Q&A with the Executive Director, Carol Reed
As the executive director of the Tennessee Corn Promotion Council, you can most likely find Carol Reed working on any sort of task or project related to supporting Tennessee corn growers. Whether that’s educating consumers on the economic value of Tennessee corn, providing resources for Tennessee educators to effectively integrate agriculture into the classroom, or helping create new marketing opportunities for Tennessee corn growers, Carol’s work life highly revolves around corn. But it hasn’t always been that way.
After graduating from Western Kentucky University, Carol began her career in financial services and commercial banking. She left banking in 2012 when she was chosen to serve as the initial Executive Director of the Northwest Tennessee Entrepreneur Center. In 2019, she was offered the opportunity to serve as the Executive Director of the newly-created Tennessee Corn Promotion Council.
Get to know a little bit more about our executive director below:
Q. Give us some background on where you grew up, your career and how you ended up in this role.
Carol and her toys. Being a practical person, Carol’s husband’s anniversary gifts tend to be useful tools for keeping up with her love of gardening.
A. My husband David and I were reared on family farms. Shortly after we married, we were beginning to feel a desire to leave Atlanta and return to our rural, agricultural roots. In 1996, we moved to his grandparent’s home and the portion of his family farm in Weakley County, TN which he had purchased several years earlier. Additionally, this move also brought us much closer to my family’s farm and home near Elizabethtown, Kentucky. We were able to immediately reconnect with the agriculture community at a meaningful level.
After moving to West Tennessee, I continued my professional career in commercial banking. I later left my lifelong career in commercial banking in 2012, when I was chosen to serve as the initial Executive Director of the Northwest Tennessee Entrepreneur Center. In 2019, I was offered the opportunity to serve as the Executive Director of the newly created - Tennessee Corn Promotion Council.
Growing up on a diversified family farm, maintaining a lifelong connection to the agricultural community, owning and living on a family farm, having a strong background in banking and lending in an agricultural community, serving over 15 years as a Director of the Weakley County Farm Bureau, and having had the experience of founding and managing a successful non-profit organization which was focused on helping entrepreneurs start and/or expand business enterprises related to agriculture and agri-business, were all important factors in my being selected to this new role with TN Corn.
Q. What's your favorite thing about what you do?
A. My favorite part of this work is being able to work for and with some of the most talented, accomplished agricultural leaders who have so much passion and insight about agriculture; and to be able to represent the finest people in the world: farm families.
Q. What do you consider to be your, or Tennessee Corn’s, biggest accomplishment so far?
A. As the newest commodity organization in Tennessee, the first months were spent defining our organizational objectives and developing the plans to achieve them. With the assistance given to Tennessee Corn by the other established commodity groups, we were able to begin our programs of market development, promotion, education, and research much earlier than many had anticipated.
Q. What challenges do you see Tennessee corn growers facing?
A. Farming comes with its unique challenges. In the last few years, farmers have had increased challenges with the COVID 19 pandemic; unusual adverse weather events; supply chain disruptions; shortage of farm labor; the unprecedented increase in crop input costs, and significant fluctuations in commodity prices.
This year the weather has been foremost on the minds of all farmers. This summer, portions of Tennessee have been unusually dry and had multiple consecutive days of extreme heat. The hot weather and dry conditions will undoubtedly mean lower yields than we have experienced in recent years.
Q. In your opinion, why should Tennessee corn farmers get involved and support Tennessee Corn?
A. The easiest way to get involved and support Tennessee Corn is to become a member of the Tennessee Corn Growers Association. While the Tennessee Corn Promotion Board devotes checkoff resources to the development of programs geared toward corn market expansion, increased corn production, and education about the value and uses of Tennessee corn and corn products, those resources are not to be used to advocate for legislative issues with state and federal policymakers.
When farmers join the Tennessee Corn Growers Association, they also become a member of the National Corn Growers Association. With over 39,000 members, the National Corn Growers Association is the largest corn-focused organization in the nation.
Over the years, the federal regulations have had a direct and often negative impact on corn farmers. The National Corn Growers Association staff in Washington DC works tirelessly with legislators to help them have a better understanding of how the impact of federal regulations affects corn farmers, the additional cost of corn production, the additional costs to the consuming public, the potential negative impacts on the environment, as well as the impacts to soil, air and water quality and conservation.
Becoming a member of TN Corn requires a tiny investment of only $5.00 a month but offers a potentially huge impact on the corn industry and corn growers. All of our friends in the agriculture industry who would like to be more involved are welcome to join TN Corn as an Associate Member.
Q. What exciting initiatives are currently happening or coming soon for Tennessee Corn?
A. We have two new, exciting initiatives coming to Tennessee Corn this summer and fall.
Recently the Tennessee Corn Promotion Board released a state-wide informational initiative: “Corn Energy is Green Energy for Today.” The objective of the initiative is to have the consumer gain a better understanding that corn-based ethanol is today’s most significant green energy and that it helps meet stated goals for climate concerns, energy independence and lower energy prices.
With more and more Tennessee consumers having limited knowledge of where their food comes from, TN Corn is pleased to announce that we are sponsoring and providing, for introduction this fall, a pilot educational program entitled “From Ear to Everything” that will be made available to fourth and fifth grade Tennessee 4-H Clubs. The Tennessee 4-H was selected to be the recipient of this pilot program because participation in 4-H is available to all young people, whether they live on a farm, in a suburban neighborhood, or a large urban center.
Q. Anything else you would like to add?
A. We are living in extraordinary times of unprecedented change. There has never been a time in the history of our country when the need for strong, sound, balanced leadership was more critical. I am honored and humbled to be able to work with such leaders from within the world of production agriculture.