Introducing New USMEF Chair Bruce Schmoll

The U.S. Meat Export Federation’s (USMEF) annual strategic planning conference, held in Carlsbad, California, concluded Friday with the election of new USMEF officers. The newly-elected USMEF chair is Bruce Schmoll, a soybean and corn producer from Claremont, Minnesota. Schmoll discusses how he came to be involved in USMEF and his goals for the organization in the attached audio report.

Other USMEF officers for 2016-2017:

• Dennis Stiffler, Ph.D., is USMEF chair-elect. Stiffler recently retired as chief executive officer of Mountain States Rosen and has more than 30 years of livestock, meat industry and international marketing experience.

• Serving as USMEF vice chair is Iowa pork producer Conley Nelson, general manager of Smithfield Foods’ hog production division in the company’s five-state Midwest region and a past president of the National Pork Board.

• The newest USMEF officer is Idaho cattle feeder Cevin (pronounced Kevin) Jones, serving as secretary-treasurer. Jones operates Intermountain Beef, a custom feedlot. He is vice chairman of the Federation of State Beef Councils and has served on the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association board of directors.


TRANSCRIPT:

Joe Schuele: The U.S. Meat Export Federation’s annual Strategic Planning Conference, held in Carlsbad, California, concluded with the election of new officers. In this USMEF report, we introduce new USMEF Chairman Bruce Schmoll, of Claremont, Minnesota.

Bruce Schmoll: My family is located in southeast Minnesota. We live on a family farm, basically raising corn and soybeans on about 1,000 acres. We incorporate a few other little things that I think makes our building site kind of interesting and fun for the friends and relatives that come over. We have a little Christmas tree plantation and a little vineyard there. Right after I first got married I was approached to serve on a local county planning and zoning board, and I probably spent 15 or 16 years on that board. I think that’s where my interest was first peaked about the livestock industry. A lot of local activities involved applications for permits for siting of confinement livestock facilities. While I was on that planning and zoning board, I was also on a township board as a township supervisor. My activities and involvement on those two boards led me to be asked to serve on the Minnesota State Soybean Growers Association board, and so I served on that board in several different capacities, including going through the officer rotation and being president of that board for a year. After that, I was asked to submit my name for the oilseed sector representation for USMEF and was elected, and I’m here today. Our main customer in the corn and soybean world is basically the livestock industry at this point. I want to do all I can as a corn and soybean farmer to help that industry improve their production and their capability of exporting red meat products. We’ve seen on the corn side of things the added value of up to approximately 45 cents a bushel. On the soybean side of things, the same type of scenario -- increased value there. So that’s going to increase my bottom line, meeting our customer’s demands and moving the export market forward.

Joe Schuele: For more information on the USMEF officer team, please visit USMEF.org. For the U.S. Meat Export Federation, I’m Joe Schuele.