Ask Dick Gallagher how to maximize the most benefit from a U.S. Grains Council membership and he will give a one-word answer: “Participate!” 

And he would know, based on 10 years of representing the Iowa Corn Promotion Board at the USGC. 

“Get on an Advisory Team, ask questions, put out your thoughts at the meetings,” he said. “You can advance as far as you want to in the USGC if you participate. 

“The really important thing is going back to your state organization to give a really good idea of what you’re doing and how your state checkoff money is being spent.” 

If given the chance, he also urges new members to travel overseas with the USGC. 

“It’s just amazing how things are done around the world, the programs we run and the respect customers in foreign countries have for the USGC staff,” Gallagher said. 

He cited as an example travel earlier this year to Japan and South Korea to meet with customers and help with rollouts of the Council’s corn quality reports. 

“We were over there to give a corn quality report on the 2016 U.S. crop, and we had 125 to 130 people at our conference in South Korea and roughly 150 to 160 in Japan,” he said. “These people were the real players in corn milling, feed milling, feed distribution. Just to meet them, hear the questions they ask and see their respect for the Council was really neat.” 

“I think the Council’s work is extremely important for the U.S. farmer – it’s our promotion arm overseas to try and increase the use of corn, barley and sorghum,” Gallagher said. “It’s truly building markets and market access, as we’ve seen in the last few years with ethanol exports.”