Keeping U.S. Transportation Improvements on Track

Soybean checkoff-funded group takes action at annual meeting

A group of soybean farmers tried to level the bumpy condition of the nation’s transportation infrastructure at the Soy Transportation Coalition’s (STC) 2011 annual meeting held recently in Savannah, Ga. Farmers representing soybean organizations from 11 states along with two national organizations who serve on the STC elected 2012 officers, received updates of transportation studies underway and deliberated and ranked new ones designed to improve public and private investment in U.S. roads, bridges, railways and ports. Soybean checkoff funds help export more than every other row of soybeans grown in the United States.

The group heard an update on two checkoff-funded transportation studies nearing completion. They include:

1.    The first phase of a study examining the local impact of a catastrophic failure of locks and dams on U.S. rivers, scheduled to be completed in January.

2.    A farm-to-market study that will explore the journey of U.S. soybeans from the farm to customer and investigate transportation choke-points along the way. U.S. soybean farmers and other representatives of the U.S. soy industry originated the project as part of the biennial soy industry CONNECTIONS meeting in 2010.

“The farmers who serve on USB determined increasing investment in transportation infrastructure should be a top priority for the soybean checkoff,” says Dale Profit, Ohio farmer and one of three United Soybean Board (USB) directors who serve on the STC. “This work remains critical if the U.S. transportation system will be able to provide us with a competitive advantage compared to soybean farmers in other parts of the world.”

USB’s Global Opportunities (GO) program provides partial funding for specific transportation-related studies recommended by the STC. In addition to Profit, other USB GO Committee farmer-directors who serve on the STC board include Dwain Ford of Illinois and Jared Hagert of North Dakota.

Other action the STC took at its annual meeting included:

•    Funding a study to examine what kind of transportation infrastructure rural America will need in the future and, if too expensive, what kind of new solutions American agriculture may need to explore.

•    Voting to research a bylaws change that could establish two-year term limits for each position of the STC executive committee.

•    Reelecting Iowa farmer Ed Ulch as 2012 STC chairman, Ohio farmer Patrick Knouff as vice chairman and Kansas farmer Jerry Wyse as secretary-treasurer.

The STC’s next meeting takes place Wednesday, Feb. 29 prior to Commodity Classic in Nashville.