The American farmer after the Second World War saw many changes from farming with horses to using tractors, more machinery, new hybrid seeds, and new technology.  Farmers were also seeing living standards going up in the urban areas as people were getting good jobs living and working in more populated areas. .  Commodity Production was going up as demand was staying level or getting a little smaller.  The government started to pay farmers to stop planting all their acres. The government bought up large amounts of grain and this kept prices low because when prices went up the government released commodity out of government storage forcing prices down.. The government paid farmers to not plant part of their land.  Planting fewer acres hurt Ag business as farmers needed to buy less of everything. This really hurt rural America. At the same time people were watching the news being broad cast from an urban area.  The general farm organizations were having a hard time raising the funds necessary to carry out programs needed to help educate the public and our political leaders. Many of these farm organizations turned to large Ag companies to help fund their efforts.

In the early 1960s farmers all across the country started looking for ways to raise money to tell their story, promote their different commodities, find new uses, and find more efficient ways to produce and distribute their commodities.   Farmers representing different commodities came up with the idea of the commodity checkoff programs.  The collecting of a small sum of money when the farmer sold his bushel or pound of a commodity.  This has been a very successful program raising over a billion dollars per year.

Basically every person living today benefits from checkoff programs.

In the  future my short articles will tell about all the things we all use today that have been developed using farmer checkoff dollars.

Read my book: “Your Food -My Adventure”

 

Philip E Bradshaw                                                                                                                                                                                                   Author of “Your Food-My Adventure”                                                                                                                                                           29497  410th Street                                                                                                                                                                                                                 Griggsville, Illinois 62340