Northern Crops Institute in Fargo celebrated its 40th anniversary this week. NCI educates international and domestic buyers about the northern-grown crops. “When you look back 40 years ago, it was a really challenging time in agriculture,” said Mark Jirik, director, NCI. “You had falling crop prices and high interest rates. There was a group of visionaries that said we need to do something different in how we market crops from this region globally and they came up with the idea of the Northern Crops Institute.” NCI is based in Fargo and serves agriculture in North Dakota, Minnesota, Montana and South Dakota. As a result of NCI courses, 95 percent of the participants surveyed said they had a greater confidence in the U.S. supply chain, 99 percent had a better understanding of U.S. crop quality and 51 percent actually increased their volume purchases as a result of what was learned. “As someone who used to be a commodity trader, knowing people are specifically reaching out saying they want these crops based on what they’ve learned speaks to the importance of education and what NCI has done for 40 years.”
