ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, US — During its annual meeting the US Wheat Associates (USW) board of directors virtually met to install new officers.
USW officers for 2020-21 include:
- Darren Padget, chairman
- Rhonda Larson, vice chairperson
- Michael Peters, secretary treasurer
- Doug Goyings, past chairman
USW officers were elected to these one-year positions at the January 2020 board of directors meeting in Washington, DC, US.
“We are all very disappointed that we could not hold our meeting as originally planned in Cincinnati, Ohio, so we could all thank Doug Goyings, his family and the team from the Ohio Small Grains Marketing Board for their dedicated leadership this past year,” Padget said. “Doug has done a wonderful job as chairman and I can only hope to meet his example with his help.”
Padget is a fourth-generation farmer in Oregon’s Sherman County, with a dryland wheat and summer fallow rotation currently producing registered and certified seed on 3,400 acres annually. Previously, Padget held positions on the Oregon Wheat Growers League board of directors and executive committee for seven years, serving as president in 2010. He chaired the NAWG Research and Technology Committee and was on the Mid-Columbia Producers board of directors, for which he was an officer for 10 years.
Larson was raised on her family’s Red River Valley farm, growing potatoes, wheat and barley. With her two brothers and son, the third generation on the farm, they currently grow hard red spring wheat and sugarbeets. Larson has been a board member of the Minnesota Wheat Research and Promotion Council for 16 years and was chair from 2010-12. She was on the Wheat Foods Council board and is a longtime member of the Minnesota Association of Wheat Growers and the Red River Valley Sugarbeet Growers Association.
Peters grows hard red winter wheat and canola and winter grazes stocker cattle on wheat. Peters is president of his local CHS Coop Board and is a member of the Okarche Rural Fire Fighters’ Association Board. He also has been president and is on the board of elders at St. John’s Lutheran Church. He currently is a commissioner and secretary of the Oklahoma Wheat Commission, is a USW director and is chairman of the USW Wheat Quality Committee. He has participated in several farm leadership programs sponsored by CHS and the National Wheat Foundation.
Goyings’ family has been farming in northwestern Ohio since 1884. He and his family grow soft red winter and have hosted numerous trade teams on their farm. He has served in Ohio and national agricultural leadership positions for 37 years. Goyings has been a member of the USW board since 2009 and is a past chairman of the USW Long-Range Planning Committee. He is a director for the Ohio Small Grains Checkoff Board, is a past-president of his local farm bureau and has been a director for the Ohio Veal Growers Inc., Creston Veal, Inc. and Paulding Landmark, Inc.
USW’s next board meeting will be held jointly with the National Association of Wheat Growers Nov. 3-8 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, US.
