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I sat down with Keith Dunn with the United Soybean Board (USB) during the Ag Media Summit to see what their main initiatives currently are. Dunn explained to me the importance of animal agriculture and how supportive the USB was of this industry.

“Currently in the United States 98 percent of the soybean meal goes for animal feed for poultry, beef cattle and dairy cattle,” explained Dunn. “So we feel that animal agriculture is very important to the industry.”

Other important elements of the USB program include its work with biofuels as well as a responding to a recent request for referendum. Less than 1/10th of 1 percent of the growers requested a referendum on the soybean checkoff and Dunn mentioned that it shows that soybean farmers are very confident in their soybean checkoff and the work that is being done.

Biofuels is a hot topic and one that is very important to USB. “We’re concerned with the new renewable fuels standard and we want to make sure these are based on sound science, factual and will work for the American people.”

You can see all our pictures from the Ag Media Summit in the IFAJ/AMS 2009 Photo Album.

You can listen to my full interview with Keith Dunn here.