What Happens When Your dreams Come True?
Every commodity checkoff meeting I have ever attended has been about one thing: building demand. Beef, pork, corn, soybean, dairy, veal, cotton, turnips, whatever, the goal of producer funded and controlled programs has always been about increasing the price of the commodity by improving demand. But what happens if you succeed? What happens when the price of your product goes higher than you, or anyone else in the industry, could have imagined. What happens when, almost overnight, all your demand dreams come true? That is just what has happened to corn and soybean producers. Corn and soybean prices have hit new record high price levels while floods have devastated millions of acres of cropland in the Midwest. Even a Purdue Ag economist said the price of corn is too high. Against this background the last thing you want to be talking about is increasing demand. This was the dilemma faced by the United soybean Board as they met yesterday in Indianapolis.
There are some who will say “with $15 soybeans who needs a checkoff?” As agriculture enters into a new era where it will be asked to produce more food, fiber, and fuel than ever before, the need for producer controlled checkoff is as great as ever. Supply and demand are just opposite ends of the same equation. The same kind of creativity and fortitude that created our demand will be needed to develop the corresponding supply.
Find out what they decided to do at Hoosier Ag Today.com