This busiest time of year for the Governmental Relations team is upon us. The 2012 Virginia General Assembly will convene next Wednesday in Richmond, and we’ve been busy preparing to fight for the legislative priority issues that you, our producer members, deemed the most important.

A big thank you goes out to all of you who attended our Senatorial District meetings across the state, as well as our Field Services Directors who helped set up the meetings. We had a great turn out this year and were very successful educating our legislators about our issues.

We will be updating you on the statuses of these issues and other issues that affect agriculture as they arise in a few different ways. We will be updating the blog every Tuesday and Thursday with important articles, so please make sure you bookmark this page under your Favorites folder or subscribe by e-mail on the left of this page.

 We will also be sending out important action and information alerts on Wednesdays and Fridays. I can already foresee us calling on your support and action several times during this session, so please make sure you are receiving these important e-mails from the VFB Capitol Connections Action Center by e-mailing kelly.pruitt@vafb.com.

There is a change this year–we will only be sending out three paper General Assembly update mailings. Those will be on: January 27, February 17 and March 23. These are the only times we’ll be sending out updates through the mail, so, if you can, please sign up for the blog and the Capitol Connections Action Center when you can.

Legislative Day is January 24. We have an exciting day planned starting with the United States Farmers and Ranchers Alliance training session in the morning, lunch with Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, meeting with legislators and delivering the Stand Our Ground: Property Rights postcards, and ending with our legislative reception hosted by the VFB Women’s Committee. I know a lot of you have registered, and we look forward to seeing you at the Capitol.

Thanks to your action and support, we’ve had much success over the years at the General Assembly. We hope you will step up again to help us keep you and all of Virginia agriculture in business.

Thanks for all that you do,

Martha