“We represent 13,000 corn producers across the state, although our office is in Fargo in the Red River Valley,” she said.

The NDCUC started in 1997, and in that crop year, there were about 579,000 acres of corn and with an average yield of about 99 bushels per acre.

“We have grown immensely in 25 years, with corn varieties that are better suited to the North Dakota climate and with technology and advancements in agriculture,” she said.

Currently in the state, there are 3.1 million acres of corn and 370 million bushels, which is an average yield of about 131 bushels per acre.

In the 2022 crop year, corn production had a $2 billion value, with about 2.7 million acres of corn harvested. The average of bushels per acre was 131, with an average price of $6 per bushel.

In January of 2023, the NDCUC completed the new updated economic contribution analysis. The numbers from 2022 looked at a three-year average of economic contributions from 2018-20.

“It showed that the corn industry in North Dakota has a $6.1 billion economic impact to this state,” she said, adding that included corn production and processing, grain handling, transportation and ethanol.

The NDCUC’s customers are first and foremost the corn producers in the state, as well as the corn production and service industry, the buyers, and the end-users of corn.

Under state law, the corn checkoff is authorized for all corn marketed in North Dakota.

“For corn sold in the state, one quarter of 1 percent of that value of that sale is taken as an assessment,” Haugo said. The funds go to the state bank in Bismarck, and afterward, the organization’s board allocates those checkoff funds for research, education, market development and promotion.

“The checkoff dollars change based on how much corn is planted and the value of that crop. We had about a $4.8 million checkoff assessment in 2022,” she said.

Those funds were allocated in the following areas:

• Research of corn plant production and stewardship market development, especially through exports.

“In North Dakota and nationally, we work with some national partners to secure markets for North Dakota corn,” she said.

• Market development for ethanol and byproducts like DDGs and education for farmers on production practices and for the public and consumers on the use of corn and ethanol.

“Research is a huge component of what we do. In 2022, about $1.2 to $1.3 million of the checkoff funds were spent on research funding at North Dakota State University and the University of North Dakota,” she said. “Those are dollars that stay in the state and that's about 53 percent of our checkoff budget that we allocated to research.”

Research projects included agronomy, research for corn production and soil and planting practices, as well as value-added research like consumer uses for bioplastics and livestock research, like the impact of feeding corn-based diets in cattle.

Ethanol is one of the main uses of corn in the U.S.

“We have five plants here and about 170 million bushels of corn are processed annually. Some 40-60 percent of corn grown in the state is used to make ethanol in North Dakota at one of those five plants,” she said. “That is also a huge economic driver for our state.”