By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The chance for American soybean growers to ask for a referendum on keeping or ditching the nationwide soybean checkoff has closed, but it will take at least another month to count the results of that month-long request period and find out if the checkoff is going to a vote.

Every five years, the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) works with the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) to take requests for a referendum on the checkoff, which was established in 1994. At least 10 percent of the country’s soybean producers must lodge a valid request for the measure to go back to a vote – which, if it happens, would determine if the soybean checkoff continues.
Two request periods were conducted in 1999 and 2004, and neither yielded enough requests to hold the referendum. According to Kenneth Payne – chief of AMS Marketing Programs branch, livestock and seed programs – only 3,200 requests were received back in 2004, and more than 60,000 would have been required for the checkoff to go back to a vote.

This time, close to 59,000 requests would be needed (out of nearly 600,000 soybean producers across the United States). The request period closed on May 29, with a mail-in allowance of June 5 for requests to end up at county FSA offices.

Looming over this particular request period were allegations against the checkoff program, of improper spending and other business practices, lodged with the USDA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).
The American Soybean Assoc. (ASA) made the allegations; the United Soybean Board (USB) administers and oversees the checkoff.

As to whether this might have influenced an increase in the number of requests for a referendum, Payne said, “I have no clue. I honestly don’t know.”

He explained right now, the requests are with individual county FSA offices in each state. Those offices are each canvassing the forms they received and will be contacting growers for more information on incomplete or questionable documentation, to give them the opportunity to fix their request.

“Once the county offices have completed that appeals process, they will tally the results and submit them to the state FSA offices,” Payne explained.

The state offices will go over the paperwork, too, and then turn it in to the federal FSA office in Washington. Once that office finishes its review, it will turn those results over to the AMS. Once Payne’s office does a final review of the information, it will issue a press release with the results – probably in mid- to late July.

“This is very typical of how we conduct our livestock and seed referendums in the AMS office,” he said, adding the office oversees 18 federal checkoff programs, all with different referendum requirements.

If there are enough requests to demand a referendum, Payne said the vote will occur within one year of the tally results announcement. Like the request period, it would probably be a four-week voting period.

As for the OIG, there is still no formal investigation or audit of the USB under way; spokesman Paul Feeney only said the office is still “conducting an inquiry into the situation,” as it has been since December 2008.