How Do Checkoffs Impact Consumers?

Consumers may not realize the extent of products, of promotions, of farm and forest goods, you come across that have a connection with producer funded commodity checkoff programs.  Entities with oversight from the Agriculture Department. 

Among the many commodities covered by an industry funded research and promotion, aka checkoff program cotton to highbush, blueberries, mushrooms to popcorn, softwood lumber to Christmas trees.  Checkoff programs operate on a basic premise.  An example is provided by Andy Bishop of the Cattlemen's Beef Board. 

“$1 from every hit marketed in the United States goes into the checkoff. Fifty cents stays at the state, $0.50 goes to the national level to either do research, marketing and promotion or education.” 

Kyle Durham of the United Soybean Board says four decades of check off funding in the research realm, supports increased value in developed and developing value added products for his commodity. 

“Dating all the way back to the first developments of soy ink and biodiesel into, now we see all kinds of industrial uses replacing plastics and forever chemicals.” 

The promotion aspect of the check off program includes product specific events such as the American Land Boards Lamb’s “Lamb Jams”, which ABL’s Jeff Ebert describes as a tour of cities where local restaurants feature their best bites of lamb, along with games, music and giveaways to attract audiences and potential new customers of Lamb.  

Educating consumers about various aspects of a commodity, such in the case of foods, things like nutritional value, ways to prepare it, health benefits and such are a key part of the mission of check off organizations. Norma Rich Johnson of the United Sorghum checkoff mentions a divergent of research and consumer education in the form of data. 

“Sorghum has been added to the USDA Food Data Central database.  That is the database where consumers, or the food industry, anyone that's interested can go and search for certain foods in different forms and find those nutritional profiles.”

If you have a story idea for the PNW Ag Network, call (509) 547-1618, or e-mail glenn.vaagen@townsquaremedia.com