TESTIMONY
Appropriations Committee
November 9, 2009
Chairman Heidemann and members of the Appropriations Committee, my name is Brandon Hunnicutt. I’m president of the Nebraska Corn Growers Association and a corn and soybean farmer from the Giltner area.
I would like to thank the committee for allowing me to share a few thoughts today. I believe the issue involving the use of corn checkoff funds is critical and worth taking a time away from my family farm during this incredibly busy time of year.
In 1978 corn farmers from across Nebraska came together to work with the State Legislature to pass the Corn Resources Act. This Act created the corn checkoff. It allows farmers to invest in themselves with every bushel they sell. The farmer members of the Nebraska Corn Growers Association played a key role in getting the checkoff established.
These individuals understood what we could do by investing our own money into research, market development and promotion. They designed the checkoff to be 100 percent self funded, so farmers would manage their investment and choose the research projects, marketing development programs and promotion efforts that made the most sense for farmers.
Along the way, these investments have paid dividends for farmers and the state as a whole.
You see, the research our investment supports helps cattle producers take advantage of the feed products produced by ethanol plants. It helps develop and create innovative products like renewable bioplastics that are made right here in the state. It helps get Nebraska pork and beef into Japan, China and the other global markets, which adds value to every animal in the state that’s raised on Nebraska corn and related feed products. All of this maintains and creates new markets for the corn produced by some 26-thousand Nebraska farmers, all of whom contribute to the corn checkoff.
This also generates important economic activity within Nebraska. And the strength of the agriculture industry has certainly has kept Nebraska from the worst of the economic doldrums this country is facing. And, as well, it will be agriculture that leads us out.
While we recognize the difficult financial situation the state is facing, I believe, as do farmers across the state, that it is wrong to take farmers' money that we agreed to invest in ourselves and in our future and use it for something else. Farmers contribute greatly to this state in the form of sales taxes, property taxes and income taxes, plus our operations and those we support employ thousands and multiply that contribution many times over.
Commodity checkoff funds are an investment made by farmers for farmers, and the authority on how to use our investment—our money—should be left in our hands.
