Washington DC

As part of our duties for the Young Cooperators Council, Kris and I attended the National Milk Producers Federation board meeting in good old Washington DC.

 

NMPF is a 97-year old organization that tries to advance the well-being of dairy producers and their co-ops.  Basically, they try to influence politics by speaking for 32,000 dairy producers who are a part of it.

 

The issues they discussed were of course interesting to us, and we even hobnobbed with some politicians:

 

Seriously, NMPF has a young cooperator program because they want us to be involved and active.  In June, the entire young cooperator council comes and we meet with our state representatives.

A lot of what I saw was this - the meeting:

But we also had time for this - the sightseeing:

 

And despite the state of the government now, we took some time to be thankful that we don't have to pay taxes in the currency of Yap.

 

Sun Country has a direct flight from Lansing to DC, and we knew we had a couple friends on the plane coming in that we were taking home ... what I didn't realize is that we would have LOTS of friends on the plane.  Michigan Farm Bureau was coming to meet with legislators, and since we've been involved in that organization, we knew about ten people getting off the plane.

 

Everyone stayed and talked for a little bit, and after they left and we sat down a stranger said to me, "I've been in airports before where I ran into someone I knew, but how is it that you knew EVERYONE on that plane?!"  I explained about Farm Bureau and she said, "Oh, I thought maybe you were rock stars."

 

That'll be my answer next time.