USDA Announces Referendum Opportunity for the Soybean Checkoff Program
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agriculture Marketing Service (AMS) has announced an opportunity for soybean producers to request a referendum on the Soybean Promotion and Research Order (the Order), as authorized by the Soybean Promotion, Research, and Consumer Information Act. The referendum would require participation by 10 percent of 589,182 eligible producers, provided that one-fifth of the requests do not come from any one state. If these conditions are met, AMS will hold a referendum within 1 year of the request and publish the results in the Federal Register. The agency will accept referendum requests between May 4 and 29, 2009. See Federal Register, March 4, 2009.
AMS earlier this week issued a final rule amending the Soybean Promotion, Research and Consumer Information program, also known as the soybean checkoff program, to update the number of eligible soybean producers. The USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) based its data on information obtained from 2006 and 2007 acreage reports, revising the number of eligible producers to 589,182 from the previous count of 663,880. FSA included “all producers that were engaged in the production of soybeans in at least one of the 2 years,” but excluded “counting a producer more than once if that producer engaged in production in both years.” The agency noted that most producers subject to the Order are small businesses defined by the Small Business Administration as those farms having annual receipts of less than $750,000. See Federal Register, March 2, 2009.
