See What You Think Of The Soy Checkoff’s New Vision For The Future

Five ways the plan is designed to increase your profit opportunities

What are your farm’s priorities? Where do you want it to be in five years? What kinds of things do you have to consider today to ensure your kids and grandkids have a profitable tomorrow? Running your family farm is no different than running the national soy checkoff, when it comes to planning for the future.

That’s why the 70 volunteer farmer-leaders entrusted with investing checkoff funds study and vote on a strategic plan every five years. The Long-Range Strategic Plan that farmer-leaders recently passed will guide the investments of the national checkoff through the 2017- 2022 fiscal years. Read the full plan here. And learn some fast facts on the plan below.

•  Winning the future means innovating, not only growing more soybeans. Just as companies like Apple need to anticipate what their customers will want to buy, so do U.S. soybean farmers. The new Long-Range Strategic Plan emphasizes the need for innovation in U.S. soy and soy products to meet the evolving needs of our customers, from animal agriculture at home and abroad (your No. 1 customer), to food manufacturers to industrial users and more. With competition growing from other countries and other feedstocks, we need to focus not just on quantity, but on innovation and quality to build preference for U.S. soy.

• Impact requires focus, and the new plan has that in spades. While the central mission of the national soy checkoff – maximizing the profit opportunities of all U.S. soybean farmers – isn’t changing, it’s more important than ever to stay focused. The new plan brings razor-sharp focus on what matters most to U.S. soybean-farmer profit opportunities, aiming farmer dollars at nine strategic goals.

• Want to succeed? You need a business plan. Each of the nine goals will have its own measurable business plan, so farmer-leaders can track progress each year over the course of the five-year plan. Milestones will be set, and all activities measured against them. When changes need to be made, the farmer-leaders will make them. Each activity of the board will help meet one of the nine goals and will be held accountable to the corresponding business plan.

• It takes the whole industry to maximize farmer profitability. The new plan identifies 13 parts of the U.S. soy industry, apart from soybean farmers, that have critical roles to play in farmer profitability, such as processors, feed-mill buyers and transportation companies, to name a few. The plan emphasizes the importance of partnerships – its central strategy – to maximizing farmer profitability.