Viewpoint
By Don Copenhaver, President

MFA’s success requires an involved and knowledgeable board of directors

In late July, 34 individuals boarded a large bus at the corporate office of MFA Incorporated. The 34 included MFA corporate board members, their wives and key management members of the cooperative. Our agenda included three days of site visits at various MFA facilities around our sales territory. Is it beneficial to spend three days on a bus? The short answer is yes.

Camaraderie is an immediate benefit. Spending three days together gives our board members a chance to get to know each other better and to become more comfortable with each other’s personalities, operations and abilities. In addition, the close confines of an extended bus ride are invaluable in having our board members interact with the individuals at MFA who are charged with managing key areas of our cooperative.

MFA has a long history of hiring incisive business people to manage our extensive and various functions. Having our corporate board members interact with and come to know and respect these managers goes a long way toward making them comfortable that management decisions are made objectively by competent individuals well educated in their areas of expertise.

We ask a lot of our corporate board members. They must thoroughly understand and approve MFA’s strategic direction. We depend on them to help management operate within the basic beliefs and values of the cooperative. They provide invaluable advice and guidance in helping us live up to our purpose of providing economic benefits to our members.

With MFA’s operations as extensive as they are, that requirement places a large burden on the 14 individuals who serve on MFA’s corporate board. They absolutely must understand the business environment in which MFA operates. They must thoroughly know our strengths and weaknesses before developing policies that affect our strategic direction. That’s crucial to a business’s survival.

The trip also gives our board members a chance to experience the diversity of MFA’s market area and get a feel for the extent of our operations. Board members get an excellent education seeing first-hand the different types of operations in our sales territory. There are many similarities between individuals who grow crops or raise livestock for a living, but there are many differences in methods, production practices and facilities among the various crop and livestock operations in our sales territory.

Some of our board members may never have seen a flood-irrigated rice field. They had that opportunity when the bus dropped us off at Cache River Valley Seed, LLC, in northeastern Arkansas. Cache River is one of our prized locations and is dominant in market share in that part of our territory. The visit was a great introduction to another region’s agriculture, an excellent opportunity to witness first-hand the diversity of Midwestern and Mid-South agriculture.

When we talk about seed cleaning in Cache River, board members, having been there, having toured the facility and having experienced the context of agriculture in that region, have a greater frame of reference and a deeper understanding with which to make informed decisions. When they’ve seen our extensive warehousing system of crop protection products in that territory, they get a better understanding of our reach and scope. Seeing is understanding. You can talk all day long. You can look at pictures. But nothing replaces actual experience.

As I have pointed out before, our board members are tasked with understanding how other cooperatives operate, how they are structured and how MFA’s balance sheet compares to the balance sheets of other cooperatives. Furthermore, they must analyze investor-owned businesses.

How does MFA compare and compete with businesses structured in an entirely different manner with entirely different philosophies? We rely on our board of directors, because they are involved—not in day-to-day decisions, but in the governance of your cooperative.

Elections coming up this March will bring four new board members to MFA. Knowing the selection process of our membership, I’m confident we will continue to bring on board well-qualified, intelligent, competent farmers and ranchers who will successfully guide MFA into the future.

But, due to term limits, in March of 2008 we will lose the knowledge and experience of four individuals I’ve come to know and respect including both our current chairman, Lester Evans of Lebanon, and vice chairman, David Cottrill of Albany. Five directors have been term-limited out over the last two years. The loss of nine individuals over a three-year period is a strategic loss for any organization, especially one with a 14-member board.

These 14 individuals represent MFA’s 14 voting districts, and they do their jobs proficiently. Our board size has varied over the years, reflecting the shrinking number of farmers in our trade territory as well as the changing landscape of agriculture. The one constant, however, is that MFA relies heavily upon its corporate board for advice, strategy and vision. That’s why it is so important for our membership to continue electing competent individuals to help guide their cooperative.

With four new directors on our board starting this coming March, we just may need to start scheduling another bus trip in the near future.

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