Bunselmeyer elected ICGA president

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Mark Bunselmeyer was elected president of the Illinois Corn Growers Association for 2025-2026 at its annual re-organizational meeting Nov. 25.

Bunselmeyer, a Maroa area farmer, has served on the ICGA board since November 2019, most recently as vice president.

He will continue his role as District 7 director for the duration of his term as president, representing corn farmer members in DeWitt, Macon, McLean, Moultrie, Piatt and Woodford counties.

Joining Bunselmeyer in leadership roles are Vice President Don Guinnip, Marshall; Secretary Matt Shane, Peoria; and Treasurer Michael Houston, Golden.

The ICGA Exports Committee will be led by Chairman Shane Gray, Waverly, and Vice Chairman Keith Sanders, Vandalia.

Elected to lead the Industrial Committee are Chair Sarah Hastings, Sidney, and Vice Chairman Ellen Rahn, Mount Carroll.

Grassroots Committee leadership for the coming year are Chairman Chris Gould, Maple Park, and Vice Chairman Dan Parker, Dwight.

Four farmers were reelected and will continue in their positions as district directors. They are Gould, Bunselmeyer, Gray, and Cliff Lane, Toulon.

Bryan Tomm, Carmi, is newly elected to represent farmers in District 13. Chad Dillenberger, Valmeyer, was appointed by the board to fill a vacancy representing farmers in District 14.

Two at-large directors were reelected to represent all the corn farmers in Illinois: Clint Gorden, Blue Mound, and Evan Marr, Jacksonville.

The ICGA Board of Directors and the counties each director represents are detailed on the organization’s website.

Farmer, Educator

Bunselmeyer raises corn and soybeans in Macon County with his father and brother-in-law. He and his wife, Mindy, have two children.

Bunselmeyer graduated from Maroa-Forsyth High School before earning a degree in agricultural and consumer economics from the University of Illinois.

He built a renewed agriculture education program and FFA chapter at Maroa-Forsyth High School in 2001 before leaving teaching in 2004 to farm full-time.

“While I was in college they had shutdown the ag education program at my high school, and I went back and encouraged them to start it back up. The principal, who was my principal while I was in high school said, ‘Why don’t you do that?’ So, while I was in college I went back and switched over,” he said.

“I didn’t switch my major. I was still an ag econ major, but I switched classes for the last year of school and started taking ag ed, teaching methods and a lot of different classes like that.”

He student-taught at Mt. Pulaski under the guidance of Ralph Allen, who recently received the Golden Owl Award as the Illinois Ag Educator of the Year.

During his time at Maroa-Forsyth, the ag education program “went from zero kids to 60 kids to 130 kids.”

“When I retired from teaching, they couldn’t shut the program down because it was full-time by then,” he said. “The program went from two hours a day when I was a student. I got it to four hours a day my first year and then it expanded to a full-time program.

“It’s still there. My son graduated from it and my daughter’s in it now.”

Through his experiences on the family farm and as an FFA adviser, Bunselmeyer saw the importance of commodity organizations and was invited to join.

“I was familiar with commodity organizations, as well as Farm Bureau. It was not something that I ever really got involved in earlier on, but as I started seeing different opportunities it presented itself for others, I started thinking, OK, this is more interesting,” he said.

“While I was a chaperone with FFA for a few years, I got to know people on the IL Corn staff and see the issues that they were working on, which were issues that affected me.

“When there was an opening for my district, Jim Tarmann of IL Corn reached out and said, ‘Why don’t you run for it?’ I did, and I’m now here.”

Looking Ahead

Challenges for farmings include increasing profitability in a low-price, high-cost environment.

“We have those slimming margins, we have constant trade issues that we don’t know each day what might be changing on the horizon that affects our commodity prices that fluctuate with it,” Bunselmeyer said.

“As far as going forward as an organization, looking federally at different legislation, we still want to have a standalone farm bill that has all the different components that were not part of the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ such as the conservation aspect of it. We want to see that done.

“Also, an avenue to get year-round E15 on the table and check that box and get that done. We thought we had accomplished that last December.

“I see the value of having that farm bill as something that bridges food assistance and food production — the bridges of rural areas and urban areas, and in this contentious political climate having something that both sides aisle can get behind. There’s nothing else else there that does that, and maybe agriculture could be a small piece of helping us as a country. That’s one of the first steps of our federal legislation.”