Illinois Soybean Association in midst of 60th anniversary

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois Soybean Association is observing its 60th anniversary this year that will culminate with an awards banquet in November.

Ron Kindred, ISA chair, reflected on the soybean industry’s advancements over the past six decades and the possibilities going forward in an interview during the Illinois State Fair Ag Day.

Kindred, also an American Soybean Association board member, farms near Atlanta with his wife, Jayne, and their son, Jay, raising soybeans and corn.

What are your thoughts about the 60th anniversary milestone?

Kindred: My thoughts go back to when the association first started. We were the Land of Lincoln Soybean Association. Back in those days, 40 bushels an acre was a good yield.

That’s what my dad strived for back in the day. Now we’ve advanced to where if we don’t get 70 bushels an acre, we’re disappointed.

I give a lot of credit to the research that the Illinois Soybean Association has invested in over the years and the markets that have been developed outside as well as inside the United States.

We’ve just come so far and it’s kind of mind-boggling when you think about when I got on the soybean board in 1999 we were growing 2 billion bushels of soybeans in the United States and trying to figure out how we’re going to get rid of them.

Now we’re growing over 4 billion bushels and we’re able to get rid of them. It just shows that we’ve come a long ways. Is our work done? No, we’ve got a lot of work to do.

We’re celebrating this throughout the year. It will culminate in November with our awards banquet at the Normal Marriot. It’s been a fun time. It’s a big milestone and I’m proud to be chairman during this celebration.

We got a proclamation from the governor. It’s neat that they’re celebrating the 60 years with us. We’re proud of that.

What do you think of the ISA docuseries on its website in observance of 60 years, highlighting its efforts through checkoff investments in research and marketing?

Kindred: It’s kind of neat that they’re doing that because it does give a lot of history of the organization, what we’ve been involved in, where we’ve been and looking toward where we’re going to go. That’s kind of hard to look into that crystal ball to say where we’re going to go.

We also started the Soy Innovation Center through ISA. It’s in its first year and we’ve got a product that’s very promising for a new use.

That’s what this is all about, finding new uses for our soybeans, whether it’s soybean oil, soybean protein, whatever, we just want to find more uses for our soybeans and try to get those for domestic use instead of worrying about international demand all of time. The investment in research to find new uses is very important.

Another exciting thing we’ve got that’s just starting is an on-farm trial network this year. We’re going to have all of these trials that farmers want to do, and it’s going to be on their farm. It’s going to be really interesting to see the results we get out of that and what research we’ll invest in based on those results.

Farmers are always thinking outside the box, want to try new things and think they have a better way of doing it, and a lot of times they do.

So, if there’s some research we can do to help speed that along to make us more profitable and more competitive in the world marketplace, then we’ve got to do it.

Research over the years has been very crucial for our organization and we’ve invested heavily in that, not only at the university level, but with ag industry, too.

What do you foresee happening in the next 60 years?

Kindred: I think we’re going to continue to grow more soybeans and continue to see more uses for them.

One potential market is sustainable aviation fuel which is huge. If we can play a part in that market, it could have a big impact on soybeans and the soybean price.

We’ll have more hurdles in the future, but we’re a resilient bunch and I’m confident that we’ll overcome those and prosper in the future.

When I first came on the board, biodiesel was a very new product. I remember our CEO at the time saying, ‘I don’t know why we’re going down this road because we don’t have near enough soybean oil to supply that market.’ Here we are now, and it just keeps growing.

We’re doing all we can to protect that market right now. It’s kind of under attack from the renewable diesel side and these (Greenhouse Gases, Regulation Emissions and Energy Use in Transportation) models scoring are skewed based on what’s going on in South America.

We want them to score it based on what’s going on in the United States. I think if they did that, soybean oil would be a preferred feedstock for the production of renewable diesel, biodiesel and sustainable aviation fuel.

What’s it like being at the Illinois State Fair’s Ag Day, with representatives from across all farm groups and commodities joining in the celebration?

Kindred: It’s a fun day. I see a lot of people that I know and get to interact with that I don’t see on a daily basis. That’s the fun part for me.

We also get to celebrate how important agriculture is to Illinois and I think that’s a message that we don’t deliver often enough of how important Illinois agriculture is to the economy of the state, and it works that way on a national level, too.

We may not be very big as far as population goes, but we’re awfully dynamic when it comes to the economics.