News and Views

Issue 8
June 1997
News & Views From the Wheat & Barley Growers

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Prairie Grains is the
official publication of
the Minnesota
Association of
Wheat Growers,
North Dakota Grain
Growers Association,
South Dakota Wheat,
Inc., and the
Minnesota Barley
Growers Association.

NDGGA at Forefront of ND Legislative Happenings
Members of the North Dakota Grain Growers Association should be proud of the influence and accomplishments of the Association during the 1997 Legislative Session. The strength of our membership numbers was evident as we testified and lobbied on your behalf. Legislators were eager to learn what the Grain Grower position was on issues ranging from anhydrous ammonia regulations to ag research to the commodity check-off increases.
The Grain Growers were represented daily during the legislature either by staff or myself or other board members who made frequent trips to the capitol to testify on your behalf. NDGGA was active in the passage of modest wheat and barley check-off increases. The NDGGA recruited legislative sponsors for the barley check-off bill and testified at all of the hearings for the bills. Additionally, Grain Growers educated lawmakers throughout the session about the need for the barley checkoff increase.
NDGGA also worked for the passage of the NDSU budget with a $1.2 million enhancement over Governor Schafer's budget. Through their efforts, the Grain Growers played an important role in research funding and were involved in the creation of the producer-driven board of directors for state research-the State Board of Agricultural Research. This Board will appropriate grants for indi vidual research projects from an up-to-$2 million fund.
The Grain Growers supported the Ag Product defamation proposal. This law will allow agricultural producers and processors to sue for damages if someone intentionally spreads false information which harms the reputation of their product. The bill was ridiculed by media interests as a "sirloin slander" proposal, but the Grain Growers and other ag groups pushed for its eventual passage.
Additionally, we lobbied for HB 1433 which establishes a minor use pesticide fund to help with costs incurred when labeling products for new uses. The NDGGA worked hard for the passage of a farmer-friendly anhydrous bill, HB 1215, to allow for rural transfer of anhydrous. Lastly, the NDGGA became involved in an ethanol battle in the late hours of the session where we lobbied to save the $1.75 million ethanol incentive program after a Senate conference committee threatened to eliminate it.
It is a priority of the Grain Growers board of directors to be responsive to the needs and request of its members. The member-based NDGGA works hard to be a non-partisan voice for North Dakota's barley and wheat producers in the North Dakota Legislature and in Washington. I think that members should be proud of the accomplishments of the NDGGA board and staff representing your interests. I know that I am.
Lowell Berntson, Kulm, ND
NDGGA President

Each Wheat Grower Contributes to Quality
I think we as wheat growers don't realize just how important we are to the U.S. wheat marketing picture. But how well each one of us harvests, stores, and delivers our wheat crop in the next few months will collectively frame the effectiveness of U.S. wheat promotion overseas well into 1998, and even beyond that.
We are doing a better job of providing cleaner wheat to overseas customers. For example, the April issue of Successful Farming tells of the Japanese Food Agency director writing to Joe Berry, the Kansas wheat producer who currently chairs U.S. Wheat Associates, to point out the progress made in cleaning up U.S. wheat. The average dockage had fallen from 0.7% to 0.5% over the last two years.
However, during the same time period, Canadian wheat purchased by the Food Agency averaged just 0.16% dockage, and Australian wheat averaged 0.3%. The fact that American ingenuity and our free-market competitiveness can take on and beat foreign governments in the business world is well documented over our nation's 221-year-old history. The resurgence of the U.S. automobile industry since the 1980s is a classic example of what a concerted effort on delivering quality can do.
With U.S. Hard Red Spring Wheat, we need to refine quality on two fronts: Cleanliness and baking performance. To address cleanliness, we need to continue to reduce dockage, starting at the most important point, our own farms. And we need to work with the grain trade to make sure greater quality control is maintained through the market system.
Longer term, we must support and expand crop breeding efforts, and harness the possibilities of biotechnology, to develop high performance spring wheat varieties for new millennium markets.
Cliff Keller, Fergus Falls, MN
Chairman, Minnesota Wheat Council

MAWG Instrumental in Advancing Ag Research
The Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers, working in tandem with the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council, has been at the forefront of many advances in agricultural research thus far in 1997, and promises to be actively involved in other significant activities and programs that are planned.
In the Minnesota Legislative Session, we were successful in securing $1.624 million over the next biennium for continued research of scab and vomitoxin in small grains.
As well, the state allocated $100,000 over the biennium for a state wheat breeder, which will be matched by a funding commitment from the wheat and barley industry. The Minnesota Barley Growers Association deserve credit for its leadership role in obtaining support for the wheat breeder position.
Kudos to Sen. LeRoy Stumpf (DFL-Thief River Falls), Rep. Tim Finseth (R-Angus), Rep. Jim Tunheim (DFL-Kennedy), Sen. Majority Leader Roger Moe (DFL-Erskine) Gov. Carlson, and the MN Department of Agriculture for seeing these issues through.
The MAWG is also active in securing support for ag research at the federal level. The MAWG and about 30 other organizations across the nation are urging congressional appropriators to earmark funding for federal scab research in the fiscal 1998 budget. We are urging congressional appropriators to support funding for the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Cereal Rust Lab in St. Paul, and have asked appropriators not to close the Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory in Mandan, ND.
Further, we are taking part in the National Association of Wheat Growers' (NAWG) Wheat Industry Research Initiative Symposium, to be held in Portland June 29-July 1. This symposium will bring conference participants up to date on progress being made in research to control major wheat diseases and solve related marketing problems. The invited keynote speaker is Dr. Norman Borlaug, internationally renowned research scientist and father of the "green revolution."
The Research Initiative is a national effort in which the wheat industry as a collective whole will focus its attention and resources on three major diseases, Karnal bunt, TCK smut and Fusarium Head Blight (scab). The initiative will quantify the economic impact these diseases have on all segments of the industry, including effects of trade barriers that have been put into place in lieu of sound, science-based trading practices.
It is the initiative's goal to provide a sound economic and scientific basis for the reduction or removal of those market impediments, to develop research priorities that benefit the entire wheat industry, and to create a dialogue throughout the wheat industry chain that results in improved communication from the producer on one end to the end user on the other, and vice versa.
The NAWG must be commended for its leadership in organizing this research initiative.
Tim Dufault, Crookston, MN
MAWG President

Market Access Program Leverages Producer Funding
It's unfortunate that some national media negatively portray U.S. market promotion programs such as the USDA's Market Access Program (MAP). Calling these export promotion tools "corporate advertising paid by taxpayers" is shortsighted and misleading.
The MAP, known in the past as the Market Promotion Program and the Targeted Export Assistance Program, has undergone two important changes in recent years:
The 1993 budget reconciliation required the Secretary of Agriculture to certify that federal funds supplement private and third-party funds, and prevented program funds from promoting specific branded products in a single market for more than five years.
The 1996 Farm Bill prevents the use of MAP funds to provide direct assistance to any for-profit corporation not recognized as a small business or to foreign corporations promoting foreign products, and requires beneficiaries of branded product programs to provide funds equal to those provided by the MAP.
MAP is different from the Foreign Market Development (Cooperator) program, because it provides funding for specific projects rather than ongoing operations. MAP is valuable to commodity promotion organizations such as the U.S. Feed Grains Council, since producer dollars are leveraged with matching MAP funds. Some examples of programs the Council will conduct this year with MAP funds:

Promote U.S. malt and malting barley at world events, such as BrazilBrau '97.
Distribute USFGC importer manuals, a feed grains buyers guide in six languages.
Conduct infrastructure and port development work in Indonesia.
Offer a regional grain commodity situation and outlook conference in Latin America.
Develop Vietnam's grain infrastructure.
Conduct a corn, sorghum and barley survey in Taiwan.
Survey the malt handling capability in Latin American markets.

The MAP program does not subsidize ag exports-it only allows promotion in closed markets. This program is essential to our worldwide export market development efforts. It is even more important given freer markets and increasing privatization of global grain purchases.
Mike Seeger, Red Lake Falls, MN
MBRPC Chairman and USFGC Treasurer

SD Growers to Pursue Prairie Premium Co-op Mills
Prairie Premium Co-op Mills has organized recently in South Dakota. This closed cooperative is pursuing the possibility of building a flour mill in Huron, SD.
South Dakota's Secretary of Ag Darrell Cruea suggested this project last December, and called upon the South Dakota Corn Growers and South Dakota Wheat, Inc. to put a steering committee together. Through these associations a working group of producers decided to proceed and a closed cooperative was formed.
As a closed cooperative, Prairie Premium Co-op Mills has been reviewing mill designs and developing a business plan for milling wheat as well as the possibilities of expanding into corn milling. Once plans are complete, PPCM will give producers an opportunity to invest and vertically expand into the processing of their commodity product.
I have been excited to be a part of this project and found it to be a learning experience. It has been fast paced, but best of all it has been consumer driven. The PPCM project looks like it is going to become a reality and while there are no sure investments in life, it is my hope that producers are the owners of this opportunity.
Will producers be ready to invest? I truly don't know. However, in a conversation with SD Governor Janklow about the flour mill, I began to realize producers will never be ready unless pushed to learn and be ready to react. The push in this case is the availability of outside, non-producer, investors wanting a chance at building this site specific mill. Why? Apparently we have an opportunity they would like to have.
Be looking for more information on Prairie Premium Co-op Mills this fall. Organizational meetings will follow when everything is in place.
In the meantime, I want to throw out some questions for you to think about in the tractor cab this summer. I have been trying to work through the same questions, and I think we'd all be a bit more profitable in the wheat business if we knew the answers:
As a producer, what are the end-use destinations for your grain?
Who wants (or doesn't want) what you produce and why?
Do you consider the quality of your commodity as you are delivering it and how that will determine its final use? How can you add value to your commodity?
Do you ever talk with people who buy your commodity (beyond the elevator) to find out how they are using your product or to determine how to improve your product for their use?
Consider educating yourself on other parts of your industry such as milling, baking, or closed cooperatives, so when the opportunity arrives you are better prepared to make a decision to invest in Prairie Premium Co-op Mills or other projects.
One way to learn more about the questions above is to subscribe to Milling and Baking News, which our association and others offer at a discounted rate to members.
We as farmers often view ourselves as price-takers. I'm convinced that farmers who thrive in the 21st century will be those who view themselves as price-makers.
Tom Young, Onida, SD
SD Wheat Inc. President

Copyright Prairie
Grains Magazine
June 1997

Issue 8 June 1997	News & Views From the Wheat & Barley Growers

Library Home E-Mail Back Prairie Grains is the official publication of the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers, North Dakota Grain Growers Association, South Dakota Wheat, Inc., and the Minnesota Barley Growers Association.	NDGGA at Forefront of ND Legislative Happenings Members of the North Dakota Grain Growers Association should be proud of the influence and accomplishments of the Association during the 1997 Legislative Session. The strength of our membership numbers was evident as we testified and lobbied on your behalf. Legislators were eager to learn what the Grain Grower position was on issues ranging from anhydrous ammonia regulations to ag research to the commodity check-off increases. The Grain Growers were represented daily during the legislature either by staff or myself or other board members who made frequent trips to the capitol to testify on your behalf. NDGGA was active in the passage of modest wheat and barley check-off increases. The NDGGA recruited legislative sponsors for the barley check-off bill and testified at all of the hearings for the bills. Additionally, Grain Growers educated lawmakers throughout the session about the need for the barley checkoff increase. NDGGA also worked for the passage of the NDSU budget with a $1.2 million enhancement over Governor Schafer's budget. Through their efforts, the Grain Growers played an important role in research funding and were involved in the creation of the producer-driven board of directors for state research-the State Board of Agricultural Research. This Board will appropriate grants for indi vidual research projects from an up-to-$2 million fund. The Grain Growers supported the Ag Product defamation proposal. This law will allow agricultural producers and processors to sue for damages if someone intentionally spreads false information which harms the reputation of their product. The bill was ridiculed by media interests as a "sirloin slander" proposal, but the Grain Growers and other ag groups pushed for its eventual passage. Additionally, we lobbied for HB 1433 which establishes a minor use pesticide fund to help with costs incurred when labeling products for new uses. The NDGGA worked hard for the passage of a farmer-friendly anhydrous bill, HB 1215, to allow for rural transfer of anhydrous. Lastly, the NDGGA became involved in an ethanol battle in the late hours of the session where we lobbied to save the $1.75 million ethanol incentive program after a Senate conference committee threatened to eliminate it. It is a priority of the Grain Growers board of directors to be responsive to the needs and request of its members. The member-based NDGGA works hard to be a non-partisan voice for North Dakota's barley and wheat producers in the North Dakota Legislature and in Washington. I think that members should be proud of the accomplishments of the NDGGA board and staff representing your interests. I know that I am. Lowell Berntson, Kulm, ND NDGGA President Each Wheat Grower Contributes to Quality I think we as wheat growers don't realize just how important we are to the U.S. wheat marketing picture. But how well each one of us harvests, stores, and delivers our wheat crop in the next few months will collectively frame the effectiveness of U.S. wheat promotion overseas well into 1998, and even beyond that. We are doing a better job of providing cleaner wheat to overseas customers. For example, the April issue of Successful Farming tells of the Japanese Food Agency director writing to Joe Berry, the Kansas wheat producer who currently chairs U.S. Wheat Associates, to point out the progress made in cleaning up U.S. wheat. The average dockage had fallen from 0.7% to 0.5% over the last two years. However, during the same time period, Canadian wheat purchased by the Food Agency averaged just 0.16% dockage, and Australian wheat averaged 0.3%. The fact that American ingenuity and our free-market competitiveness can take on and beat foreign governments in the business world is well documented over our nation's 221-year-old history. The resurgence of the U.S. automobile industry since the 1980s is a classic example of what a concerted effort on delivering quality can do. With U.S. Hard Red Spring Wheat, we need to refine quality on two fronts: Cleanliness and baking performance. To address cleanliness, we need to continue to reduce dockage, starting at the most important point, our own farms. And we need to work with the grain trade to make sure greater quality control is maintained through the market system. Longer term, we must support and expand crop breeding efforts, and harness the possibilities of biotechnology, to develop high performance spring wheat varieties for new millennium markets. Cliff Keller, Fergus Falls, MN Chairman, Minnesota Wheat Council MAWG Instrumental in Advancing Ag Research The Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers, working in tandem with the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council, has been at the forefront of many advances in agricultural research thus far in 1997, and promises to be actively involved in other significant activities and programs that are planned. In the Minnesota Legislative Session, we were successful in securing $1.624 million over the next biennium for continued research of scab and vomitoxin in small grains. As well, the state allocated $100,000 over the biennium for a state wheat breeder, which will be matched by a funding commitment from the wheat and barley industry. The Minnesota Barley Growers Association deserve credit for its leadership role in obtaining support for the wheat breeder position. Kudos to Sen. LeRoy Stumpf (DFL-Thief River Falls), Rep. Tim Finseth (R-Angus), Rep. Jim Tunheim (DFL-Kennedy), Sen. Majority Leader Roger Moe (DFL-Erskine) Gov. Carlson, and the MN Department of Agriculture for seeing these issues through. The MAWG is also active in securing support for ag research at the federal level. The MAWG and about 30 other organizations across the nation are urging congressional appropriators to earmark funding for federal scab research in the fiscal 1998 budget. We are urging congressional appropriators to support funding for the Agricultural Research Service (ARS) Cereal Rust Lab in St. Paul, and have asked appropriators not to close the Northern Great Plains Research Laboratory in Mandan, ND. Further, we are taking part in the National Association of Wheat Growers' (NAWG) Wheat Industry Research Initiative Symposium, to be held in Portland June 29-July 1. This symposium will bring conference participants up to date on progress being made in research to control major wheat diseases and solve related marketing problems. The invited keynote speaker is Dr. Norman Borlaug, internationally renowned research scientist and father of the "green revolution." The Research Initiative is a national effort in which the wheat industry as a collective whole will focus its attention and resources on three major diseases, Karnal bunt, TCK smut and Fusarium Head Blight (scab). The initiative will quantify the economic impact these diseases have on all segments of the industry, including effects of trade barriers that have been put into place in lieu of sound, science-based trading practices. It is the initiative's goal to provide a sound economic and scientific basis for the reduction or removal of those market impediments, to develop research priorities that benefit the entire wheat industry, and to create a dialogue throughout the wheat industry chain that results in improved communication from the producer on one end to the end user on the other, and vice versa. The NAWG must be commended for its leadership in organizing this research initiative. Tim Dufault, Crookston, MN MAWG President Market Access Program Leverages Producer Funding It's unfortunate that some national media negatively portray U.S. market promotion programs such as the USDA's Market Access Program (MAP). Calling these export promotion tools "corporate advertising paid by taxpayers" is shortsighted and misleading. The MAP, known in the past as the Market Promotion Program and the Targeted Export Assistance Program, has undergone two important changes in recent years: The 1993 budget reconciliation required the Secretary of Agriculture to certify that federal funds supplement private and third-party funds, and prevented program funds from promoting specific branded products in a single market for more than five years. The 1996 Farm Bill prevents the use of MAP funds to provide direct assistance to any for-profit corporation not recognized as a small business or to foreign corporations promoting foreign products, and requires beneficiaries of branded product programs to provide funds equal to those provided by the MAP. MAP is different from the Foreign Market Development (Cooperator) program, because it provides funding for specific projects rather than ongoing operations. MAP is valuable to commodity promotion organizations such as the U.S. Feed Grains Council, since producer dollars are leveraged with matching MAP funds. Some examples of programs the Council will conduct this year with MAP funds: Promote U.S. malt and malting barley at world events, such as BrazilBrau '97. Distribute USFGC importer manuals, a feed grains buyers guide in six languages. Conduct infrastructure and port development work in Indonesia. Offer a regional grain commodity situation and outlook conference in Latin America. Develop Vietnam's grain infrastructure. Conduct a corn, sorghum and barley survey in Taiwan. Survey the malt handling capability in Latin American markets. The MAP program does not subsidize ag exports-it only allows promotion in closed markets. This program is essential to our worldwide export market development efforts. It is even more important given freer markets and increasing privatization of global grain purchases. Mike Seeger, Red Lake Falls, MN MBRPC Chairman and USFGC Treasurer SD Growers to Pursue Prairie Premium Co-op Mills Prairie Premium Co-op Mills has organized recently in South Dakota. This closed cooperative is pursuing the possibility of building a flour mill in Huron, SD. South Dakota's Secretary of Ag Darrell Cruea suggested this project last December, and called upon the South Dakota Corn Growers and South Dakota Wheat, Inc. to put a steering committee together. Through these associations a working group of producers decided to proceed and a closed cooperative was formed. As a closed cooperative, Prairie Premium Co-op Mills has been reviewing mill designs and developing a business plan for milling wheat as well as the possibilities of expanding into corn milling. Once plans are complete, PPCM will give producers an opportunity to invest and vertically expand into the processing of their commodity product. I have been excited to be a part of this project and found it to be a learning experience. It has been fast paced, but best of all it has been consumer driven. The PPCM project looks like it is going to become a reality and while there are no sure investments in life, it is my hope that producers are the owners of this opportunity. Will producers be ready to invest? I truly don't know. However, in a conversation with SD Governor Janklow about the flour mill, I began to realize producers will never be ready unless pushed to learn and be ready to react. The push in this case is the availability of outside, non-producer, investors wanting a chance at building this site specific mill. Why? Apparently we have an opportunity they would like to have. Be looking for more information on Prairie Premium Co-op Mills this fall. Organizational meetings will follow when everything is in place. In the meantime, I want to throw out some questions for you to think about in the tractor cab this summer. I have been trying to work through the same questions, and I think we'd all be a bit more profitable in the wheat business if we knew the answers: As a producer, what are the end-use destinations for your grain? Who wants (or doesn't want) what you produce and why? Do you consider the quality of your commodity as you are delivering it and how that will determine its final use? How can you add value to your commodity? Do you ever talk with people who buy your commodity (beyond the elevator) to find out how they are using your product or to determine how to improve your product for their use? Consider educating yourself on other parts of your industry such as milling, baking, or closed cooperatives, so when the opportunity arrives you are better prepared to make a decision to invest in Prairie Premium Co-op Mills or other projects. One way to learn more about the questions above is to subscribe to Milling and Baking News, which our association and others offer at a discounted rate to members. We as farmers often view ourselves as price-takers. I'm convinced that farmers who thrive in the 21st century will be those who view themselves as price-makers. Tom Young, Onida, SD SD Wheat Inc. President
Copyright Prairie Grains Magazine June 1997

News & Views From the Wheat & Barley Growers

Copyright Prairie Grains Magazine June 1997

Copyright Prairie
Grains Magazine
June 1997