Just under three weeks and the shortline farm equipment industry will be gathering in St. Louis for EMDA’s Fall Convention and the Farm Equipment Manufacturers Association’s Distribution & Marketing Convention. Meeting and networking opportunities are the main reason attendees and exhibitors participate in the Fall Convention and EMDA strives to provide the most effective structured means to enable such interaction.
EMDA is also pleased to have several keynote speakers on hand in St. Louis too.
The EMDA and FEMA Joint Opening Session on Wednesday (November 6) is designed to bring the members together to “kick-off” their conventions with a dynamic presentation that will set the tone for an intensive week of appointments and meetings.
The Joint Opening Session features Neil Caskey presenting “The State of the Industry: What’s Ahead for Ag?”
A representative from the National Corn Growers Association will open the convention with an assessment of the state of the industry as it relates to trade, commodities, and policy, and offer well-informed speculation of what’s ahead for agriculture. Neil Caskey is Vice President of Communications for the National Corn Growers Association. Caskey’s career began on Capitol Hill, and through roles as employee or consultant, he has worked with organizations such as the American Soybean Association, Monsanto, and the USDA. Caskey has been a key player in national conversations on the ethanol issue and the Bud Light Super Bowl commercial that misled consumers about corn syrup. He will offer his thoughts on the state of the ag industry and what lies ahead.
Immediately following Tuesday’s Joint Opening Session is EMDA’s Corporate Annual Meeting which includes the Association’s annual report to the membership and Board of Directors elections.
Dr. Ernie Goss will present The Regional Economy-Black Swans & Golden Geese: Surveys of Supply Managers & Bank CEOs during the Corporate Annual meeting. Ernest Goss is the Jack MacAllister Chair in Regional Economics at Creighton University and served as the initial director for Creighton’s Institute for Economic Inquiry. He is also principal of the Goss Institute in Denver, Colorado.
He is editor of Economic Trends, an economics newsletter published monthly with more than 10,000 subscribers, produces a monthly business conditions index for the nine-state Mid-American region, and conducts a survey of bank CEOs in 10 U.S. states. Through his work with The Goss Institute, Dr. Goss has amassed more than 20 years of economic data about Midwest agriculture and manufacturing into a proprietary dataset that is coveted by analysts the world over.
Each month Creighton University surveys bank CEOs in rural, agriculturally dependent areas of 10 Mid-Western and Mountain states and manufacturing supply managers in urban areas of 9 Mid-America states. Dr. Goss will provide a summary of recent survey results detailing risks and opportunities for businesses, banks, farms, and investors in the months ahead. Goss will devote particular attention to the impact of trade, manufacturing, and agriculture on the regional economy.
If you haven’t registered yet – we can still get you signed up! Registration forms are available at: https://www.emda.net/fall-convention/
See you at #EMDAstlouis!