This year’s annual meeting was held on Tuesday, June12, 2018 at TorNino’s Banquet Hall in Fresno. It was a very special evening in which we celebrated the 55th Annual Dinner Meeting of the Association.

Chairman James McFarlane gave a report on the prior season and provided a vision for the future. He also thanked the Board and staff for their efforts last season in which another shelling record was broken when 120,484,511 lbs. of meat equivalent were shelled compared to 109,287,465 lbs. in 2017.

President Kelley then reported on the season ahead and stated that the Association has budgeted for a crop size of 118,546,584 lbs. for the upcoming harvest season. He also reported that at this time it appears that the Association would not be repaying the entire Operating Retain to our members due to low hull prices received last season. This is attributable to difficulties in the dairy sector and low prices for competing products used in the dairy ration. We also experienced less hull volume than expected.

Therefore, the net cost of hulling net of trucking in2016 will be .37 cent per meat pound. He went on to note that the cost of hulling last season was exceedingly competitive with other shelling operations in our area that charged between 4.0 and 7.0 cents, (plus trucking), as the cost of hulling last year’s crop. He went on to report that members who delivered crop in 2013 received a check in repayment of the 2013 Crop Revolving Fund (Capital Fund) at or following the Annual Dinner.

Jeff Yribarren, a member of the Election CertificationCommittee, gave a report on the results of a recent election for two seats for Directors whose terms were expiring. Seat 4 held by Tom Chandler and & Seat 5held by Jeff McKinney were re-elected to their respective seats on the Board for another three-year term. They ran unopposed as no other nominations for challengers were received.

To close out the evening the audience had the pleasure of listening to the hilarious comedic talents of Jim Pelley, a former writer and performer on SaturdayNight Live from 1978 through 1994.