United Soybean Board Working To Change How Soybeans Are Priced

Feb 21, 2017

The chairman of the United Soybean Board (USB) says Checkoff dollars are being used to reinvent the price structure of soybeans to reward quality over quantity. Northwest Ohio farmer John Motter tells Brownfield growers have been forced to work within a system that prefers supply over demand, which is a major reason for the slumping ag economy. "We need to start doing things in our industry that improves the quality ... (245 words)

The chairman of the United Soybean Board (USB) says Checkoff dollars are being used to reinvent the price structure of soybeans to reward quality over quantity.

Northwest Ohio farmer John Motter tells Brownfield growers have been forced to work within a system that prefers supply over demand, which is a major reason for the slumping ag economy.

"We need to start doing things in our industry that improves the quality of the product that we are producing, and in turn we want to be paid for a better quality product."

He calls soybean farmers price takers instead of price makers, but a new strategic vision placing more emphasis on oil and protein content has the potential to change that.

"We are engaged in a meal enhancement product. We are working with the technology companies so that we know that we can be successful in doing that."

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Video: Seeing the Whole Season: How Continuous Crop Modeling Is Changing Breeding

Plant breeding has long been shaped by snapshots. A walk through a plot. A single set of notes. A yield check at the end of the season. But crops do not grow in moments. They change every day.

In this conversation, Gary Nijak of AerialPLOT explains how continuous crop modeling is changing the way breeders see, measure, and select plants by capturing growth, stress, and recovery across the entire season, not just at isolated points in time.

Nijak breaks down why point-in-time observations can miss critical performance signals, how repeated, season-long data collection removes the human bottleneck in breeding, and what becomes possible when every plot is treated as a living data set. He also explores how continuous modeling allows breeding programs to move beyond vague descriptors and toward measurable, repeatable insights that connect directly to on-farm outcomes.

This conversation explores:

• What continuous crop modeling is and how it works

• Why traditional field observations fall short over a full growing season

• How scale and repeated measurement change breeding decisions

• What “digital twins” of plots mean for selection and performance

• Why data, not hardware, is driving the next shift in breeding innovation As data-driven breeding moves from research into real-world programs, this discussion offers a clear look at how seeing the whole season is reshaping value for breeders, seed companies, and farmers, and why this may be only the beginning.