Ag Director Ed 2021 | California Center for Cooperative Development

Date:

Thursday, January 21, 2021 - 2:00pm to Thursday, February 4, 2021 - 4:00pm

Info

Registration

About

The Agricultural Cooperatives Leadership Training is going virtual! We're hosting four highly interactive webinars on Governance and Strategy with "Building Better Co-op Boards" and "Case Studies in Strategy".

Content Presented

Building Better Co-op Boards will be presented by Dr. Gregory McKee over two interactive Zoom sessions on January 21 & 28 from 2:00-4:00pm PST. (This is a two-part workshop that should be taken together.)

Case Studies in Strategy will be presented by Michael Boland and guest presetners from each cooperative on February 2 and 3 from 2:00-4:00 pm PST.

February 2 will be with Tillamook Creamery

February 3 will be with Bard Valley Date Growers Cooperative

For more information, visit the Workshops page from the menu above.

Who Should Attend

The forum is designed for directors and top level management of established agricultural cooperatives. Academic and other support industry practitioners are also welcome.

Many Thanks to Our Sponsors!

Workshops

Building Better Boards with Dr. Gregory McKee
January 21 & 28 from 2:00-4:00pm PST (This is a two-part workshop that we recommend be taken together.)
REGISTER

Engaged cooperative directors develop good relationships among themselves and with their CEOs. Dr. Greg McKee will discuss what it means to be an engaged director and the efforts engaged boards make to advance their cooperatives. Topics include CEO and director evaluation and CEO succession planning. Participants will engage with these topics through discussion and interactive activities.

Session 1 - A board makes a meaningful contribution to co-op leadership and performance when it strikes a balance with management. A good balance allows management to make better decisions than it would have made on its own. The first session presents a framework for engagement and provides activities for directors to take stock of the strength of that engagement.

Actively creating co-op value through board engagement
Board information requirements
Board and management alignment

Session 2 - A board maintains healthy engagement with the co-op when it designs performance metrics that reinforce the ability of the board and management teams to create value. Session two allows boards to assess the health of their evaluation processes and how these affect the co-op's strategic direction.

CEO evaluation process
Executive session
Managing board self-development
CEO succession

Case Study in Strategy

These sessions can be taken independently

1. Tillamook Creamery

Each session includes an introduction by Dr. Michael Boland providing context and group discussions to help participants explore how strategies can help with their own cooperative's challenges.

February 2 from 2:00-4:00pm PST

Tillamook Creamery is an Oregon dairy cooperative that recently achieved "Certified B Corporation" status. This case describes how a corporation must measure performance in five categories: community, customers, environment, governance and workers and its implications for business strategy. B Corporations are relatively new and only a handful of companies have achieved it. This case looks at how firms are using this status with regard to business strategy.

2. Bard Valley Date Growers Association

February 3 from 2:00-4:00 pm PST

Bard Valley Medjool Date Growers produce a unique product that was introduced to the United States over 100 years ago. There has been a global expansion of date palm production, and an effort to bring it into mainstream diets is needed. This case study explores how the cooperative developed business strategies to grow markets.

Tim Rooney, CEO will present

Special Guest Dane Lance, CEO of Sunsweet Growers, will join the discussion to share how Sunsweet met challenges similar to those Bard Valley Date Growers are facing today.

Speakers

David (Dave) Anderson is a 1984 Graduate of Emporia State University (Kansas) with a Bachelors degree in Business. Having worked at grocery retail thru school, he started his career path with Nestle/Carnation company, working in sales/trade marketing in Midwest, Texas, Northeast market areas. Before arriving at Bard Valley Date Growers in 2008, Dave also included stints in retailer foodservice merchandising & perishable / specialty food broker sales & marketing. He is presently the Vice President of Sales & Marketing for BVDG, and manages a sales team of seven, and a marketing team of three, with both top and bottom line accountability with CEO and growers. His category experience in the Produce Business is extensive and includes deep knowledge in dried fruit, avocados, pears, cherries and soft fruit (peaches, plums, nectarines).

Michael (Mike) Boland is the Koller Professor at the University of Minnesota where he has teaching, research, and outreach responsibilities in agribusiness management and in particular, agricultural cooperatives. In addition, he is Director of the University of Minnesota Food Industry Center and was elected to the board of directors for the Agricultural and Applied Economics Association. He also sits on the board of the Council on Food, Agriculture, and Resource Economics (C-FARE) in Washington DC. He is a member of Harvard’s Private and Public, Scientific, Academic, and Consumer Food Policy Group.

Dave Mansheim a Business Unit Manager for Gowan Company currently manages Bard Date Company and Global Agricultural Products as well as oversight of packing and growing operations in Mexico of Medjool Dates. Dave joined Gowan Co. in 1995 as Manager of Desert Depot, a third party logistic/warehousing company. Under his management, they established the first Foreign Trade “Sub Zone” with private privileges in the nation. In 2005 Dave was tasked as International Business Manager where he worked directly with Global Executives in the transition phase to establish operational procedures within their organizations.

Originally from rural Iowa Dave managed a full service Grain Elevator in Salem, Iowa before joining the US Marine Corps in 1983. He served 4 years as a Marine Air Traffic Controller achieving an FAA, Radar Facility Rating. After leaving the Marine Corps in 1987 he worked in the aviation industry where he progressed in positions from Line Pilot, Chief Pilot, FAA Check Airman to Director of Operations for an Advance Life Support Air Ambulance. In addition Dave spent 3 seasons doing aerial application in South East Iowa. Dave holds ATP, CFII, MEI and RATCF FAA ratings. He is a graduate of Southern Illinois University and is past President of the Bard Valley Medjool Date Growers Association

Gregory Mckee is Professor of Agricultural Economics at University of Nebraska. His teaching and research interests include financial performance of cooperative businesses; management of cooperative businesses; marketing activities of cooperative businesses; and contracting and vertical integration in agriculture and agribusiness. Dr. McKee is also interested in the economics of invasive species management, which includes the cost and benefit of policies designed to manage invasive species and the information requirements to develop such policies. He teaches courses in cooperative business management and in agribusiness industrial strategy. Dr. McKee received his M.S. and PhD in Agricultural Resource Economics from University of California, Davis.

Tim Rooney, CEO of Bard Valley Date Growers Association and Datepac LLC has been a C-level executive for the last 12 years in Food Processing / Consumer Packaged Goods. Prior to working in Consumer-Packaged Goods, he was a Management Consultant providing guidance to improve the performance of organizations for a variety of industries domestically and internationally, including U.S. Navy, Pharmaceutical, Food Processing, Mining, Silicon Chips, Finance, Banking and Insurance, Plastics, and Chemicals

Paul Snyder is Executive Vice President at the Tillamook County Creamery Corporation. A member of the Executive Team and reporting to the CEO, he leads several functions including corporate responsibility, sustainability, community engagement, corporate communications, government affairs, farm services, and co-op member relations. He joined Tillamook in June of 2019

Previously, Paul was Global Vice President – Corporate Responsibility at InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG). In that role, Paul co-led IHG’s global Corporate Responsibility function and directly oversaw sustainability strategy and execution for the company’s nearly 5,200 hotels worldwide.

Paul earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature at Lawrence University and an MBA at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.