South Dakota Farm Bureau President Scott VanderWal has been re-elected to represent the Midwest region on the American Farm Bureau Board of Directors.

Elections were held during the national Farm Burea's 89th annual meeting in New Orleans.

VanderWal, who farms near Volga, was first elected to the national board in 2006.

More than 5,000 people attended the convention.

VanderWal said that the delegate session was fairly quiet, because the organization already had very strong policy in all of the major issues.

"The biggest change was to favor mandatory country-of-origin labeling," VanderWal said in a prepared release. "The reason for that is because the proposal has changed from its earlier version. The AFBF board and staff had previously determined that the compromise language for COOL in the new farm bill used a lot more common sense and was now workable."