 Hi, I'm Lorraine Voight. I'm the NDSU Extension Agent up in Renville County with Mohal being the county seat. And I wanted to talk to you a little bit today about crop improvements and our involvement in the seed increase program with North Dakota State University. Many people have been involved with the crop improvements, been on the crop improvement associations, but I'm sure there's quite a few producers that aren't aware of all the involvement and activities that local crop improvements do. Generally there's a crop improvement representation in each of the counties. I think there might be a couple counties in the state of North Dakota that are missing their crop improvement. But most of these associations work very closely with the county agents and the NDSU Extension Service within their counties. Very evolved relationships that work in the seed increase program, which is one of the primary functions of the state crop improvement associations. It all kind of begins with the breeders program at Fargo and I always like to put a plug in. Probably the top breeding program in the nation at NDSU in Fargo. And as new seeds are released through the ag and experiment station, there's many different organizations that are involved in getting that new varieties out in the country for the farmers producers to use. And just to name a few, it's the ag experiment station, it's the research centers that we're here at today that try those varieties and get them in their test plots for us. And then it's also foundation seed stock, seed department that does some of the regulatory. And eventually once the seeds are close to being released, it comes to the North Dakota crop and seed improvement association, which is our state organization for our crop improvements. And then that seed is dispersed throughout the counties. The county crop improvements make selections, they make the decisions of which of the varieties that they would like to try within their county. For instance, this past year in 2019, the experiment station released ND Hart Oats, they released ND Dickie soybeans, and they released ND Don Field Peas. And in Renville County, we're right along the very northern border of the state, obviously when our association looked at the potential releases, the Dickie soybeans, the ND Dickie soybeans was definitely a too long a season for us to have. The ND Hart Oats, we didn't have a whole lot of interest or a whole lot of seed growers that had raised oats in the past. But the ND Don yellow field peas were definitely of interest to growers and our crop improvement board. We requested an allotment of that seed, and we were fortunate enough to receive an allotment through the North Dakota Seed Increase Program. And that, then we reach out to the certified seed growers within our county to contract them to raise it for our crop improvement associations. And they increase that seed under contract with our organization. It's a very fun board to work with, they do many things, like I mentioned, the seed increase program is part of their revenue. We get a check off, off of all the bushels that are sold from that first initial increase. And beyond that, then we do other programs that we can for the county with some of that funds that we generate. It might be crop tours, might be the annual meetings, or we have a seed show that we put on in the winter, might be farmer appreciation meals, many different options that we take a look at through our local crop improvement organizations. So like I mentioned, many people involved all the way from the North Dakota Ag Experiment Station, the local research centers all the way down to the certified seed growers at the county level, so a very, very involved program and hopefully you'll follow along a little bit more and be more aware of what the crop improvement in your county is doing.