Ag United refocuses under executive director Don Norton

For a couple of decades, South Dakota soybean growers have collaborated with other checkoff and advocacy groups to reach consumers with consistent messaging.

“Each commodity group, you know, has their own outreach efforts and they do a great job with that, expanding markets and coming up with new uses of products and getting the word out,” said Don Norton, executive director of Ag United for South Dakota. “Corn gets the word out to corn growers and soy gets the word out to soybean growers and the same with all of the other commodities, but we’re really focused on that message to the consumer. It’s a lot of work to get the shared interests between everybody to talk about how agriculture is very much geared to providing what the consumer wants.”

Norton, who early this year took over the lead position for Ag United, says the consortium is known not for its policy positions, but instead for its delivery of agriculture information in a way consumers want to hear it.

“You know there are very specific topics that we have found in South Dakota that consumers latch on to; they’re concerned about water quality, they’re concerned about animal welfare, they’re concerned about sustainability, and you know what, so are the farmers and ranchers,” said Norton. “We have shared interests and organizations like Ag United really can bring that forward so that we can listen and begin a dialogue with the consumer.”

South Dakota Soybean is one of seven commodity and advocacy organizations that fund and benefit from the outreach of Ag United for South Dakota, now in its 20^th year.

“We have work underway for a new website that will be like an integration hub for all of the messaging, and we can aggregate libraries of materials that the organizations can use,” he said. “Because we’re able to make a better case with the consumer, we feel the soybean growers will benefit from that.”

During his first year with the organization, Norton, who will be featured on an upcoming edition of the Soybean Pod, available on most podcast platforms, says Ag United is refocusing from what it’s done in its first twenty years.

“We’re being more of an outreach organization, more consumer-facing,” said Norton. “It’s really going to be an interesting year to see how all of these things come out and the work that we’re able to do.”