This week in St. Louis, the 48 members of the American Soybean Association (ASA) Board of Directors met at the annual ASA winter meeting to discuss the priorities for the association in the coming year. The meeting began Wednesday morning with the annual Monsanto Partnership Day, an opportunity for industry leaders to come together with technology provider partners to discuss ways to better advocate for agriculture.

In addition to presentations from McDonald's on customer engagement and from Monsanto on access to seed science for educators, Monsanto's Vance Crowe and Janice Person discussed the industry's evolving outreach to opinion drivers online.

Following the Partnership Day, Matt Dace of the St. Louis Area Foodbank spoke to the board on the intersection of agriculture issues with anti-hunger issues. Upon the conclusion of Dace's presentation, the board collected a donation of $1,560, which according to the foodbank provides 6,240 meals for the hungry in the St. Louis area. The ASA donation was unplanned and prompted by ASA Minnesota Director Lawrence Sukalski.

The St. Louis Area Foodbank is the local affiliate of Feeding America, and serves 26 counties in Missouri and Illinois. At the national level, Feeding America and ASA have joined to lead an effort of anti-hunger and agricultural groups to explore how these two segments of the food industry can better understand the other’s needs and priorities.