A Challenge To The SD Ag Foundation
A column by Gov. Dennis Daugaard:
This past week, on Tuesday, March 20, we celebrated National Ag Day. It was a day proclaimed by the President to recognize the “preeminent role that agriculture plays in our daily lives” and “agriculture’s continuing importance to rural America and our country’s economy.”
I was fortunate to spend part of that day at POET headquarters in Sioux Falls where we celebrated the creation of the South Dakota Agriculture Foundation. The Foundation was authorized in the 1970s by the state Legislature, but the law sat on the books for several years before anything came of it. It was our former Secretary of Agriculture, Lucas Lentsch, who saw the statute and came to me with the idea of creating a private funding source for ideas and projects to benefit agriculture.
In 2016, the Ag Foundation got its start and began work to provide economic development assistance, sponsor youth programs and encourage philanthropy within the industry. The Foundation already has a number of supporters, including POET, which announced a $250,000 contribution on National Ag Day. To spur more generous donations, I have joined with the South Dakota Community Foundation and issued a challenge to the Ag Foundation. If the Foundation can raise $4 million in the next five years, the State of South Dakota and the Community Foundation will each contribute $500,000 to the fund for future grants and programs.
The landscape of agriculture in South Dakota is changing. We need to look beyond today, and adapt to those changes. To thrive, we must be in a position to seize opportunity when it arises. That is what the Ag Foundation will help us to do as a state. It will serve as a funding source for the ideas and projects that we can’t even imagine yet.
Ultimately, the Ag Foundation will serve to protect and enhance our state’s number one industry. In South Dakota, agriculture isn’t just a means to make a living; it’s a way of life and the bedrock of the values that we have passed on from generation to generation.
If you would like to make a donation to the South Dakota Ag Foundation, visitsdcommunityfoundation.org.
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