In AFIA’s seventh and eighth decades, farm real estate wealth in that critical state – and across the country – changed rapidly. From 1972 until 1981, the average farmland value in Iowa rose from $345 per acre to $1,789 per acre. But the apparent farm prosperity began to fade in 1981. Iowa farmland values flattened for a few years, then dropped to average $652 per acre in 1987. The plunge in farmers’ fortunes hit the feed industry hard.
While the association and its members poured time and talent into relatively new issues such as dust standards and crop liens, they never strayed from their historic focus on feed regulations. The Feed Control Committee and AFMA staff member, Lee Boyd worked long and hard to influence federal and state regulations. One major, multi-year effort culminated with Food Drug Administration’s 1986 publication of the “Second Generation of Medicated Feeds,” which established two levels of Good Manufacturing Practices. One level was for operations whose products required approved medicated feed applications; or MFAs, a less stringent set of GMPs applied to operations and that did not require MFAs.
In 1987, American Feed Industry Association, the successor of the American Feed Manufacturers Association, led the formation of two organizations that would develop into independent entities: the American Feed Industry Insurance Company and the Animal Industry Foundation, which later changed its name to the Animal Agriculture Alliance.
During this decade, AFMA’s leaders made a major organizational decision. “Perhaps the greatest single change was the decision in 1985 to grant full membership to all firms in the industry, and to become the American Feed Industry Association,” wrote Oakley Ray in an article for Feed Management in 1992, the year of his retirement as president of the association. Two years after changing its name, AFIA broadened its base as it merged with the Grain Equipment Manufacturers Association and formed the Equipment Manufacturers Council.
More AFIA growth was not far away.
A few employees of Tennessee Farmers Cooperative gather outside one of their facilities. Photo: From the AFIA Archives. |
William McLean (l.) of The Essmueller Company and William Tribble of International Feedmasters Inc. drive a feed-bag racecar in a procession during the 1987 feed show in Indianapolis. Photo: From the AFIA Archives. |