East Central South Dakota | Thank you for taking the time for a thoughtful reply. We are a very political family, and the rule is you have to have oral reasons for a solution. Here is my take based on South Dakota. I am sure, I hope, other state organizations are run better.
1. The organization is now 50 years old with very little change in operations in 50 years. The elections are not transparent enough and not enough involvement. Same people just bounce back and forth from the grower side to the utilization council when they get termed out. Elections should be voted on electronically. Nominations should be more easily facilitated. Annual meeting should be in the afternoon to encourage attendance not at 8 o'clock in the morning the day of the banquet---the two boards are literally the only people in attendance for the most part.
2. The corn growers and utilization board should be one board. South Dakota corn voted to endorse the summit pipeline at the annual meeting early Saturday morning with, if I remember right, 34 people present----18 of which were board members.
3. Narrow the scope of your mission to education and Government policy. Two things. Quit sponsoring agriculture events and conference tournaments trying to sell yourself to producers. You are spending money on the wrong crowd, we all know how great we are. Doing two things really well is better than doing 20 poorly.
4. Why do I have to buy a membership when you are already taking money out of my corn check? If you pay into the check off, you should automatically be a member of the corn association. Those that aren't members are being taxed without representation.
5. The commodity organizations need drastic change to catch up with how technology has changed the industry. People want to see change and today the environment is ripe for that change. If we are not willing to do that we need to just go away and give me my money back.
Prime example of the incompetence we deal with, with the Corn Growers. There are 10,035 farms that grow corn in South Dakota by the Corn Growers own website. I wanted to know how many of those producers are members of South Dakota Corn Growers. I just now hung up from calling the state office, talked to two people and no one in the office knew that number. The director of media and communications didn't know how many members she is representing. The guy that knows isn't in today. How does not every employee know how many members their organization has. We are just a meal ticket for a lot of people. |
Future worth of check off dollars....
