In recognition of the hard work Missouri corn growers put forth to grow our state’s agricultural industry, Missouri’s Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder presented the Missouri Corn Growers Association (MCGA) with a declaration last week at the state capitol. The “Declaration in Support of Agriculture Service” was given to highlight MCGA’s contribution to the success of Missouri’s agriculture industry and encourage a future relationship between the Lt. Governor’s office and Missouri Corn in order to meet the needs of the state’s most vital industry.
Pictured with Lt. Governor Kinder are Jayne Glosemeyer, Missouri Corn Merchandising Council chairwoman; Mike Geske, Missouri Corn Growers Association president; and Ashley McCarty, MCGA director of public policy.
Biodegradeable bottles made from corn are greening up the U.S. House of Representatives.
As part of the Green Capital Initiative, “Green Bottle Spring Water” from a company called Naturally Iowa will now be the only bottled water available in the US House Cafeteria. The bottles are made out of polylactic acid (PLA), a biodegradeable plastic made from corn. The bottles can be composted, incinerated, or ground up and used again. The Cafeteria has access to a well-developed industrial compost system developed by the United States Department of Agriculture. The composting material is sent daily to the facility in nearby Maryland to go from trash to topsoil in less than ninety days.
The slogan for Naturally Iowa is “We Milk the Cows and Grow the Bottles.” Co-founders William Horner and Steve Williams both grew up on farms in Southwest Iowa, and later returned to farming after completing their education. In 2002, the two partnered to provide an opportunity for family operated dairy farms to make a comeback by adding value to their product and became the world’s first dairy to use PLA bottling.
The company produces milk, ice cream and drinkable yogurt in PLA packaging and moved into the bottled water business by partnering with a natural spring water company out of Virginia.
Representatives of the U.S. Grains Council recently returned from their China Corn Tour, which is conducted every year to try and get a handle on production, yields and demand, since there is no source of reliable corn crop estimates from the Chinese government. The tour consisted of four groups of agriculturists evaluating nearly 300 cornfields.
Charles Ring of the Texas Corn Producers Board was with the group that toured corn fields in the Northeastern provinces of Heilonjiang and Jilin. He is also the team leader of the Council’s Asia Advisory Team and is pictured here with a Chinese farming family. “The farmers in China are very efficient with what they have,” observed Ring. “They don’t waste anything and family is the central point of their work.”
What the groups were able to determine on their tours was that higher corn yields are expected in China for 2008 compared to 2007 resulting in a crop of 153.54 million metric tons - or about 6 billion bushels. According to Cary Sifferath, U.S. Grains Council senior director in China, the national average yield for all provinces is 5.28 tons per hectare (84 bushels per acre) with Jilin province showing the highest yield the tour saw in terms of production at 111 bushels per acre.
Despite the improved yield numbers in 2008, there seems to be little sign that China will begin exporting corn anytime soon as the government has been trying to control food inflation. “The government has virtually shut down exports of corn, wheat and rice. Other than a few sales trying to go through, there are no real exports going on at all,” Sifferath said. He also said feed demand in China is increasing with more corn going into the country’s swine industry.
Just how much animal feed does the American ethanol industry produce each year?
According to a new analysis by the Renewable Fuels Association, America’s ethanol producers delivered 23 million metric tons of livestock and poultry feed to the world last year, or nearly three times the amount of wheat, sorghum, barley and oats fed to U.S. livestock in the 2007/08 marketing year.
Put another way, the amount of feed produced by the ethanol industry in 2007/08 is roughly equivalent to the combined total amount of feed consumed by cattle on feed last year in Texas, Kansas, Nebraska, and Colorado-the nation’s four largest feedlot states.
This week’s summit on the Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations seemed to focus precious little time on how agriculture can help end global poverty and hunger. In fact, it was sad to see that the whole summit seemed to focus more on problems than solutions.
However, a pre-summit private industry forum did offer some constructive suggestions, and one of them is biofuels production. The CEO of South Dakota-based POET, the world’s largest ethanol producer, was one of two presenters at a roundtable on energy and biofuels at the UN on Wednesday. Jeff Broin made a compelling argument for ethanol being “one of the greatest opportunities our world has seen in decades” mainly because of the great productivity possible in agriculture. Here’s just a portion of his comments - you can read the rest on the POET blog, on Rhapsody in Green.
With a billion acres of idled cropland across the globe — and the price of agricultural commodities above the cost of production for the first time in decades –there is an unbelievable opportunity for underdeveloped countries to simultaneously lift people out of poverty and solve their crippling addiction to energy imports.
How? Given all the advancement in agriculture, including new seeds, more durable crops, and smarter farming techniques, people today in places as far apart as Sioux Falls and South Africa can grow more sustainable crops than ever before. For example, in the 1940s, the average American farmer produced about 40 bushels of corn per acre; today it’s 140. The result is an agriculture industry that can meet the growing demand for food and biofuels — and help nations once left out of the agriculture industry take care of their food needs, raise people out of poverty, and develop a profitable, self-sustaining farming industry.
And the good news is that this development doesn’t have to come at the expense of the environment. The billion acres of idled crop land guarantees that new farm land need not come from rainforests or other sensitive areas. And thanks to the work of scientists, farming today relies much less on pesticides and much more on new seeds and smarter agricultural techniques.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s renewable energy chief took on corn ethanol critics last week, arguing that without existing ethanol production, “the price of gasoline would have been a lot higher.”
As a home to many livestock and oil interests and a governor who has little use for the renewable fuels standard, Texas is also a corn state and home to a burgeoning ethanol industry. So it was only fitting and proper (and good fun, no doubt!) for the Renewable Fuels Association to spotlight Hereford, Tex., in its new ad campaign promoting ethanol.
Interestingly, it was research out of Texas — A&M University’s own Agricultural and Food Policy Center — that has been used by RFA and other ethanol supporters to defend the RFS!
Cindy just posted a story about the new Corn Refiners Association, Sweet Surprise campaign. I thought you might enjoy seeing one of the tv ads as much as I did. Unfortunately, we have a consuming public that’s too quick to jump on an idea based purely on emotionalism without the facts. So, that’s why groups like the CRA have to invest in ways to get truthful information out.
In the ethanol discussion, the contributions of distillers grains are often overlooked. This high protein feedstock produced in the corn-based ethanol process is adding competitively priced feed into the supply chain for livestock producers.
“We use approximately 100 million bushels of corn for ethanol production in Missouri, yet one-third of that corn comes back into the food chain in the form of distillers grains,” said Jayne Glosemeyer, retiring chairwoman for the Missouri Corn Merchandising Council. “Distillers grains really are ethanol’s untold story.”
As a way to spread the word about distillers grains, the Missouri Corn Merchandising Council recently partnered with the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association and the University of Nebraska to develop an informational publication explaining the various types of distillers grains, storage techniques and ration incorporation.
The Corn Refiners Association rolled out a national campaign this month promoting high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
The campaign includes ads on cable TV and in woman’s magazines, as well as full-page newspaper ads will appear in several major newspapers across the country. In addition, there is a great interactive website called “Sweet Surprise” which contains factual information about sugar, honey and other sweeteners as well as HFCS.
Featured prominently on the site is a “Sweet Smarts” quiz - which I took and totally failed. But, I learned a lot too - and that is the goal.
“There are so many myths, inaccuracies and untruths associated with this sweetener that we felt it was necessary to set the record straight,” said CRA president Audrae Erickson. “We hope to provide balanced information about high fructose corn syrup to allow consumers to make informed decisions based on science.”
Here’s some quick facts that may be a sweet surprise to many:
The American Medical Association (AMA) recently concluded that “high fructose corn syrup does not appear to contribute to obesity more than other caloric sweeteners.”
High fructose corn syrup has the same number of calories as table sugar and is equal in sweetness. It contains no artificial or synthetic ingredients.
Research confirms that high fructose corn syrup is safe and no different from other common sweeteners like table sugar and honey. All three sweeteners are nutritionally the same and all qualify as “natural” ingredients according to FDA labeling rules.
The website also has links to the television and print ads.
In recognition of the hard work Missouri corn growers put forth to grow our state’s agricultural industry, Missouri’s Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder presented the Missouri Corn Growers Association (MCGA) with a declaration last week at the state capitol. The “Declaration in Support of Agriculture Service” was given to highlight MCGA’s contribution to the success of Missouri’s agriculture industry and encourage a future relationship between the Lt. Governor’s office and Missouri Corn in order to meet the needs of the state’s most vital industry.
As part of the Green Capital Initiative, 
The slogan for Naturally Iowa is “We Milk the Cows and Grow the Bottles.” Co-founders William Horner and Steve Williams both grew up on farms in Southwest Iowa, and later returned to farming after completing their education. In 2002, the two partnered to provide an opportunity for family operated dairy farms to make a comeback by adding value to their product and became the world’s first dairy to use PLA bottling. 
Representatives of the 
What the groups were able to determine on their tours was that higher corn yields are expected in China for 2008 compared to 2007 resulting in a crop of 153.54 million metric tons - or about 6 billion bushels. According to Cary Sifferath, U.S. Grains Council senior director in China, the national average yield for all provinces is 5.28 tons per hectare (84 bushels per acre) with Jilin province showing the highest yield the tour saw in terms of production at 111 bushels per acre.
According to a new analysis by the 
However, a pre-summit private industry forum did offer some constructive suggestions, and one of them is biofuels production. The CEO of South Dakota-based 
How? Given all the advancement in agriculture, including new seeds, more durable crops, and smarter farming techniques, people today in places as far apart as Sioux Falls and South Africa can grow more sustainable crops than ever before. For example, in the 1940s, the average American farmer produced about 40 bushels of corn per acre; today it’s 140. The result is an agriculture industry that can meet the growing demand for food and biofuels — and help nations once left out of the agriculture industry take care of their food needs, raise people out of poverty, and develop a profitable, self-sustaining farming industry.
As a way to spread the word about distillers grains, the Missouri Corn Merchandising Council recently partnered with the Missouri Cattlemen’s Association and the University of Nebraska to develop an informational publication explaining the various types of distillers grains, storage techniques and ration incorporation. 
The campaign includes ads on cable TV and in woman’s magazines, as well as full-page newspaper ads will appear in several major newspapers across the country. In addition, there is a great interactive