The Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association is seeking an Administrative Assistant to the Executive Director.  As a critical member of our team, demeanor is a crucial aspect of this position.  The candidate will be the principal administrative support person for the leader of this commodity based association, thereby performing a vitally important role.  The successful candidate will have a sincere interest in the Association’s mission, possess excellent administrative and relational skills, value attention to detail, and be able to handle a variety of activities and tasks.  The office environment is informal but highly professional, requiring quality work and individual initiative.  Send cover letter with resume and salary requirements to: Bruce M. Kleven, PO Box 24008, Minneapolis, MN  55424.

Major Responsibilities:

• Serve as right-hand of the Executive Director
• Represent the Executive Director and the Association in a professional and congenial manner in person, in telephone conversations, and in written correspondence
• Telephone coverage, mail processing, ordering supplies, preparing bank deposits
• Write letters and other correspondence for the Executive Director
• Discreet handling of confidential information
• Proofread and edit documents
• Assist with development and preparation of budgets for specific projects of the organization
• Update contacts and articles in the database, using database to export information, merge letters, make contact lists, produce labels, and prepare group emails
• Assist with filing and organization of information
• Maintain the office calendar, including the schedule for the President
• Assist with travel arrangements for the Executive Director and maintain travel records
• Take minutes at Executive Committee meetings
• Assist with general office administrative tasks as needed
• Assist with meeting planning as needed

Qualifications:

• Excellent interpersonal skills
• Strong verbal and written communication skills
• Attention to accuracy and detail in all aspects of responsibilities
• Proficient computer skills, particularly with Microsoft Office, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as QuickBooks
• Experience performing research utilizing the Internet
• Excellent organizational skills
• Knowledge of basic filing and organizational protocols
• The ability to follow directions, sometimes from multiple sources, and determine priorities

Education and Experience:

• Bachelor’s and /or equivalent work experience

5-2-12

WEST FARGO, N.D. — The head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Natural Resources Conservation Service promised by September to come up with a just solution for wetland determination backlogs when he spoke Monday at the Red River Valley Fairgrounds here.

Wetlands determinations that are held up, waiting for NRCS approval, have become frustrating for the region’s farmers, particularly those in the central and southern Red River Valley. They want to use tile drainage or water management to contend with a string of wet years, and to capitalize on higher commodity prices and land values.

“I have one shot to make this right,” said NRCS chief Dave White, who came to Fargo at the invitation of Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D. “It’s got to be legally defensible. It’s got to be fair, it’s got to be equitable, it’s got to be transparent. If I screw this up, it’s going to be bollocks for the USDA in lawsuits for the next 20 years. I’m begging, pleading for your patience as a lot of these things are worked through.”

Fed up farmers

Farmers who want to tile and need to drain land must fill out federal forms (AD-1026), requiring that NRCS complete a “certified” wetland determination. This can start with office work, but ends with a field determination.

The NRCS uses aerial photography to make preliminary determinations. Part of this involves various markers including wet spots that have shown up because of historic wet conditions. Farmers who thought they had two or three wetlands on a tract of land now were disappointed to find out that they have 20 spots that weren’t identified before.

The appearance of wetlands can stop the drainage project until a field determination is made. Farm program benefits are at risk if the drainage goes forward without it.

Fed up with the backlog, some farm leaders at the meeting reported that they or their neighbors have dropped out of the farm program entirely. Hoeven took the opportunity to stress that he’s against tying conservation compliance to crop insurance, which is one tool environmental groups have advocated to keep conservation techniques in place.

White said his agency has received 34,713 wetland determination requests from 2009 to 2011 in the four Upper Midwest states. “We’ve done about 24,000 of them and we have about 11,000 of them left,” he said. The agency puts “a few million dollars into the Dakotas, Minnesota and Iowa, to hire people to do that,” he said.

Mary Podoll, NRCS State Conservationist, based in Bismarck, said the agency completed 3,000 determinations in the past 18 months but has some 3,500 additional sitting on the books today.

“Yesterday we were losing ground, but with some of the changes the chief has suggested that can be implemented fairly quickly, we will start gaining ground this summer,” Podoll said.

Fixing the backlog

Among the ways suggested to cut the backlog is to create a procedure for off-site wetlands determinations. One likely idea is to use a 30-year history of wetland mapping as a baseline for establishing normal conditions on farm lands.

The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration uses a 30-year period to determine a “normal” average. The agency’s “baseline” for what is a wetland would start with precipitation data from 1970 to 2000, which includes 15 years before and 15 years after the 1985 conservation compliance provisions were started. High and low precipitation years would be discarded to represent a reasonable range. The agency would come up with five of the most representative years for weather, and would even use methods to “normalize” those, to compensate for data collected before and after a big rain.

White said that if the data show a “wetland signature” at least 60 percent of the time it would constitute a farmed wetland in a remote wetland determination. If it’s seen less than 30 percent, it isn’t a wetland. If it’s there from 30 to 60 percent of the time, the NRCS would send someone out to look at it.

White said a streamlined remote approach will “unify around a set of climate data” and get teams up and running that can specialize in the process. Plus, the agency is planning to offer producers more options for mitigation. White said he thinks USDA can approve some of the procedures in a month. He said the agency also is in the process of finalizing parts of the process, including mathematical formulas for setbacks — distances that tile must be from wetlands — by September.

Bill Hejl, an Amenia, N.D., farmer was among those cautioning White to include snowfall precipitation and not just precipitation over a three-month (May to July) period. “If we have 140 inches of snow it’s going to look wet for a long time.”

White said he’s leaning toward allowing farmers to opt for a field determination and opt out of the remote determination. Similarly, he is considering allowing farmers to certify an entire tract, or separate fields within a tract. He said NRCS engineers are in the process of reviewing four formulas for setbacks. “For this area of the world, we will have one” formula, he says. “Everybody’s going to use the same formula for setback distances.”

5-7-12

WASHINGTON – Trade experts Bob Kudrle and Bryan Riley are convinced that price supports and other protections for the U.S. sugar industry force consumers and foodmakers to pay more for sugar than they should.

U.S. Rep. Collin Peterson, who represents thousands of Minnesota sugar beet growers and producers, believes the federal sugar policy guarantees jobs and stable commodity prices.

Still, all three men agree on one point: The current sugar policy won’t go away any time soon.

Over the past two weeks, the sugar industry has persuaded lawmakers to renew the sugar program in the 2012 farm bill, which will govern agriculture policy for the next five years. Further, tariffs on foreign sugar won’t be part of the negotiations for a new free trade agreement spanning the Pacific Ocean.

“We remain confident that the sugar policy that has been in place … will remain in place,” said Kevin Price, a lobbyist for Moorhead-based American Crystal Sugar Co.

To most observers, the likely renewal of the sugar program demonstrates the enormous political clout of the sugar lobby, and in particular, American Crystal Sugar, a farmers’ cooperative. During the first quarter of 2012, the co-op poured $951,300 into lobbying Congress, leading a

$2.5 million industry push that was roughly six times what opponents of the sugar policy spent.

“People have recognized that this is a bad policy all of my adult life, but it gets through,” said Kudrle, an international trade professor at the University of Minnesota. “There is no question that money talks more than ever.”

As the nation’s largest producer of refined sugar through beet farming, Crystal Sugar generates 15 percent of the country’s sugar supply, while cultivating deep roots in Washington, D.C. The co-op continues to be one of the biggest congressional campaign contributors, spreading the maximum allowable donations to hundreds of Senate and House candidates.

This strategy, critics and proponents agree, has preserved a unique federal program that virtually assures profits for the U.S. sugar industry through price controls, tariffs on foreign sugar and loan guarantees whereby growers can repay the government in sugar if the market crashes.

The sugar program passed out of the Senate Agriculture Committee unscathed on April 26 with the support of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn. The senator has said current sugar policy has a positive impact on Minnesota’s economy.

Last week, another attempt to change the sugar policy failed, as the U.S. Trade Representative’s office spurned an effort to include sugar in the Trans Pacific Partnership trade negotiations. Associations representing some of America’s biggest food processors – including Minnesota-based giants Cargill, General Mills and Land O’Lakes – were pushing the trade office to eliminate tariffs on sugar produced by TPP countries.

“We have considered this issue carefully and expect to retain the existing market access provisions with the current group of TPP countries,” said Carol Guthrie, a spokeswoman with the U.S. trade office.

The Trans Pacific Partnership includes Chile, Brunei, New Zealand, Singapore and sugar-rich Australia.

Excluding sugar from trade talks could compromise the pact, said Devry Boughner, Cargill’s trade lobbyist.

“Once a country removes an industry from the table, other countries remove their offerings,” Boughner said. “TPP has meant to serve as the gold standard for trade agreements, meaning the agreement should be comprehensive.”

Don Phillips, trade adviser to the American Sugar Alliance, disagreed with Boughner’s assessment, arguing it would be a mistake to open U.S. sugar producers to global competition. “Typically, that’s a dump market,” he said. “To throw our market open to that would be a disaster.”

Back in Washington, William Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, which is part of the Coalition for Sugar Reform, said his group will press for changes to the sugar program.

“It’s premature to say efforts to reform have failed,” he said, noting that the price gap between what the world pays for sugar and what American consumers and businesses pay is getting bigger.

But Reinsch, whose 98-year-old organization represents global companies, acknowledged an uphill fight.

“The sugar program has been around a long time, and we have never succeeded in killing it,” he said.

“Throughout the bargaining process, we have committed to good faith negotiations in the interest of reaching a fair agreement with our employees,” said Brian Inguslrud, Vice President for Administration at American Crystal Sugar Company. “The National Labor Relations Board’s dismissal of the union’s charges clearly affirms that we have acted with transparency, clarity and willingness to compromise.”

The NLRB cited the following explanations for dismissing the BCTGM’s charge:

 The Employer clearly laid out its objectives at the start of bargaining. The Union “repeatedly refused to consider the Employer’s proposals, and made virtually no counterproposals to address the Employer’s objectives.”
 The Employer significantly modified the subcontracting language in one of its last proposals prior to the lockout. “The modification was consistent with what the Employer claimed was past practice, and there is no evidence suggesting that the Union disagreed with the Employer regarding the past practice.”
 The Employer satisfied all information requests made by the Union.
 The Employer’s last two proposals before the lockout contained “significant movement” by the Employer. “The economics of its final two offers do not reflect bad-faith bargaining, and the last two proposals also included significant concessions on noneconomic items. The Employer’s significant movement is particularly relevant because the Union made few (if any) concessions.””American Crystal made a final offer to the union on July 28. The offer included significant pay increases over the life of the contract even when factoring in changes to the health care plan and increased pension contributions. The union rejected the Company’s final offer.

“Successful negotiations are based on reasonable give and take by both parties,” added Ingulsrud. “As this ruling clarified, we’ve been willing to negotiate but the union hasn’t shown the same willingness.”

To review the letter from the National Labor Relations Board, go to www.acsccontracttalks.com.

• America’s sugar producers support 146,000 U.S. jobs.
• Sugar farmers don’t receive government subsidy checks.
• Sugar producers generate nearly $10 billion a year for the U.S. economy.
• Sugar policy is predicted to cost taxpayers $0 in 2010.
• Sugar is produced in 18 states.
• Sugar producers’ fuel costs have skyrocketed by 251% since 1985.
• Two-thirds of Americans believe sugar in the U.S. is inexpensive.
• Food manufacturers pocket lower sugar prices to boost profits instead of sharing the savings with shoppers.
• Sugar policy didn’t cost taxpayers a dime in ’02, ’03, ’04, ’05, ’06, ’07, ’08, ’09 and ’10.
• 38 of America’s foreign sugar suppliers are developing countries and most support U.S. sugar policy.
• Seven out of ten of Americans prefer buying homegrown sugar, even if foreign sugar is cheaper.
• 100% of sugarbeet companies are owned by farmers.
• Dependence on foreign sugar in WWII forced the government to ration sugar.
• One-sided trade deals force the U.S. to import sugar from 41 countries regardless of our needs.
• The world sugar market is a thinly traded, heavily subsidized dump market and is the world’s most volatile commodity market.
• America is the world’s second largest sugar importer.
• NAFTA made Mexico the only sugar producer-domestic or foreign-with unlimited access to the U.S. market.
• 55-60% of America’s sugar production comes from beets, the rest from cane.
• Sugar producers’ labor costs are up 110% since 1985; farm equipment costs 75% more.
• Sugar prices in Mexico have historically been higher than U.S. prices.

STOWE, Vt. — As most industries limped through the recent economic meltdown, one thrived, according to an issue brief, “Confectioners’ Sweet Recession ,” released today by the American Sugar Alliance (ASA).

Stories of job creation, facility expansion, production increases, and record sales have been commonplace among candy makers since 2008, according to the report, which was published at the 28^th International Sweetener Symposium. “And it should continue if analysts’ predictions hold true.”

However, lawmakers aren’t hearing the good news.

“In fact, when [the National Confectioners Association] NCA and other candy industry lobbyists visit Capitol Hill, they spin a much different story—one of job loss and struggling company revenues because of sugar policy, which operates at no cost to taxpayers,” read the issue brief.

The fact that U.S. government data show candy production increasing nearly 9 percent since 2004, and 2.5 percent since the recession started in 2008, is just one of the positive developments not being shared with Congress, the ASA found.

This was confirmed by NCA’s president, who the issue brief quoted saying, “Despite a shaky economy for the past two and half years, sales continue to increase an average of 3% per year, with a nearly 4% gain this past year.”  That’s a far cry from sugar policy being a “financial burden,” as he’s told lawmakers.

NCA and other food manufacturers unsuccessfully lobbied in the last Farm Bill to increase taxpayers’ financial burden by replacing the no-cost policy with a $1.3 billion per year subsidy check program.  “Now, they are simply asking to eliminate any policy, at the risk of ending U.S. sugar production and leaving the United States dependent on foreign suppliers,” read the report.

This too seems destined to fail, according to the ASA.  After all, even sugar policy’s biggest critics are profiting and growing under the current system, which stands alone as the sole farm policy to operate without cost to the government.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” ASA chairman Jack Pettus said at the Symposium.  “Farmers, confectioners, and taxpayers all seem to be thriving under America’s no-cost success story.”

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