Soybean Leaders Collaborate Since Student Government Days

There are many people who collaborated to give birth to the South Dakota Soybean Association. One is Jerry Schmitz, who was instrumental in the organization’s 1982 founding. Schmitz, now its executive director, retires in July. A farmer who was beside him and helping to see to that founding is retired farmer Mark Berg.

“Well, I was fortunate enough to meet Jerry back in my days at South Dakota State University,” said Berg, taking a break from volunteering at the South Dakota Soybean office in Sioux Falls. “We didn't have the same pursuits from a major standpoint. He was in the ag school, and I was in the engineering school, but we met within student government.”

In fact, the two were introduced and bonded over their mutual opposition to a South Dakota Board of Regents proposal that would have had a negative impact on the engineering college at South Dakota State University. Their opposition, combined with statewide pushback, resulted in legislation that eventually blocked the board’s proposal.

Berg, formerly of Tripp, South Dakota, went on to help Jerry get elected SDSU student body president. Later, Jerry called on Mark to help recruit enough soybean growers to create the state organization that exists today.

“We got an ambulance building in Elk Point, South Dakota, that had three [telephone] lines coming in. Remember this is landline days before there were cell phones,” explained Berg, himself a past president of the American Soybean Association. “Three of us got together five nights in a row and we got our 200 people within one week. And that's how the South Dakota Soybean Association was formed from those calls that occurred in 1981. And then we were officially affiliated as the 25th American Soybean Association state in 1982.”

Jerry Shmitz has been the staff leader, a paid position at South Dakota Soybean, for several years; that’s after serving decades as a farmer leader of the organization. Mark Berg recalls the early days when South Dakota Soybean existed essentially out of the trunk of Jerry’s car.

”Everything was all volunteer at that time and Jerry was an endless volunteer. I mean, he donated a lot of time. Fortunately for ag in South Dakota, he donated his leadership ability. And there is no doubt that the soybean industry is much better off for having Jerry involved,” said Berg. “It takes people like Jerry to get things to happen.”