The Checkoff Cannot Lobby. That Is Why We Exist.
Posted September 18, 2026
Colorado has two corn organizations, and growers mix them up constantly. It is an easy mistake — similar names, same crop, same people at the same meetings. But they are funded differently, governed differently, and one of them is barred by law from doing the thing most growers assume it does.
Colorado Corn Council
The checkoff- Funded by
- One cent per bushel, collected automatically
- Who pays
- Every Colorado corn grower. It is not optional.
- Collected by
- Your first handler — the elevator or feeder
- Does
- Research, market development, outreach, education, promotion
- Cannot do
- Policy work. Checkoff dollars are prohibited from lobbying for or against any bill.
Colorado Corn Growers Association
The advocacy- Funded by
- Voluntary memberships and sponsorships. Nothing automatic.
- Who pays
- Only people who choose to
- Founded
- 1979, by its own members
- Does
- Public policy. Lobbying in Denver and Washington.
- Governed by
- A board of working farmers, elected by the membership
That last row on the left is the whole point. The penny per bushel you already pay does real work — research, markets, education — but it is legally prohibited from being spent on a bill. Not discouraged. Prohibited. When a piece of legislation threatens your operation, not one cent of checkoff money can be used to fight it.
Everything on the policy side is paid for by growers who volunteer to fund it. That is a few hundred people covering the cost of advocacy that benefits every corn grower in the state, including the ones who never contribute a dollar.
If You Are Getting a Payment, That Is Growers at Work
This is the part worth sitting with. Every federal program putting money into Colorado corn operations exists because somebody advocated for it. Programs do not write themselves, deadlines do not get extended on their own, and eligibility rules do not expand by accident.
The checkoff could not have worked on any of it.
- Over $100 million through Market Facilitation Programs during the China trade war
- Over $400 million in CFAP 1 and 2 COVID-19 relief for Colorado agriculture
- Over $300 million in ARC and PLC farm bill safety net payments
- Over $200 million in PPP loans that kept Colorado farms going
- SDRP eligibility — our Southwest Council of Agribusiness partnership pushed "excessive heat" as a qualifying condition, which took Colorado from 24 drought counties to statewide coverage
- Regulatory relief — SB-021's labor regulations fought off
- Ethanol markets — the Renewable Fuel Standard defended
That is more than $1.2 billion in assistance for Colorado agriculture since 2018, secured by volunteers on Friday morning phone calls.
The statewide SDRP change is the clearest example. Colorado's initial eligibility covered 24 counties on drought. Somebody had to make the case that excessive heat belonged in the rule. That argument is the reason a grower outside those 24 counties can file before this month's September 30 deadline at all.
Why We Keep Asking
We collect no automatic funding. There is no assessment, no mandated fee, no line item on your settlement sheet that comes to us. That independence is genuinely useful — it means nobody can quietly defund us for taking an unpopular position, and we can push aggressively without clearing it through a bureaucracy.
It also means the work stops if growers stop paying for it. There is no reserve to fall back on. The lobbyists, the travel to Washington, the legal work, the coalition building — all of it runs on voluntary dollars.
Fifty dollars goes a long way
Sponsorship tiers start in the thousands, and the operations that can write those checks are the backbone of what we do. But this is not only a corporate ask.
If you farm and you have benefited from any program on the list above, $50 matters. It is a rounding error against what a single policy win returns to a Colorado corn operation, and enough of them together is what keeps somebody on the phone Friday morning.
Give what makes sense for your operation. Every amount is a Friend of Agriculture contribution and every amount is put to the same use.
The Short Version
- You already pay the checkoff. It funds research and promotion and cannot touch policy.
- Advocacy is a separate organization funded entirely by choice.
- The programs paying out this fall exist because that advocacy happened.
- If you are not contributing, someone else is covering your share of it.
CCGA and the Colorado Corn Council are separate organizations with separate boards, separate funding, and separate mandates. Nothing here is a criticism of the checkoff, which does work this association supports and does not duplicate. The restriction on using checkoff funds for policy is a matter of law, not preference. Questions about the corn assessment itself should go to the Council; questions about membership or sponsorship come to us.