There are 7,500 dues-paying members with farmers serving as board directors elected by their peers. The Iowa Corn Promotion Board handles the checkoff to which farmers contribute.

“The boards are separate but they share a common mission: creating opportunities for long-term grower profitability in Iowa. We help farmers be successful and address issues from a local level all the way to the international level,” said association chief executive officer Craig Floss.

The ICGA has influence at the State Capitol and in Washington, D.C., Floss said, petitioning for issues critical to Iowa’s corn growers.

One early and major accomplishment of the association was the creation of Iowa’s corn checkoff program.

-Submitted photo by ICGA

In 1971, the ICGA began efforts in the Iowa Legislature to pass a corn checkoff authority bill. In 1977, six years after the initial bill was introduced, the corn referendum received a majority of votes and was passed into law.

Iowa’s corn checkoff was the first in the nation and the model for more than 20 other similar state checkoff programs that followed.

One of the landmark events for Iowa Corn happened on June 15, 1978, when ICGA Past President Thurman Gaskill, a Corwith farmer who was then acting as ICPB’s first president, pumped the state’s first tank of ethanol in the town of Clarence. Many at the time thought it was a joke. But Gaskill, who later went on to serve as state senator, and other leaders, found five stations willing to sell the gasoline mixed with 10 percent ethanol in the towns of Clarence, Cumberland, Osage, Peterson and Fort Dodge.

“One of the biggest and earliest victories came with ethanol,” Floss said. “The Iowa Corn Promotion Board put the first checkoff dollars into the first gasohol pumps in 1978 after the checkoff passed in 1977. The association’s leaders knew they wanted to increase markets. Ethanol has opened up export markets around the world, and it’s in countries and regions where it’s never been before. We’ve done lots of new things to create markets for Iowa’s corn farmers.”

The biggest marketing effort to tout ethanol came when ICGA formed an alliance with the Iowa Speedway in 2007 for what’s now called the Iowa Corn 300 race. Yet there are untapped markets awaiting Iowa-grown corn, too, Floss said.

“You can make so many things form the corn kernel. Our ability to get into the plastics market has the potential to create a lot of demand for corn. We believe we’re going to compete head-to-head competitively in that arena. We also have some exciting things happening in the ethanol space relative to exports, and the U.S. Grains Council is working closely to open up new markets for distillers grains and ethanol,” Floss said.

“We’re able to export it and help improve air quality in other countries like China where an explosion of automobiles has really caused major air quality issues.”