Harvesting the Right Answers

Corn, soybeans and wheat, step aside. In today’s dynamic agricultural environment, the biggest crop most farmers plant today is questions.

They come in seasonal varieties, like “When will it rain?” and “How will the markets perform?” And they come in long-growing hybrids, like “How will changing demographics, government policies and leadership succession affect me and my cooperative?” While the answers won’t be known for years or even decades, these questions demand ongoing thoughtful planning and action.

Like any other crop, yielding the right answers tomorrow depends on precise inputs and sound management today.

This issue of C magazine explores some of the major questions shaping the future of agriculture, cooperatives and rural America. In this time of softer markets and generational transitions, most of us are asking these questions as we focus not only on short-term actions, but also on our system’s longterm success.

Last summer, more than 500 cooperative leaders joined me and others from the CHS senior leadership team to explore big-picture issues facing current and, more important, future generations of producers and cooperative leaders. Our discussions were lively and thought-provoking. They underscored our deep, mutual commitment to working together to build strong producers, strong member cooperatives and a strong CHS system.

While there were some regional differences across the 15 meetings, we heard several consistent themes and are already taking action to meet needs that were expressed.

• Working together to build awareness and pride in the cooperative value story. Our owners ranked this as their top priority, and we’re already taking steps through awarenessbuilding programs at land-grant colleges and universities, in our educational programs, and through CHS publications.

• Building awareness and loyalty among next-generation producers and employees is critical to the future growth and success of the system. We agreed that producers, member cooperatives and CHS should work together to advocate for the value the co-op system provides to younger producers and employees. We’ll continue to build on the two decades of our highly respected CHS New Leaders program and evolve the second annual Your CHS Experience to develop future coop leaders, and engage next-generation producers. Carl Casale, president and CEO, CHS

• Remaining relevant by “running faster than the farmer” through deploying technology and investing in the future of this system’s energy, grains, fertilizer, and food and food ingredient operations. Our cooperative-owners and producer-owners also called on CHS to serve as a strong voice with federal and state lawmakers and regulators who have significant influence over every aspect of what we do.

You can read the full Town Hall meetings report and access other resources at chsinc.com/townhall.

As we continue to tackle these issues together, we know there will always be new crops of challenging questions. We look forward to working with you in the decades to come to ensure that the answer to every question involves always helping our owners grow.

We have a deep, mutual commitment to building strong producers, strong member cooperatives and a strong CHS system.