 Hello, I'm Charlie Stoltenall. Many of you know me as Dr. Charlie, Program Leader for Agriculture and Natural Resources, or as we affectionately know it as A&R. Today's topic are commodity elections. You're about to find out that commodity elections are very important to the citizens of North Dakota and to those of us in extension. So what are the commodity elections? Commodity elections are an opportunity and a responsibility for the NDSU Extension Service. North Dakota law authorizes producers of agriculture commodities to establish councils that support their specific industry. The councils are allowed to levy an assessment also known as a check-off on these producers and use the proceeds to fund research in promotion of the commodity. The commodity councils are managed by a board of producers for that commodity. Each county has the opportunity to have a county representative. County representatives are elected by all county producers of that commodity. Counties are grouped into districts. Every commodity council determines what their districts are. District representatives are elected by the county representatives in the district. The district representatives are the people who decide how the proceeds collected from the producers is spent. A very important job. So why is NDSU Extension involved in these elections? The NDSU Extension Service is required by the North Dakota Century Code to conduct elections for the North Dakota Barley Council, Corrin Council, Dry Pean Lental Council, Oil Seed Council, Soybean Council, and the Weed Commission. Each commodity requires an election to be held in each county for the county representative positions. The elections are based on a three or four year rotation depending on the commodity. NDSU Extension County and our agents are tasked with coordinating these elections. Elections can be held in conjunction with an event such as a crop improvement meeting or a separate meeting. Multiple council elections can be held during the same event. Here's our opportunity. Planning and officiating these elections provide the county and our agent a great opportunity to meet and form a working relationship with the producers in the county. Providing a well-run election and event can help agents become a recognized and knowledgeable resource to area producers. So how are county elections planned? Emails are sent out in November to counties required to hold elections for the next year. Some commodities allow elections to be held as early as December while others require a January 1st or later date. The emails are sent by the A&R program leaders office except for the soybean election information which will come directly to you from the North Dakota soybean office. Once the agent receives the email they are asked to set the date, time and location of the county election and then send the information including the address of the election site to the A&R program leaders office the earlier the better. An email will then be sent to the agent with the newspaper ads, news release, ballots and certificate for the election. Newspaper ads can be sent to the local newspaper. Publication dates are provided at the top of the ads. The Extension A&R agent conducts the county election. Ballots are supplied for nominations and voting. Agents are highly encouraged to use the ballots in case there is a contested election. If there's a tie vote the winner can be termed by a flip of a coin or if there are more than two candidates in a tie drawing a name from a hat is an acceptable tiebreaker. After the county election is held a copy of the certificate with the name of the county representative is mailed or emailed to the A&R program office. Ballots should remain in the county office until the next election for that commodity which can be three or four years later. Soybean elections are the only commodity election held by mail-in ballots. The North Dakota Soybean Council office takes care of all nomination and ballot mailings for the county elections. The agents' role is to collect the nominations through the mail and provide the names to the soybean office. The ballots will also be sent to the agent's office and the agent will be required to provide the name of the winner to the soybean office by a certain date. The district election is the next step. An agent in the commodity district is chosen by the A&R program leader, the commodity council, and the district director to officiate the district election. These elections are planned with the help of the commodity offices and are run similar to the county elections. So what are county representative duties? County representatives represent the producers in the county where they live. Their role is to serve as a liaison between the producers and the council. This enables the county representative to, one, influence how the check-off dollars are invested, two, places the representative in a position to influence the industry's direction, three, enables them to expand their network of fellow producers, leaders, and key influencers in their industry, and four, increase their personal knowledge of the commodity they represent. So what are the district representative duties? District representatives represent their district at the council or commission meetings. Their duties include, one, participate in board and committee meetings, two, select and evaluate their administrator, three, evaluate and review commission operations, four, monitor and participate in issues impacting the council and or commission, five, determine uses for the check-off money and six, approve, establish and prioritize and evaluate programs and services of the organization. So what can you do? Talk to your producers and look for potential county representative candidates throughout the year. Do not wait until January. So to recap, the commodity elections are great opportunity for A&R agents to meet and develop relationships with producers within their county and the opportunity to help develop leaders within their communities. These relationships will last an entire career. Also, NDSU Extension is given the responsibility to conduct a fair and transparent election as required by the North Dakota Century Code. Our public has placed their trust in us. Commodity elections are just one of the opportunities to show their trust is well placed in the NDSU Extension Service. This has been a lot of information in a short amount of time. We are placing this video and other supporting information on the NDSU Extension website under the for employees section as reference material for you. Thanks for watching. Have a great day.