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Missouri Soybean focused on farmer profitability

The new deputy executive director of the Missouri Soybean Association says the key to increasing farmer profitability is growing soybean demand.

Casey Wasser says Missouri farmers are uniquely positioned to benefit from expanded use of biofuels.

“If you look on a state level, Missouri soybean is very lucky to have four biodiesel facilities that are also co-located with crush facilities.”  He says, “We’re going to continue to try to build demand for that biodiesel.”

However, he says the recently announced 45Z biofuels tax credit poses challenges to that potential growth.

“We know that we need to be the voice for soybean oil as a feedstock specifically,” he says, “and of course just the overall difference in value between soybean oil and other feedstocks in the 45 Z tax credit. We need to make sure that our farmers are seeing the financial benefit of the biofuel demand that we created years and years ago in this state.”

He tells Brownfield expansion of the state’s livestock industry is also a priority.

“We want to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to knock down administrative barriers, through regulation, or if it’s tax incentives, to bring livestock production to this state.”  He says, “We want to make sure that we’re growing demand for the opposite side of that bean, which would be the meal side.”

Wasser says a goal of Missouri Soybean is to facilitate demand growth through meaningful policy changes at both the state and federal level.

Wasser was recently promoted to his new role as deputy executive director.  He’ll maintain his position as chief operating officer of the Missouri Soybean Merchandising Council.

AUDIO: Casey Wasser – Missouri Soybean Association