Dee Vaughan
Dumas, Texas
Dee Vaughan and his wife Terri, farm in the Texas Panhandle, raising corn, seed sorghum, commercial sorghum, soybeans, wheat and other various grains for seed.
Vaughan currently serves on TCPB and CPAT. He is active in both organizations and has set goals for each.
“The only reason for TCPB or CPAT to exist is to create economic benefits for Texas corn producers,” Vaughan said, “it is my goal to help identify and work on projects or issues that yield the greatest economic return to the Texas corn producers for the money invested in either the check-off program or membership dues.”
Before Vaughan was involved with the corn board and association, he studied agricultural economics at Texas Tech University and completed the Executive Program for Agricultural Producers.
Along with TCPB and CPAT, Vaughan has served on the Precision Agriculture Advisory Committee and the Texas Panhandle Agricultural Research Advisory Board. Vaughan is a member of the agricultural committee of the Dumas Economic Development Corporation.
He formerly served on the National Corn Growers Association board, where Vaughan came to learn about different regions’ production practices and unique issues that each area faces.
“The size of farms, production methods and climatic differences vary from one production area to another, but there is an equivalent amount of diversity when you begin to discuss policy,” Vaughn explains.
According to Vaughan, agriculture has changed drastically over the past ten years. He mentions the explosion of new technology, the rise of biotechnology, the financial and management aspects of business, producers spending more time studying the new technologies, the vast expansion of the ethanol industry, increasing globalization and water conservation methods.
While the industry is constantly changing, producers have another topic to keep in mind, the 2012 farm bill.
“It is difficult to forecast how the farm bill will change and thus how producers will change. All we can do is look at history and try to avoid mistakes of the past,” Vaughan said, when asked how the farm bill would impact producers in 2012.
Vaughan continues to be an advocate for agriculture and searches for new ways to better equip farmers for any challenges the corn industry might meet in the future.
