Gorfine, Schiller & Gardyn (GSG) recently attended the 2017 American Commodity Distributors Association annual conference in Denver, Colorado, which addressed significant challenges within the food processing and agricultural industry. GSG’s Audit Team members Charles Todd Fagan, Scott Rodgville, Darren Lis, and John Mahaffey joined more than 700 members of the Commodity Distributors community as well as the industry’s key stakeholders.
ACDA’s annual conference shared best practices on how to enhance the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Distribution Programs, such as detailed reviews of ordering and the necessary forecasting elements and guidelines for the procurement of foods.
In addition to these topics, the conference spotlighted a critical development for the USDA, the Business Management Improvement (BMI) process.
The BMI process is an ongoing initiative by the USDA to alleviate communication deficiencies for the food processing and agriculture industry. The USDA’s process is still in the early stages of implementation with just three short years of acquiring feedback from industry stakeholders, which include agricultural organizations, regulators, food processors and producers, and recipient agencies.
Participants in the USDA Food Distribution Programs face a common challenge: lack of transparency throughout the supply chain. There is an evident disconnect in the flow of information in every sequence of the supply chain, starting with farming and agriculture, making its way to the end result of recipient agencies, such as school districts.
The USDA is continuously updating the process and using it to streamline commodity purchasing and provide clarity within the agricultural organizations, regulators, food processors and producers, and recipient agencies. The BMI process targets the current issues and looks to restructure ordering, procurement, delivery, and inventory to benefit stakeholders and enhance the end-to-end process.
GSG services the food processors from a compliance perspective as it relates to the audit requirements of the USDA. Not only do our audit experts closely examine the end-to-end process, but our accounting, tax, and business consulting team members contribute to the enhancement of efficiencies of food processor and producer procedures.
In 2018, the ACDA conference moves to Minneapolis, Minnesota, and GSG plans to join for another insightful year. In an effort to continue to support this organization and stay abreast of the dynamic food processing industry, GSG will be investigating committee memberships.
If you have any questions, or would like to learn more, please contact our Audit Team here.
Categories: Audit & Accounting, Consulting, Food Processing
