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When you sell your soybeans, half of 1% of the total selling price goes toward the soybean checkoff. Half of that goes to the United Soybean Board for investment in their long-range strategic plan, and the other half goes to the Indiana Soybean Alliance for investment in areas that are priorities for Indiana soybean farmers as decided on by Indiana soybean farmers.
Indiana Soybean Alliance board chair Kevin Cox told Hoosier Ag Today that one of his fellow board members was recently asked, “Why do you support the checkoff program?”
“And he pondered for a moment and then he said, ‘You know, I support the checkoff because the checkoff supports me.’ And I think that sums it all up very, very well because if we don’t do something to try to promote our product, to promote our industry, we’re going to be in serious trouble.”
We told you last week about the Student Soybean Innovation Competition at Purdue where students come up with their own soybean creations. This is one of the many events sponsored by the Indiana Soybean Alliance aimed at finding new uses.
“Our goal, as the board of the Indiana Soybean Alliance, is just trying to figure out how to move the pile, how to move more and more soybeans out of the state of Indiana. To be able to come here, to see the enthusiasm and the excitement from the students that are here, the way that they address the competition, they’re trying to figure out something that’s brand new, something that nobody else has done, and trying to figure out a way that they can utilize soybeans that we produce here, it’s just exciting.”
While at Purdue last week, Cox says ISA board members sifted through over 100 requests for funding during their board meeting for different research projects around the world to help move that Indiana soybean pile.
“Feeding trials, feeding fish overseas, feeding fish in Indonesia, or using it for different foodstuffs, different food products, plastics, oils, inks, those kinds of things. Things that you don’t traditionally think about as just being crushed for soybean oil or soybean meal. So, utilizing those opportunities that we have, figuring out ways of investing the checkoff dollars into research so that we can see some of these products come to fruition.”
Research from Cornell shows that for every $1 invested in the soybean checkoff, it returns over $12 back to the farm.