Posted By Cindy March 31, 2009
As the concept of limiting carbon dioxide emissions in the form of so-called “cap and trade” legislation gets closer to reality, agriculture groups have drawn up a list of guiding principals for Congress to consider when it comes to regulating greenhouse gas emissions and the impact it could have on farming and ranching.
A dozen ag organizations joined together to outline nine key principals regarding greenhouse gas cap-and-trade legislation which they have sent to Capitol Hill.
The nine issues outlined in the briefing document include:
1. The agriculture sector must not be subject to an emissions cap.
2. Any cap-and-trade legislation must fully recognize the wide range of carbon mitigation or sequestration benefits that agriculture can provide.
3. Legislation must be structured so that it makes economic sense for agriculture.
4. USDA should promulgate the rules and administer an agricultural offsets program (as opposed to EPA).
5. The use of domestic offsets must not be artificially limited.
6. Carbon sequestration and greenhouse gas mitigation rates must be based on sound science.
7. Any cap-and-trade legislation must provide an initial list of project types that are eligible agricultural offsets.
8. Legislation should recognize early actors.
9. Legislation should not prohibit stackable credits or participation in multiple programs when multiple benefits are achieved for the same practice.
The organizations that have endorsed the principles document include the National Corn Growers Association, American Farmland Trust, the American Soybean Association, the National Association of Conservation Districts, the National Association of Wheat Growers, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, the National Farmers Union, the National Milk Producers Federation, the Public Lands Council, the United Fresh Produce Association and the Western Growers Association.
Posted By Cindy March 31, 2009
USDA’s forecast for planted acreage this spring is not very different than last year – corn down just one percent and soybeans up only slightly.
According to the Prospective Plantings report issued this morning, USDA says corn growers “intend to plant 85.0 million acres of corn for all purposes in 2009, down 1 percent from last year as lower corn prices and unstable input costs are discouraging some growers from planting corn.” That would still be the third largest acreage since 1949, behind 2007 and 2008.
Expected acreage is down from last year in many States, however, producers in the 10 major corn-producing States (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin) collectively intend to plant 66.3 million acres, up slightly from the 66.1 million acres planted last year.
Many forecasters were predicting a larger drop in corn acreage and a much bigger increase in soybeans – as much as six percent. Still, USDA is calling for 76.0 million acres of soybeans in 2009 which would be the largest on record.
Posted By Cindy March 30, 2009
Corn cobs will be the primary feedstock for a new plant being located in Iowa that will be producing “BioAmmonia.”
SynGest of San Francisco has announced that the first plant to manufacture anhydrous ammonia fuel and fertilizer from corn biomass will be located in the little burg of Menlo, Iowa – about 45 miles west of Des Moines, with easy access to road and rail transportation.
According to the company, the plant “will use 150,000 tons of locally supplied corn cobs per year to manufacture 50,000 tons of bio-ammonia annually, enough to fertilize 500,000 acres of nearby Iowa farmland under corn.” The company uses a process that burns the cobs at temperatures of up to 1,700 degrees to produce a vapor that is liquefied into ammonia.
So, what they are saying is that they can use corn leftovers to make fertilizer to grow more corn. That could come in pretty handy with fertilizer prices continuing to go up and most ammonia imported from countries like Trinidad and Russia.
According to SynGest CEO Jack Oswald, their SynGest biomass-to-ammonia mini-plant will “empower the farmer and make him impervious to external forces. The SynGest option will let him convert his agricultural waste material into fuel to power the farm and nitrogen fertilizer to replenish the soil.”
The $80 million plant will be located next to the Hawkeye Renewables ethanol plant and reportedly plans to announce a partnership with a major agribusiness firm that will work with farmers on selling their corncobs to the plant.
Posted By Ken March 26, 2009
There are many reasons to love corn ethanol, and a group of respected military experts draws a strong connection to national security in a recent letter opposing a proposed low-carbon fuel standard in California that is biased against biofuels.
From the letter:
“This is not simply a scientific or environmental matter. It is a matter of national security, which is threatened by our reliance on oil and the effects of climate change. That is why we, as former members of the United States armed forces and intelligence services are writing to you on this important subject. Biofuels play a critical role in breaking our dependence on oil and mitigating the impact of climate change. The links between national security, fossil fuels, and climate change are many and they are severe.”
Posted By Cindy March 26, 2009
An ethanol producer rose to the defense of both the biofuel and American farmers in an Omaha World-Herald opinion piece this week.
Chuck Woodside, who is chief executive officer of KAAPA Ethanol in Minden, NE and secretary of the Renewable Fuels Association, says attacks upon corn ethanol are becoming more frequent and fanciful – but “there’s scarcely a kernel of truth in any of them.”
“Their fundamental flaw is underestimating the ingenuity of the American ethanol industry — and American agriculture as well. Both are becoming more technologically advanced and more efficient in every way, including their use of energy, water and land.”
(P)roducing increased amounts of grain ethanol requires remarkably little land in this country and exerts a negligible impact on land use throughout the world. The total amount of cropland dedicated to American ethanol production in 2007 was only 0.6 percent of the worldwide total.
Moreover, the total amount of agricultural land required to produce 15 billion gallons of grain ethanol in the United States by 2015, as required by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, would most likely be less than 1 percent of world cropland.
Meanwhile, agriculture is becoming more efficient, especially in this country and throughout the world as well.
It would have taken more than twice as much land in 1967 to grow the corn crop that the world harvested in 2007. Further minimizing the supposed problem, vast amounts of land are still available, if needed, for agricultural expansion throughout the world.
As the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has reported, while some 1.5 billion hectares of land are currently used for arable and permanent crops, 2.8 billion hectares remain that are suitable for rain-fed farming. (A hectare is approximately 2.47 acres.)
Read the entire op-ed here.
Posted By Cindy March 25, 2009
The next big new use for corn could be on a roll.
Purdue University students Janie Stine, David Jaroch and Jessamine Osborne have created a corn-based biodegradable toilet paper called Nature’s Silk that took the $10,000 top prize in the 2009 Indiana Student Corn Innovation contest.
“We were sold on the idea of Nature’s Silk from the beginning,” said Osborne, a senior from Evansville, Ind., double-majoring in cell molecular development and genetics. “The idea is simple, but perfect. We couldn’t figure out why this product wasn’t already on the market.”
The other big winners in this year’s competition at Purdue to create new products out of corn and soybeans were soybean-based cupcake liners and biodegradable cork that can be made of both soybeans and corn. The competition drew a record 33 students on 12 teams—nine of which competed in both corn and soybean categories.
“The participation in both the corn and soybean competitions this year was outstanding,” said Mark Henderson, executive director for both the soybean alliance and corn marketing council. “Developing new uses for our crops, as well as building interest among students to work with both corn and soybeans, is essential in building demand for the crops. This is a top priority for our state’s corn and soybean checkoff programs.”
Other products in this year’s competition included a decomposable flowerpot, snow removal and de-icing solution, car wax, paint balls, disposable cups, biodegradable cigarette filters, hydroplaning solution, biodegradable shotgun cartridge casings and a biodegradable garden container.
Posted By Cindy March 25, 2009
*But Were Afraid to Ask.
It’s all in “The Corn Fact Book.”
For example, did you know that…
…only about 1 percent of the corn we grow is eaten as corn?
…U.S. farmers grow five times more corn today than in the 1930s on 20 percent less land?
…today’s farmers produce 70 percent more corn per pound of fertilizer than they did 35 years ago?
…that corn is America’s biggest crop – and the world’s – and that U.S. corn farmers grow 2/5s of the world’s corn?
“The Corn Fact Book” is a new publication from the Corn Farmers Coalition, which includes the National Corn Growers Association and 10 state corn associations. It can be downloaded for free here on the website.
Posted By Cindy March 24, 2009
A bipartisan group of 12 Senators last week called on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) not to propose regulations assuming that greater U.S. biofuels use would increase carbon dioxide emissions. In a letter to EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, the senators argued that because the data and methods for calculating “indirect land use changes” such as from forest or grassland to crops are not adequately developed they should not be used in ways making it harder for biofuels to meet requirements for reduced carbon emissions from advanced biofuels under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS).
On Monday, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) took the issue to the Senate floor, pointing out a number of reasons why measuring indirect emissions of greenhouse gas reductions is still far from a perfect science and should not be used to make decisions that could affect the move toward using less fossil fuels.
“There are a number of assumptions that can affect the conclusions about indirect land use changes. With any model, if you put garbage in, you’ll get garbage out. I want to make sure that the EPA isn’t putting garbage in,” said Grassley. “I want to make sure they know yields per acre for corn have doubled between 1970 and today. I want the EPA to know that nitrogen fertilizer use per acre has been declining since 1985. The EPA also needs to know that the ethanol industry today is vastly more efficient that it was just a few years ago. Ethanol producers use one-fifth less energy today than they did in 2001. More fuel is being produced from the same amount or even less land.”
Grassley concluded that “agricultural practices and land use decisions in other countries are not driven by U.S. biofuels polices and even if they were, we have no accurate way to measure it scientifically.”
Posted By Cindy March 23, 2009
Plant breeders are coming up with new varieties of corn plants that could play a big role in producing biomass for next generation ethanol production, as well as other desirable traits.
University of Illinois plant geneticist Stephen Moose has been working on a couple of new plants with some serious potential.
For one, Moose doubled the “Glossy 15″ gene that slows down shoot maturation and ended up creating a plant with a giant potential for biomass. “What happens is that you get bigger plants, possibly because they’re more sensitive to the longer days of summer,” Moose explained. The addition of the gene “makes the plant slow down and gets much bigger at the end of the season.”
The ears of corn have fewer seeds compared to the normal corn plant but more sugar and the energy to make the seed goes instead into the stalk and leaves. “We essentially can make any corn variety bigger with this gene,” said Moose.
Moose has also been working with crop scientist Fred Below crossing maize plants adapted to the tropics with lines used as parents of popular Midwestern corn hybrids. In doing so, they have developed a new type of plant that uses less nitrogen and can yield three different crops – grain, sugar and biomass.
“These plants are massive,” Moose said. “They have big stalks, and unlike normal corn where stalks become hollow as they supply the grain with nutrients, these corn stalks are all filled up inside with sugar. If you harvest at the right time, it’s almost like harvesting sugar cane — the amount of sugar in the stalk is like sugar cane.” They calculated that there is six times the amount of sugar in the stalk of this newly developed corn and could produce about 200 gallons of ethanol per acre.
Test plots indicate that this type of corn would make a better energy crop than switchgrass. The yields of this new corn, even under low nitrogen, beat the record for switchgrass yields in the Midwest.
Posted By Cindy March 20, 2009
High fructose corn syrup (HCFS) is natural according to the FDA, but only products sweetened with sugar are getting that label on some new beverages.
A Forbes article today draws attention to new “natural” soft drink products being marketed that use sugar instead of HFCS, saying that the Corn Refiners Association may be losing its battle “to restore a tarnished image.”
PepsiCo is actually launching three new products – Pepsi Natural, Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback – all sweetened with “natural sugar.”
An all-new premium cola, Pepsi Natural is made with all-natural ingredients, including lightly sparkling water, natural sugar, natural caramel and kola nut extract….Pepsi and Mountain Dew are offering consumers a taste of the past with their own versions of Throwback, two new limited time only products inspired by the ’60s and ’70s, sweetened with natural sugar in a retro-look package.
We kind of get that same prejudice with sugarcane ethanol compared to corn ethanol – somehow it is more natural and better for the environment and the food supply – even though it takes land to produce it and is a food being made into fuel. Go figure.
The question with these sugar-based sodas will boil down to consumer demand. Do they taste good? Is it worth it to pay more for a “natural” premium soda, especially in the current economy? Time will tell if nature takes its course.
Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback will be available nationally for eight weeks only, beginning April 20.
