Now celebrating 30 years with the U.S. Grains Council (USGC), Erick Erickson has filled many roles at the Council and will be honored along with other USGC staff celebrating notable anniversaries at the Council’s 12th International Marketing Conference and 55th Annual Membership Meeting in Heredia, Costa Rica.
USGC Past Chairman Glen Buckley cites Erickson’s work with the Council’s demand model and long-range planning process as a unique contribution.
“As members we had input but Erick was instrumental,” Buckley said. “He took the lead. Without Erick it never would have been so successful.
“The rest of the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture) cooperator groups were really impressed with the whole thing, all because of Erick’s dedication and the enormous amount of work he put into it. It really did become the industry standard for cooperators.”
The demand model looked at population, world economic growth, trade developments and more to assess the coarse grain outlook in the world and in key countries and regions.
“With that, we were much more effective at targeting Council funds into the places where we could get the most bang for our buck,” Buckley said. “It wasn’t just small decisions either. We changed the structure of our overseas offices based on that work.”
Buckley also praised Erickson for being easy to work with during demand model deliberations.
“If you had a question or wanted him to run a different scenario, he was so cooperative. He listened to what we wanted to know and answered based on the statistics and the facts.
“That always impressed me about Erick – the way he listened and responded to the members.”
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