Corn Farmers Coalition Speaks Out
Posted: April 30, 2009
Representatives from the Corn Farmers Coalition (CFC), an alliance of the National Corn Growers Association and 10 state corn associations, discussed implementation of Farm Bill reforms, federal and state ethanol regulations, and other issues affecting America’s largest crop during a Thursday teleconference with reporters.
CFC Director Mark Lambert said they just want to get the facts about corn farming out to policy makers. For example, “It’s a little known fact that we are growing five times as much corn as our grandfathers did in the 1930s on 20 percent less land,” said Lambert.
Facts like these are vital to stress as the issue of indirect land use gains traction in ethanol policy decisions on the state and federal levels, according to Ross Korves, economic-policy analyst and expert on farm and trade policy for the research firm ProExporter Network. “As corn farmers get more productive, so does corn’s environmental impact abate,” said Korves. “More productivity per acre means we produce more corn on the same acres. There is no land use effect because we are simply not using more land.”
National Corn Growers Association first vice president Darrin Ihnen, a farmer from South Dakota, says ethanol is not only an important market for corn growers, it continues to be the primary way for the nation to lessen its dependence on foreign oil. “As a corn farmer, let me tell you, we need that new market because with the new generation of biotech seeds and our productivity going through the roof, we’re going to have plenty of bushels to go around,” Ihnen said. “By the end of last year, the US had the capacity to produce more than 10.8 billion gallons of ethanol, displacing more than seven percent of the total annual gasoline use.”
The CFC is providing input as the Environmental Protection Agency develops rules for implementing the Renewable Fuels Standard and considers increasing the ethanol blend rate to 15 percent. “All we ask is that they consider the facts,” Lambert says.