Kent Yeager to Discuss Rural Engagement at Annual Fish Fry
The Spencer County Democrats are pleased to welcome Kent Yeager, Deputy Chair for Rural Engagement with the Indiana Democratic Party, as our featured guest speaker at the annual Fish Fry on Sunday, July 18 at the 4-H Center in Chrisney. We will also be welcoming Executive Director of the Indiana Democratic Party, Lauren Ganapini, and 8th District Chair, Thomasina Marsili, as special guest speakers as well.
Kent Yeager has spent most of adult life working on farm and rural policy issues. From April 2019 until March 2020, he worked on Pete Buttigieg’s policy team, focusing on rural policy issues. Kent joined US Senator Joe Donnelly’s staff in September of 2013 and served as his state agricultural liaison until 2018. The position with Senator Donnelly followed his retirement from Indiana Farm Bureau in August 2013. Kent had served as Farm Bureau Director of Public Policy since May 1996. In that position he led Indiana Farm Bureau’s public advocacy and political strategy, including the political action committee, Indiana Farm Bureau ELECT. For most of his career Kent was Indiana Farm Bureau’s federal lobbyist and he has made more than 250 visits to Washington, DC.
Kent joined the Farm Bureau public policy team after serving for three years as state executive director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency. Prior to his 1993 appointment to the FSA position, he was a field representative and national affairs assistant for IFB.
In his early adult life, Kent was an active farmer and volunteer in Farm Bureau and many other organizations including service on the board of directors of the Indiana Corn Growers Association, the Indiana Soybean Growers Association, the Southern Indiana Rural Development Project and Purdue CARET.
In 1983, Kent was named Indiana’s Conservation Farmer, and was chairman of the Indiana Farm Bureau Young Farmer Committee in 1984. He was named to the original Indiana Commission for Agriculture and Rural Development by Frank O’Bannon in 1989 and was elected twice to the Harrison County Council. Kent was the first person to be named an honorary commissioner of agriculture in Indiana. He received Indiana’s Sagamore of the Wabash in 1996 and a Distinguished Hoosier in 2013.
Kent and his wife, Joy, live in the home where he was raised. Their house, near Mauckport, Ind., is almost 150 years old, and the farm has been in the Yeager family since before the home was built. They are the parents of three adult children and are active members of St. Joseph Catholic Church in Corydon.
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