Sara Stelter lives in Central Wisconsin and grows corn and soybeans as well as processes vegetables for canning companies. She also has a cow calf operation where she raises them out to be feeders or sells the cow calf pairs. This doesn’t keep her busy enough as she was recently appointed to serve on the United Soybean Board. She shares insight into practices she uses on her farm and her involvement with the soybean board.
“One of the things we have been doing for generations that now people are really starting to see the importance of is cover cropping,” says Stelter. Because our soil is so light, routinely we have been cover cropping as much as possible to keep our land in place over winter”
Stelter has always been interested in educating and talking about her farm. She had a friend that was involved in state and national organizations that provided her with information about what the boards did. Stelter was impressed with the United Soybean Board and what they do to promote soybean research, education, and general promotion in terms of marketing. The more she found out about the soybean organizations, the more she wanted to get involved.
“I am just beginning as I was just appointed to the United Soybean Board,” explains Stelter. “I am one of 77 farmers from across the country whose job it is to determine how the soybean checkoff monies are going to be used to fund education and research and promotion.”
For every soybean bushel that is paid for, a half a percent of the market price of that bushel sold goes to the checkoff board, and a half of that half a percent stays in the state of Wisconsin. The other half goes to the national level, where the United Soybean Board is in charge of determining how that is used. That is money that’s put up by farmers, and it’s farmers that decide how to use this money for the betterment of other farmers.
Stelter says that there is a lot of work involved with being on the board. She says that if you’re not willing to do the work, you’re not going to get a lot out of it, and you’re not doing your job as a representative of the soybean farmers in the country. She is working on doing research into past projects so that she can readily support the group moving forward.
Stelter adds, “There’s some really good initiatives coming up. The board is really getting involved in an initiative called the Farmers for Soil Health. This is an initiative that will help bring money back to the farmers where sustainability is happening at the farm level.”
The Farmers For Soil Health is an initiative with the National Corn Growers Association as well as the National Pork Board. The three organizations are working together to enhance sustainability practices on the local farm level. The initiative goes beyond strictly a cover crop program and looks at other ways that farmers can be sustainable.
Other things that the United Soybean Board is working on are continuing to look at research projects which will use soybean oil in biodegradable plastics, shoes, and artificial turf. One of the big initiatives the United Soybean Board is continuing to work on is biodiesel.
“This initiative is not only biodiesel for ground transportation, but also marine,” says Stelter. “We’re now really pressing forward with biodiesel for aviation fuel. All of this will only enhance our environment because using biodiesel has so much less carbon emissions of greenhouse gas emissions than petroleum diesel, so that’s something that’s extremely important.”
Stelter adds that on a state level, that is something she is pushing more towards as well. Right now farmers are not able to buy biodiesel in bulk in Wisconsin and she is looking at how the state checkoff dollars can be used to encourage that fuel to be available.
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