(NewsDakota.com/NorthDakotaAgConnection.com) – The North Dakota Corn Utilization Council (NDCUC) will be able to provide grant funding to other corn groups, especially to the North Dakota Corn Growers Association (NDCGA).

The North Dakota Legislature recently changed a state law that will allow the grants to be expended in an amendment to HB1153. The earlier bill kept the council from distributing money through grants.

The council collects the checkoff dollars from corn that is sold, as established by state law. The checkoff fees are one quarter of 1 percent of the value per bushel of corn sold in the state.

NDCUC and NDCGA met and came to an agreement on the funding.

“It was suggested language that we ended up coming to agreement on because the bill did not define whether we could or could not provide funding,” said Tysen Rosenau, chair of the NDCUC.

The statute just said that the NDCUC could expend the funds.

The bill as originally drafted would have divided checkoff money 50/50 between the two groups.

“The whole reason that the bill came about was the ambiguous language. Putting it into a statute that ‘we could provide grants’ cleared it up,” he said.

Rosenau said discussions between the two groups centered on a NDCUC $1.5 million grant to the NDCGA.

“Dues to the National Corn Growers Association is about half of that $1.5 million grant,” he said.

The grant went from $300,000 to $1.5 million, but some of that money had already been spent.

“That sounds like a big jump for an organization as far as monies to be expended, but half of that money were funds that were already being expended by the council. It is now being shifted to the growers association,” Rosenau said. “When you factor in those dues, the dollar amount really isn’t that different.”

Rosenau explained the two groups, the corn council, and the corn growers association met and cleared up the language as far as “what we could and couldn’t expend.”