LATEST UPDATE ON THE PROPOSED U.S. SOD CHECKOFF
By Casey Reynolds, PhD
Te proposed U.S. Sod Checkoff crossed a key milestone in the fall of 2023 when the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) announced the opening of the 60-day public comment period. If you’ve been to one of the many sod producer meetings at TPI or other industry shows in the last two to three years where the proposed checkoff has been discussed, you have likely heard me talk about this as an important step in the process. More recently, in February of 2024, the USDA announced that they anticipate a summary of the public comment period in April of 2024. As of the writing of this article in early June, that information has not yet been provided, so we were still awaiting the USDA announcement. In the meantime, here is a brief recap below of the proposed checkoff program, recent activities, and expected next steps.
Process and Timeline Recap USDA Research and Promotion programs, aka checkoffs, are nothing new to agriculture. Tey’ve been around in other agricultural industries for almost 60 years. Tere are currently 22 USDA Research and Promotion Programs that raise approximately $1 billion annually to fund research and promotion of agricultural products. Some are commodity-based industries, but more recently they have been established in specialty crops more similar to ours.
Te path to a checkoff is purposefully long. It involves submitting a proposal that includes an industry analysis, justification, objectives, proposed structure, impacts on small businesses, and likely most importantly, industry support. You can see in Table 1 that after meeting with USDA-AMS in 2018 and with the American Farm Bureau in 2019, we drafted a proposal and initially submitted it to USDA in 2021.
Since that time, I have been traveling the U.S. speaking about this idea and getting input from sod producers nationwide. During those discussions, there were a couple
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of key points that kept coming up around board structure and an in-state model for research and promotion dollars. Tese suggested changes ultimately were adopted and drafted into the final version of the proposal in December 2022. After that point, USDA-AMS reviewed it, cleared it, and posted it for public comment on October 16, 2023.
Current Status Te public comment period was closed on December 15, 2023, with 245 comments from almost 100 sod farms. All of those comments are available for anyone to read publicly at
https://www.regulations.gov/docket/AMS-LP-21-0028 and will remain there in perpetuity. When broken down by industry segment, 65 percent of all comments came from sod farms, 13 percent came from customers of sod farms (sports field managers, landscapers, individuals, etc.), 13 percent came from industry associations representing customers of sod farms (the Sports Field Management Association [SFMA], the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America [GCSAA], the National Association of Landscape Professionals [NALP], etc.), and 9 percent came from universities with turfgrass research programs.
Of these 245 comments, 92 percent of them were supportive of at least bringing the proposed checkoff up for a vote while 8 percent did not support a vote, and/or suggested changes in how the referendum should occur if it were to move forward to a vote. Many of the comments referenced the need for regional and national research and promotion dollars to educate consumers, to push back against competitive products, and to protect future generations of sod farmers. Others shared their concerns about the program which primarily included questions around government oversight, and how the referendum should be conducted. It’s difficult to summarize all 245 comments in one article here, but I certainly encourage everyone to log on and read any or all of the comments at the link listed in this article.
TPI Turf News July/August 2024
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