posted on Tuesday, May 18, 2021
Over the years Decision Innovation Solutions (DIS) has been fortunate to develop strong working relationships with Agribusiness advocacy organizations in several states. One of those business partners is Minnesota AgriGrowth in St. Paul, Minnesota.
The Executive Director for Minnesota AgriGrowth, Tamara Nelsen is a very effective supporter of Agriculture and its related industries in the state. Our team at DIS had the opportunity of working with Tamara while she was with the Illinois Farm Bureau. One of the projects we completed for the Illinois Farm Bureau, with the support of multiple commodity organizations, was an Agricultural Economic Contribution Study (AECS).
Tamara knew how important it is to have current and reliable data on agriculture when communicating with the general public, media and government representatives and agencies. When individual industry advocates sponsor economic studies, it can create discrepancies and double counting issues. That is why it is also important that everyone in agriculture is using the same information so they can spend time advocating for their cause instead of defending the data.
One interesting aspect of this project was the involvement of 24 individual sponsoring groups. The groups included the Minnesota Department of Agriculture, numerous commodity organizations, groups representing the forestry industry, academic & research organizations. DIS hosted multiple video meetings with the participants to gain their support for the study.
The Minnesota Agriculture & Forestry Economic Contribution Study was published in September of 2020. As far as we can tell, this study was a first of its kind and was well received by all the sponsors. Following are some links to examples of how the report has been used to tell the story of agriculture and forestry in Minnesota.
Soybean Business May - June 2021
Ag, forestry ‘integral’ to Minnesota – Finance & Commerce (finance-commerce.com)
MN Valley Business
Our DIS team has developed a methodology that is industry accepted for these types of studies and we have had the opportunity of completing studies for Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota, Alabama, Missouri and now Minnesota.