmer Shannon Douglass, the history she made on Dec. 5 was years in the making.

When Douglass was elected first vice president of the California Farm Bureau in 2017, many expected her to someday lead the 29,000-member organization. “The future of Farm Bureau is very important to me,” she told Farm Press in 2018.

Now Douglass, 39, will get a chance to shepherd that future. At the CFB’s 105^th Annual Meeting in Reno, she was chosen by delegates as the organization’s first female president, succeeding three-term president Jamie Johansson.

She was elected to a two-year term and can serve up to four terms.

“This is an exciting moment,” Douglass said. “Farm Bureau has provided me with tremendous opportunities as a first-generation farmer. I’m excited to be part of the leadership of this organization, which represents the diversity of farmers and ranchers in our state.

“The California Farm Bureau has long played an important role in working to protect the future of America’s most productive agricultural economy,” she added. “We face abundant challenges in farming and ranching today. But California remains a great place to grow food, and Farm Bureau is committed to helping our state farmers, ranchers and agricultural businesses thrive for generations to come.”

Douglass is an owner of Douglass Ranch in Orland, Calif., which raises cattle and grows walnuts, corn and forage crops, She also co-founded CalAgJobs, an online listing of employment opportunities in California agriculture.

She joined the Farm Bureau in college to take part in a discussion meet, and later she and her husband started a Young Farmers and Ranchers group in Glenn County. She later chaired the YF&R State Committee and took part in the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Partners in Agricultural Leadership program.

She has served as a director of the Glenn County Farm Bureau and as chair of the California Farm Bureau’s Young Farmers & Ranchers State Committee.

Lifelong ag interest

Douglass became interested in agriculture through 4-H and FFA activities while growing up in the Sacramento area. She studied ag at California State University, Chico, where she was in numerous clubs and was on the livestock judging team. That’s where she met her husband, Glenn County native Kelly Douglass.

Shannon Douglass taught animal and crop sciences at Chico State for a few years while also recruiting young professionals for a pest-control trade group. She left the teaching job when she and her friend and business partner, Miranda Driver of Woodland, Calif., started CalAgJobs in 2013.

Douglass and Driver started their job-placement service with the help of a USDA Specialty Crop Block Grant of about $66,000, which has been used to help students find internships. The service started as an email distribution list, to which Douglass would post job openings as they came in. But the list got too big for their email account to handle, so they started a website, CalAgJobs.com.

CalAgJobs offers three services – internship postings, job postings in which people can apply on the website or on the employer’s website, and recruitment services for specific companies.

With Douglass’ ascension, Shaun Crook of Sonora, a three-term second vice president of CFB, was promoted by delegates to first vice president. Stanislaus County cattle rancher Ron Peterson was chosen as second vice president.