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Wisconsin farmer recalls early corn checkoff days

The Wisconsin Corn Growers Association is fifty years old, and the Wisconsin Corn Promotion Board has been managing the corn checkoff for forty of them. 

Cal Dalton farms near Endeavor has been there through the checkoff’s history. “I first started as a sales representative from Mid State going to Corn Expo just as an exhibitor and then got onto the county board and then the state board, and then I was on the National Corn Growers Board.”

And after that, he joined the Wisconsin Corn Promotion Board. “When I first started, we had a 10% checkoff, so we were only getting like pennies a bushel. We operated the growers on about a $20,000 budget, which you’d never get done today.”

Dalton says in the early days, the Wisconsin Corn Growers Association shared management with the soybean program, but now, they have their own office and staff to help find new markets and new uses for corn.

Dalton spoke to Brownfield at the Wisconsin Corn-Soy-Pork Expo in Wisconsin Dells, Wisaconsin.

Audio: Cal Dalton discusses his involvement in the promotion of Wisconsin corn with Brownfield’s Larry Lee