Council Participates in 2026 KC Chamber Fly-In

By Zach Helder, Vice President

Earlier this month, the Ag Business Council joined the Greater Kansas City Chamber's annual D.C. Fly-In, April 13–15. About two dozen civic and business leaders made the trip — Hallmark, Panasonic, Garmin, Honeywell, KU Med, UMKC, the Kauffman Foundation, MARC, and others — for two days of policy briefings, Hill meetings, and conversations about Kansas City's place in the national agenda.

The heart of the trip was on the Hill. The delegation met directly with Senators Marshall and Moran and Representatives Schmidt, Cleaver, and Davids, and with senior staff in the offices of Senators Hawley and Schmitt and Representative Graves. In addition to the Chamber's broader agenda, we had the opportunity to discuss USDA's reorganization, including the relocation of employees to our region: Kansas City is pressing its case to host as many relocating civil servants as possible among the five hubs under discussion. We also thanked agriculture committee members for their leadership and engagement with our membership. Around those meetings, the group heard timely briefings from the Bipartisan Policy Center, the U.S. Chamber's Global Energy Institute and C_TEC, and political strategists from the Hawthorn Group and the U.S. Chamber.

Beyond the formal agenda, two days spent alongside Kansas City's civic leadership was valuable in its own right. I like to think our presence was a physical reminder of the role of agriculture in our region's civic and economic life. Many in the delegation are longtime friends of the Council, and the Fly-In put agriculture squarely in the wider conversation about the region's priorities — workforce, transportation, energy, health, and growth. We left the trip not only with a fresh touch with our congressional delegation, but with renewed opportunities for partnership with allied, non-agricultural leaders in the Kansas City region.