USB board tightens budget

DECATUR, Ill. — The United Soybean Board tightened its budget belt for the new fiscal year by prioritizing high-impact projects with better return on investment for farmers.

During USB’s annual meeting in July, board members approved a budget that was reduced from $173.8 million in fiscal year 2025 to $121.3 million for fiscal year 2026.

“The 77 farmer leaders on the board all got together and agreed to our budget. Just like all that’s been going on in farming lately, we had to tighten our belt a little bit, and reduce our budget about 30%,” David Wessel, USB board member from Chandlerville in central Illinois, said at the group’s Farm Progress Show booth.

The budget process included a deeper dive into the soybean checkoff-funded projects “and making sure that the ROI is getting back to the farm level,” said Wessel, who also serves as an Illinois Soybean Association at-large director.

“I feel really good about the projects that we moved forward. Of course, there’s a lot less of them, being a reduced budget. We had to cut some that have been going on for a long time, but you kind of like weed it out and the cream comes to the top.”

Priorities

Key investments USB is prioritizing in the new fiscal year include:

• Food: Expanding high oleic soybeans as a strategic ingredient for the food industry.

• Feed: Advancing and deploying research and marketing to enhance demand of U.S. soybean meal by supporting health, productivity and profitability of livestock and poultry production.

• Fuel: Positioning U.S. soybean oil as the preferred feedstock to meet the renewable volume obligation of 5.6 billion gallons of biomass-based diesel in 2026.

• Industrial Uses: Furthering the commercialization of new soy-based technologies with the greatest potential to drive soybean demand.

• Exports: Growing U.S. soy exports into more than 80 established markets while diversifying into new markets through the promotion of U.S. soy’s quality attributes. Export partnerships also aim to raise consumption of U.S. meat, poultry and eggs around the globe, which increases the demand for U.S. soybean meal in domestic animal diets.

• Sustainable Production: Addressing major yield threats and exploring on-farm cost-saving opportunities.

“We have six market segments that we do most of our funding in. We tried to spread the load out amongst them, and each farmer on the board has their own expertise from wherever they may be, because we have 77 farmers from over 30 states around the country on the USB board. We a diverse group of farmers on that board,” Wessel said of the budget process.

“I sit on a production side. I’ve always been on the production side at ISA. I know a lot of them think moving the soybean pile is what we need to do, but we also need to make sure that we have a pile to move.

“If farmers aren’t raising the bushels, it seems like that’s what pays the bills anymore because prices aren’t exactly where you need to be and to make that ROI, at least to be a little more profitable, we have to have the bushels to match that.

“We’re doing a lot of work on all the stresses, abiotic diseases, pests, weeds. As I mentioned, we kind of curtailed it a little bit with our reduced budget, but we’re still doing a lot of projects nationwide to address those issues.”

Diverse Board

Among the highlights as a USB board member is working with a diverse group of soybean farmers.

“A lot of it is the networking between the farmers and learning from the diversity, because just in our production committee at USB, we have farmers from Minnesota, all the way down to the southern tip of Texas on that committee,” Wessel said.

“I didn’t even know they were growing soybeans in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, but USB board member Andy Scott grows a few soybeans down there. He was done harvesting corn in June, and there were people in Illinois still trying to get their first corn planted in June.

“We have to cater to them in the Rio Grande Valley, too. It’s not a large segment of the soybeans grown, but his are just as important, too, so that he can grow a soybean there and have a market for that soybean just as much as we are in central Illinois.”

Other Illinois farmers serving on the USB board are Dwayne Anderson, Lynn Center; Gary Berg, St. Elmo; and Steve Pitstick, Maple Park.

Wessel Farm

Wessel grows corn, soybeans, wheat, cattle and hay with his father and son, representing the fourth, fifth and sixth generation on the farm.

Conservation practices also span generations at the farm where his father started utilizing 100% no-till 40 years ago.

“We have a little bit more rolling ground. It was originally started because of soil erosion, but we also see all of the other benefits that come along with it with the soil health, the recycling of nutrients, because we’ve utilized cover crops,” Wessel said.

“We also have a cow-calf operation, so we’ve always grown some forage crops. We have cereal rye out there for the cattle to graze on throughout the winter months, but now our farm is almost 100% cover crops, because I’ve seen the benefits.

“My yields were improving where I was running the cattle and had cover crop every year. My organic matter was moving up, soil health was getting better. I was getting more filtration of the water. I wasn’t having the issues there.

“I’m trying to adopt that more into my other farm. I still don’t have enough cattle near all of the farm to graze, and where the cattle are now, I wish I would have had another couple hundred head of cattle on hand because that’s definitely the most profitable side of our farm at this aspect.

“But that’s what got us started in the conservation side of it with the cattle and being on the rolling hills. We definitely see the benefit, no matter what soil type. I have some pretty flat prairie soil also, and we see the benefits on it just as much.”

Service

Along with serving on the ISA and USB board, Wessel wears several other hats, as well.

He currently sits on the Illinois Nutrient Research and Education Council as treasurer and is also the Western Illinois University representative for the University Endowed Research Support Fund Advisory Committee.

He is a past ISA Soy Ambassador and Cass County FSA Committee chairman and has been involved with the Clear Lake Drainage District, Cass-Morgan Farm Bureau, and Illinois Farm Bureau.