Connecting to Customers Off The Farm: USGC Recognizes Bart Schott For Five Years Of Service

Two producers – Bart Schott from North Dakota and Wendell Shauman from Illinois – left their farms and flew to Colombia and Panama in 2011, the year before free trade agreements with both countries were officially signed. Traveling with the U.S. Grains Council (USGC), the pair met with customers to share their experiences and offer assurances that U.S. farmers like themselves could deliver both the reliable supply and consistent quality of corn that customers wanted.

“A person is still a little awestruck,” Schott said. “Without the Council, we would never have been able to get down there. And here they sent two farmer leaders into the country to blaze a trail.”

The following spring, the two free trade agreements – along one inked with South Korea – entered into force, and Schott had helped set the stage for trading relationships that have since grown. He said that experience taught him just how important of a role farmers can play in the Council’s market development activities.

“I gained a better understanding of how important the Council is to exporting through that experience,” Schott said. “Seeing the effect of farmers moving off the farm and into global networking with exporters and importers had a really big impact.”

Schott was no stranger to farmer leadership when he became involved with the Council. He started attending Council meetings while serving as an officer of the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA). When his NCGA officer rotation ended, he joined the Council as a delegate from the North Dakota Corn Growers Association. The Council recognized Schott for five years of service during its 15th International Marketing Conference and 58th Annual Membership Meeting in Houston, Texas, last month.

“With North Dakota being landlocked, we need to export everything here,” Schott said. “When farmers see what you can do just stepping out and promoting North Dakota products and how productive that can be, it makes people realize that if you want it to happen, you have to be a part of it.”

Schott initially served on the Council’s Trade Policy Advisory Team (A-Team), but switched to the Ethanol A-Team when the opportunity arose in 2015. On the Ethanol A-Team, he was able to apply his experience helping establish the ethanol industry in North Dakota and supporting national growth as a NCGA officer.

“The ethanol industry started as a farmer-owned, farmer-driven idea,” Schott said. “Ethanol just made sense to most farmers – we would be able to produce the ethanol and clean up our air and ease dependence on foreign oil.”

However, Schott said ethanol’s main co-product – distiller’s dried grains with solubles (DDGS) – initially took the industry by surprise until the Council helped introduce the protein source to the world market and ethanol plants developed DDGS as a secondary revenue stream. Now, he is thrilled to see ethanol also exported.

“It is just doggone exciting to see something that started out as an idea that just took off,” Schott said. “Here is something that started to help out our own country that is now being exported to other countries and to not only feed their livestock, but also clean up their air and make their gas better.”

“It means a lot to me as a farmer to see that happening, gives me a lot of security knowing we have another product we can count on. It solidifies the guys that are starting to farm, like my son, into a really bright future.”

Looking forward, Schott said he has worked to make sure that farmers – like his son, Andy, who is the fifth generation working on the family farm in Kulm, North Dakota – are even more aware of the potential for overseas markets to benefit them in the future.

“I know that this next generation of farmers wants to take a look at trade, and they know the Council is involved in that effort in a really big way,” Schott said. “Over half of our grain is exported, and that just does not happen by somebody else’s wish or order.”

“If you want exports to grow, you have to find an organization like the Council and get involved and then things will happen. That is what I have been telling guys here – jump out of your normal routine and make a difference someplace.”