The ACGA is the nation's leading progressive commodity group.

Thanks to all who share our vision and support the role of the

family farmer as a tireless steward.

Food, Conservation, Energy, & Trade 2009 was a success because of you!

Listen Now! 22nd ACGA Convention archive

As you  listen to Jim Hightower and our long list of esteemed speakers - you will understand the policies and practices of food, conservation, energy and trade that impact your life.  Farmers and consumers - we invite you to listen to our conventon archive!  Invite a friend or a neighbor to listen, then we're confident that each of you will want to help make a difference in your community.  

"Food, Conservation, Energy & Trade 2009" addressed the current policies and practices of food, conservation, energy and trade.   The American Corn Growers Association wants to make sure that you are represented in national policy debates and the issues that impact you, your family and your community – now and in the future. 

Take the opportunity to learn and understand how you can be a driving force in the initiatives that matter most to you. Thank you for listening as ACGA addressed the current issues and the policies and practices of food, conservation, energy and trade at our 22nd annual convention in Coralville, IA, January 15-16, 2009. 

Re-localization was a primary focus of our day!  

From Farmscape to Cityscape - Local Food, Local Fuel and You. 

The American Corn Growers 22nd  Annual  Convention in Coralville, IA, January 15-16, 2009 was held at the Marriott Hotel and Conference Center. "Food, Conservation, Energy & Trade 2009" boasted a line-up of well-known industry leaders who addressed the current policies and practices of food, conservation, energy and trade. 

Straight out of Texas, author and populist Jim Hightower, as the keynote speaker, delivered his seriously funny message calling farmers, consumers and just-plain-folks to get involved and make a difference in their own lives and communities.  ACGA promised to deliver a day of must-have education and new insights with well-known guest speakers from your neighborhood and around the country and we did!.  As you listen to our archive, you'll hear the news, views and solutions from speakers that address the current policies and practices that impact you and your community.

Thanks to all who helped kick off the ACGA's American Growers Club, a fundraising program that supports our work on food, energy and trade. It was a success! We started the day with an exclusive “Breakfast with Jim Hightower”, our first of many anticipated American Growers Club events.  Next, the convention began and our speakers prepared to take us down the road from "Farmscape to Cityscape".  Along the way, they helped the audience realize the vital connections between rural and urban ways of life, our human relationship with nature and then encouraged us to further explore the policies and  practices of food, conservation, energy and trade that shape our lives. These policies and practices impact everyone - farmers and consumers, friends and neighbors, you and me.  

If you missed the convention you can listen to our archive, which is coming soon.  We don't want you to miss  Jim Hightower, Keith Dittrich (ACGA Chairman of the Board), Fred Kirschenmann (Leopold Center, Distinguished Fellow), David Blume (ethanol pioneer/author "Alcohol Can Be A Gas!"), Roya Stanley (Director, Office of Energy Independence [IA]), Curt Meine (conservation biologist/author/Leopold biographer) Donald Hey (The Wetlands Initiative), Paul Heltne (Humans & Nature), Brian O'Shaughnessy (CPA Co-Chair Manufacturing and Chairman of Revere Copper Products), Dan McGuire (CEO ACGF/”Wealth From the Wind” program), Marguerite Kelly (National Renewable Energy Laboratory [NREL]), Paul Olson (NFO President) and Larry Mitchell (ACGA/Director Governmental Affairs), Jim Braun (Illinois Organic Food and Farm Task Force), Iowa Representative and ACGA Board member, Mark Kuhn and more.  They shared their own stories and exciting news, views and solutions that address the current policies and practices of food, conservation, energy and trade. These issues impact all of us.  You still don't have to miss it.  Visit our 22nd ACGA Convention archive soon! Visit us again online at acga.org or become a member today by calling ACGA at 202-835-0330 or the ACGA Midwest Field Office at 815-646-4040. 

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the new book, “Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow”, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks. 

As keynote speaker at the ACGA 22nd Annual Convention, on January 16, 2009, Hightower brought a hard-hitting populist viewpoint that rarely gets into the mass media.  In all of his work he keeps his ever-ready Texas humor up front, practicing the credo of an old Yugoslavian proverb: "You can fight the gods and still have fun."

Twice elected Texas Agriculture Commissioner, Hightower believes that the true political spectrum is not right to left but top to bottom, and he has become a leading national voice for the 80 percent of the public who no longer find themselves within shouting distance of the Washington and Wall Street powers at the top.  Hightower is a modern-day Johnny Appleseed, spreading the message of progressive populism all across the American grassroots. For more information on Jim Hightower visit  http://jimhightower.com/ .

Continuing our—empowering grassroots message,  ACGA welcomed the return of  ethanol pioneer, farmer and ecologist, David Blume.  Author of  the best selling “Alcohol Can Be A Gas!”,  Blume “filled you up” with ethanol-related facts and figures, dispelling any myths, questions or concerns you may have regarding the use of ethanol that Big Oil would rather you didn’t know.  Farmers and consumers alike, you too, can have a still built or community-based ethanol station in no time!  Thanks to all who attended and joined David for our one day “Alcohol Can Be A Gas!” workshop - January 15^th.  You can still learn how, let David and ACGA show you! (for more WORKSHOPS near you, visit our website at www.acga.org or go to www.permaculture.com) .      

Joining our Energy panel was Roya Stanley,  Director of the Office of Energy Independence (IA).  Director Stanley is well-known for her broad work on  alternative energy policies, practices and solutions.   Dan McGuire, CEO of the American Corn Growers Foundation moderated and brought us up to date on the successful “Wealth From the Wind” program.  Marguerite Kelly gave us the overview of "Windpowering America" and is the Senior Project Manager, National Wind Technology Center having joined the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) (SERI) in 1979 and the Windpowering America Team in 2003. 

Our regrets regarding our guest speaker,  Sue Martin who was hospitalized and unable to speak at the convention - we missed her and understand she is feeling better.  We will have a 20 minute interview that we can share that she recorded before the convention and we'll post the link soon.  Sue is a popular market analyst, president  and owner of Ag & Investment Services, Inc. will join us at the convention.   With 36 years experience in the brokerage business, Sue offers up daily analysis for the U of I Radio Station, WILL which covers the majority of Midwest markets in Illinois, parts of Indiana, Ohio and Southern Wisconsin.   She shares her knowledge in market trends with her weekly AG Week article and is a regular analyst for the popular “Market to Market.”  You can hear Sue daily on KFRM covering Kansas, Oklahoma, parts of Nebraska, Texas, Colorado, New Mexico, Arkansas and Missouri.  You can sometimes hear her as a guest on the Des Moines radio station WHO and commentary for the Linder Farm Network covering 23 stations throughout Minnesota, as well as,  the Farmnet Network, syndicated throughout the Midwest. 

As we all struggled with the 30 degrees below 0 weather in Iowa, back home in Wisconsin, Will Allen could not make the trip to Coralville.  Our regrets again and ACGA will welcome him to another event in the near future. Will is the founder and president of the Rainbow Farmer’s Cooperative.  One of the only African American farmer’s in the State of Wisconsin, Allen has struggled vigorously to alleviate the plight of the small family farmer.  He works a 100-acre farm in Oak Creek, WI and is responsible for organizing most of the farmers markets in Milwaukee.  He is the CEO of Growing Power, a national not for profit organization supporting the development of community food systems. Growing Power’s Community Food Center in Milwaukee, WI is considered a model for communities worldwide.

He has over fifty years experience in farming, marketing and distributing food and has shared this knowledge with youth, adults, community groups, immigrants, farmers, and consumers.  He is leading the effort to vertically integrate our youth into healthy eating habits to end juvenile obesity. Will is also putting Growing Power in a position to become energy self-sufficient by installing solar and a high solid Methane producing Anaerobic Digester.  He was honored in 2005 by the Ford Foundations Leadership for changing world Award and is a featured speaker on Food Systems worldwide.  Will was recently awarded the 2008,  $500,000 Mac Arthur “Genius Grant” for his efforts to promote sustainable farming methods in low-income neighborhoods.  He is driven by a desire to make quality fresh fruit and vegetables accessible to underserved inner-city populations.  He targets “food deserts,” communities that rely on corner markets which load their shelves with junk food and liquor, and rarely stock quality produce.   

His national non-profit organization, Growing Power, remains based in Milwaukee, but he has spread his urban farming message from Africa to Europe to South America.  Since winning the award, he has been interviewed by Good Morning America, CNN, NPR and the New York Times.  He oversees 14 greenhouses where greens, vegetables and herbs are cultivated year-round.  He and his staff also raise chickens, turkeys, perch and tilapia.  He has become an expert composter and turns food waste into fertilizer and methane gas.  And he maintains a 33,000 square-foot warehouse where 300 small-time farmers store their produce and prepare it for market.  Will is a former professional basketball player in the American Basketball Association and European Professional League, the first African American basketball player at the University of Miami, Florida, and also a farmer and community activist, dedicated to supporting low-income and small family farmers and bringing healthy, affordable food to urban areas.  For more information visit www.growingpower.org   

ACGA Executive Director, Pam Horwitz, moderated the Conservation Panel and welcomed Donald Hey, PhD.  He is President of The Wetlands Initiative, a nonprofit corporation dedicated to restoring the wetland resources of the Midwest to improve water quality, increase wildlife habitat and biodiversity, and reduce flood damages.   Donald L. Hey and Albert E. Pyott founded The Wetlands Initiative in 1994 to focus restoration efforts and funds on reversing the environmental damage created by the drainage of wetlands in the upper Midwest. 

The Wetlands Initiative has pioneered the strategy of “nutrient farming."  A nutrient farm is a constructed wetland designed, built, and operated for the primary purpose of processing nutrients.  The Wetlands Initiative foresee policymakers and ecosystem managers throughout the country adopting strategies, such as nutrient farming, that provide financial incentives for reducing contaminants in our nation’s waterways and coastal estuaries.

Hey discussed the development of programs such as nutrient farming, water quality trading markets and districts that provide financial encouragement for private landowners to participate in industrialized wetland restoration.  Visit www.acga.org and discover our Agricultural Water Quality Restoration program or www.wetlandsinitiative.org .

The Conservation Panel included Iowa native, Paul Heltne, PhD, who is the  Director of the Center for Humans and Nature,  and is based in the Chicago office.  CHN explores and promotes moral and civic responsibilities to human communities and to natural ecosystems and landscapes.  Promoting  greater conservation, biological and cultural diversity, health, and social justice in the interactions between natural systems and human communities, the  center  aims to define and express a new vision of ethical responsibility and ecological citizenship.

CHN pursues its mission through a three-pronged strategy of (1) philosophical and historical research, (2) ethics, scientific, and civic education, and (3) policy analysis, regional planning, and regional civic action.  Dr. Heltne comes to CHN from the Chicago Academy of Sciences, where he is President Emeritus and served as Director and later President for two decades. He is a leader in the field of promoting scientific education and scientific literacy.  Visit www.humansandnature.org.

Curt Meine is a conservation biologist and writer based in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin. Meine serves as Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo, Wisconsin; as Research Associate with the International Crane Foundation (also in Baraboo); as Director for Conservation Biology and History with the Chicago-based Center for Humans and Nature; and as Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his bachelor’s degree from DePaul University in Chicago and his graduate degrees from the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

He is author of several books, including the biography Aldo Leopold:  His Life and Work (1988) and Correction Lines:  Essays on Land, Leopold, and Conservation (2004).  He is also active in his local landscape as a founder and member of the Sauk Prairie Conservation Alliance in Sauk County, Wisconsin.

Our Trade Panel was moderated by ACGA's own John Dittrich, Senior Policy Analyst Emeritus and included—speaker Brian O’Shaughnessy, Chairman of Revere Copper Products, Inc.  Founded in 1801 by Paul Revere and believed to be the oldest manufacturing company in the USA.  The factory is in Rome, New York and produces copper and brass sheet, strip, coil and extruded products for shipment to other manufacturing companies. Revere is a domestic manufacturing company and outsources nothing.  O’Shaughnessy will share his passion with the audience and in 2008 he was quoted, “No matter how we try to rationalize it, millions of manufacturing jobs are going overseas.  My unwillingness to outsource or sell out is based solely on loyalty and patriotism."  He also represents and serves on the Board of Directors as Co-Chair (Manufacturing) of the Coalition for a Prosperous America (CPA). This coalition includes domestic manufacturing, organized labor, farming and ranching. Visit CPA at www.prosperousamerica.org.

We were joined by Dr. Daryll Ray, who is Director and holds the agricultural policy chair at the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center(APAC).  APAC, at the University of Tennessee, is a research program structured around the Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy to function with a core of permanent research staff supported by a number of flexible staff positions — which adjust in number and expertise to meet the demands of various research projects.  Serving as APAC's Director, Dr. Daryll Ray, is Professor and Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy.  He received his Ph.D. from Iowa State University in 1971 then joined the faculty at Oklahoma State University where he served until accepting the chair position at the University of Tennessee. Dr. Ray established the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center around his research program in 1992 and has served as APAC's director since that time. Over his distinguished career, Dr. Ray has focused primarily on commodity policy, development of analytical models for policy analysis, and deepening the understanding of the structure and nature of the agricultural sector.

Social Issues in agriculture were addressed by Fred Kirschenmann.  He is a longtime leader in national and international sustainable agriculture, shares an appointment as Distinguished Fellow for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University and as President of Stone Barns Center for Food and Agriculture in Pocantico Hills, New York. He also oversees management of his family's 3,500-acre certified organic farm in south central North Dakota and is a professor in the ISU Department of Religion and Philosophy.  Kirschenmann holds a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Chicago, and has written extensively about ethics and agriculture. He has held numerous appointments, including the USDA's National Organic Standards Board and the National Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production operated by the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and funded by Pew Charitable Trusts.

He served as the Leopold Center's second director from July 2000 to November 2005, when he was named a Distinguished Fellow. He joined the board of the Stone Barns Center in 2004 and was elected president in 2007. In January 2008, he assumed a half-time appointment at Stone Barns, dividing his time between Iowa and New York, to explore ways that rural and urban communities can work together to develop a more resilient, sustainable agriculture and food system.

Larry Mitchell is Director of Governmental Affairs for ACGA. Mitchell previously served as Deputy Administrator for Farm Programs of USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) and Deputy Vice President, Commodity Credit Corporation. As Deputy Administrator, he was responsible for converting farm program legislation into working policies and procedures that regulate the delivery of FSA’s conservation and commodity and emergency programs.

Programs within his area of responsibility included the Conservation Reserve Program, production flexibility contracts, commodity and livestock disaster programs, marketing assistance loan programs, and the tobacco and peanut programs. Direct payments and loans to farmers and ranchers under these programs exceed $20 billion annually. Mitchell earlier served as FSA’s Director of the Legislative Liaison Staff and as a Confidential Assistant to the FSA Administrator.

Prior to working with FSA, Mitchell served as Vice President of Government Relations for the National Farmers Union (NFU) in Washington, D.C. His primary duties were serving as Chief Administrator of NFU’s Washington office and as their head government relations representative. His areas of responsibility were crops, taxes, aging, farm credit, banking, trade and the futures market. Mr. Mitchell has also served in the following positions: Independent Policy Consultant and Writer (1993); Director of Federal and State Relations, American Agriculture Movement (1989-1993); Editor, American Agriculture Movement Reporter, Washington, D.C. (1989-1993); Farmer (1971-1989).

He grew up on a fifth generation family farm in North Central Texas. He is or has been a member of a number of organizations including – National Spokesman for the Alliance for Rural America, Alternate to the Board of Oversees, CARE; the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights; National Association of Farmer Elected Committeemen; Vice President, American Agriculture Movement of Texas, Inc.; Texas Farmers Union; Regional Coordinator, Farm Aid’s Farm and Ranch Congress. Mr. Mitchell has been an advocate for small businessmen, farmers and rural citizens on the local, state and national levels from 1985 to present on issues concerning production agriculture, private property rights, taxes, banking regulations, environmental protection, health care, and others.