Praying for Farmers and Those Who Rely On Them

“Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth.”  - Psalm 54:2

On Thursday, our country celebrates the National Day of Prayer. It’s always a welcome day for many of us, a time to join together and thank God for his many gifts while praying for our specific needs.

This year, there is so much to pray about and so many to pray for, such as those still dealing with the effects of natural disasters like floods, earthquakes, tsunami and tornadoes.  On the southern tip of Illinois a historic town may face destruction if the only practical alternative, flooding rich Missouri farmland, is not taken. It’s not a good situation for anyone. (5/3 Update: the levee was blown and the farms are flooding.) And then there are the millions of hungry here and abroad. Often, it’s not because there is no food, but no way to get healthy food to them.

Here in the Midwest, farmers anxiously want to plant their crops but are challenged by wet weather. They know they can feed the world, and they are eager to do so, but the weather does not cooperate.

And so it’s a good time to pray. We should give thanks, first, for our blessings, our talent and success and, yes, our technology that helps us grow more food each year. But we should also pray directly for our needs and those of others. All we have to do is ask. Here are some suggestions:

Pray for those who do not have enough food and for those who are working hard to help feed them.

Pray for those who have lost their homes and those in danger of losing their property.

Pray for favorable planting weather now and the rain we need later this summer to grow our crops.

Pray for farmers that they may be strong and healthy for this most important work.

Straight Talk Straight from the Farm

People don’t trust traditional media the way that they did a decade ago.  Studies have reported time and time again that today people want to speak directly with the source.  CommonGround, a joint program between the National Corn Growers Association and the United Soybean Board, gives them just that opportunity.

By empowering farm women to tell their own stories of agriculture, CommonGround helps the connect the people who grow food with urban and suburban consumers interested in knowing more about what they feed their families.  Fostering open, honest communication, CommonGround shines a spotlight on the stories behind food production in America.

But why listen to a blog about it?  Farm broadcaster Pam Fretwell recently released a series of interviews with farmer, agvocate and CommonGround spokeswoman Dawn Caldwell.  Listen to Dawn talk about farming, her views on agriculture and her experience with this exciting program.

Corn Bags Clean Up the Clean Up

For years, environmental activists have reinforced the negative impact that plastic bags, similar to those used in grocery stores, have upon the planet.  These ubiquitous bags can sit in landfills for over 1,000 years.  Now, people who love the planet and their dogs are championing a better option- corn-based biodegradable dog waste bags.

Here, ingenuity and U.S. farming collide to meet demand rooted in an urban problem, cleaning up after Fido.  With the new bags, which programs such as the downtown St. Louis “Scoop the Poop” campaign are using, dog owners can rest assured knowing that they are keeping their city and their planet clean.

Farmers know how important caring for the land is.  So enjoy walking Rex and don’t forget that farmers provide the fuel for innovative ways to improve the way we treat the earth every day.

Glenn Beck Fails Ethanol 101

 Guest Blogger:  Jesse Johnson, Social Media Director, South Dakota Corn Growers Association

In case you didn’t know it, Glenn Beck hates ethanol and has always been very vocal about it including a recent rant using some fear mongering about our national corn supply where he brings up the food vs. fuel argument.

Glenn must be desperate for killing some air time because the food vs. fuel debate has been put to bed more times than a teething two year-old. Beck, like every other anti-ethanol rube fails to mention the contribution of dried distillers grain (DDG’s), corn ethanol’s by product which can be fed to cattle, hogs, poultry and aquaculture. One-third of the corn used for ethanol comes back as DDG’s as the production process only removes the starch.

DDG’s impact includes replacing more than one million bushels of corn for feed in the U.S. and its overall production is equivalent to the number four corn producing nation in the world. Distillers grain exports are in high demand in Asia, the Middle East, Canada and Mexico.

Numerous experts have come out over the past few weeks with the same message, “Don’t blame ethanol and farmers for rising food prices.” The reason behind rising food costs has much more to do with rising oil prices, weather and unrest in the Middle East.

Beck says only one billion bushels will be going to food…wait, he does know that humans don’t consume yellow number two corn, right? Well that’ tough to say when a so-called expert totally excludes distillers grain from a food vs. fuel argument.

Glen states that farmers can’t produce more corn. While much depends on the weather, with increased seed and farming technologies corn yields are still trending upwards allowing farmers to consistently meet the world’s demands for food, feed, fuel and fiber.

Beck with finishes with the line, “It’s like we are being set up for a lose-lose.”

I’m sorry Mr. Beck but reducing our countries dependence on foreign oil, creating jobs, bettering the environment and producing a high-protein livestock feed sounds like nothing but winning to me

Canada Ends Food Versus Fuel Debate

It’s official – the Grain Farmers of Ontario have proclaimed that the food versus fuel debate is over.

That’s what the organization heralded this week with the release of a new report on “Effects of Biofuels and Bioproducts on the Environment, Crop and Food Prices and World Hunger,” which they say “should put an end to the ongoing debate of whether the grain we grow should be used for food or fuel. We can and should do both.”

Indeed we should and the Canadian farmers’ reasoning is pretty much what American corn growers have been saying for several years now.

As farm yields climb and investments are made in farm production in the developing world, feeding and fueling the world can even be done cost effectively. “My corn yields have increased by 35 percent since I started farming in 1975,” says Don Kenny who farms just outside of Ottawa and is the chair of Grain Farmers of Ontario. “I am confident that my land will continue to be productive and that new products and technologies will ensure my family supplies our local livestock market and the ethanol plant down the road for many years to come.”

The study found that global grain production has increased by 1.5% per year over the past 20 years, more than the 1.1% per year food demands are growing, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. “Quite frankly, it is a relief for us to learn that production of biofuels, like ethanol, here in Ontario makes such a positive contribution to our environment without any notable impact on overall food prices and the world’s ability to supply food,” says Barry Senft, CEO for Grain Farmers of Ontario.

It would certainly be a relief for all ethanol producers if this did mark the end of the whole food vs. fuel debate, but I doubt if anyone is ready to write that obituary just yet.

Would Earth Tip Scales of Justice?

Granting legal rights for Mother Earth is in the news again, thanks to the efforts of Obama administration’s controversial former “green jobs czar.”

According to Fox News, Van Jones, who resigned from the administration in September 2009, is one of the newest board members of “an obscure San Francisco New Age-style organization known as the Pachamama Alliance,” which is associated with the Global Alliance for the Rights of Nature (GARN). The GARN group supports a “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth” that outlines the “Inherent Rights of Mother Earth” and “Obligations of human beings to Mother Earth.”

Mother Earth is proclaimed as a “living being” in this declaration which has “the right to full and prompt restoration the violation of the rights recognized in this Declaration caused by human activities.” This group is calling on the General Assembly of the United Nation to adopt the declaration as a “common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations of the world.”

What is missing in the Declaration is any obligations of Mother Earth toward her lowly human beings. In most landlord-tenant contracts there are at least SOME provisions that the lessor has towards the lessee. So, to be fair, there should be an Article 4 in the Declaration that gives the humans a few rights, like the “Right Not to Get Smacked with Hurricanes, Earthquakes, Tsunamis, Tornadoes or any Such Natural Disasters.”

If the radical idea of granting basic HUMAN rights to the entire planet – including all its “ecosystems, natural communities, species and all other natural entities” – goes forward, it has the potential to open up a vast new legal playground where environmental lawyers could sue human beings for such things as trampling on Mother Earth’s “right to not have its genetic structure modified or disrupted in a manner that threatens its integrity or vital and healthy functioning.”

According to the Declaration, “Just as human beings have human rights, all other beings also have rights which are specific to their species or kind and appropriate for their role and function within the communities within which they exist.” The problem comes when those rights collide and it has to be determined which rights are more important. The Declaration says any conflict between rights “must be resolved in a way that maintains the integrity, balance and health of Mother Earth.” Who would make that determination?

Just think about how such a declaration could impact food and agriculture if adopted by “all nations of the world.” There’s a clause that says “Every being has the right to wellbeing and to live free from torture or cruel treatment by human beings.” What if slaughtering and eating animals were deemed to impact the wellbeing of the beings, and thus constituted torture and cruel treatment? What if biotech crops were determined to be a genetically modified structure that threatens Mother Earth’s integrity?

If it ever came down to a choice between feeding the world or protecting the rights of Mother Earth, who would win? The key to the scales of justice is keeping them balanced.

Corn is More than Food

Something gets lost in the “food versus fuel” fight, and that is that corn is an amazingly versatile crop with endless possibilities for bio-friendly products. Using it for food or feed alone is just limiting its enormous potential.

Teams of Purdue University students recently came up with a few more potential uses for corn. The winners of this year’s Corn Innovation Contest, sponsored by the the Indiana Corn Marketing Council, developed a liquid bandage made out of a by-product from corn ethanol production called zein. The Natural Renewal Liquid Bandage – created by students Andrew Furrow of Greenwood , Ann Alvar of Zionsville, Robert Agee of Rushville and Yang Zhou of West Lafayette (not pictured) – takes advantage of the properties of zein, which is a transparent, edible, water insoluble and biodegradable polymer that acts as a physical defense for wounds and binds to the skin’s surface. The team used ethyl alcohol made from corn to act as an antiseptic until the solvent evaporates. They believe that the product also will act as a skin scaffold that will reduce scarring in minor wounds. For their innovative thinking, the team members are sharing a cash award of $20,000.

Second place and $10,000 in the competition this year went to Jonathon Welte of Elberfeld, Audrey Wessel of St. Anthony and Spencer Dieg of Evansville for creating drop ceiling tiles made from corn stover. The team worked to create tiles that were more environmentally friendly compared with regular tiles made from such materials as wood, plastic and fiberglass and other materials.

The competition also includes new products for soybeans and the winners this year developed Dentural, an all-natural adhesive for full dentures. The product is in the form of a paste consisting of soy products that form a vacuum to keep dentures in place. It is an alternative to synthetic chemicals used in other products.

“The versatility of corn and soybeans is limitless, and these competitions serve as a showcase not only for the potential new uses of crops grown here in Indiana but also for the students who put their time, effort and talent into their projects,” said Jane Ade Stevens, executive director for both the corn and soybean checkoff organizations. “Indiana corn and soybean farmers are committed to working with Purdue to continue to build excitement around the new uses competitions, which ultimately helps build demand for corn and soybeans,” Stevens said.

(Purdue Agricultural Communication Photos/Tom Campbell)

Corn Prices Higher With or Without Ethanol

The basic conclusion of a new report from the from the Iowa State University Center for Agricultural and Rural Development (CARD) is that corn prices would have done just about the same thing between 2006 to 2009 with or without ethanol.

The analysis by Bruce Babcock and Jacinto Fabiosa uses a computer model to “rewrite history” by re-creating what actually happened in agricultural markets then removing government incentives to produce and consume corn ethanol. To further isolate the effects of ethanol on commodity prices, they also ran a scenario where ethanol production was frozen at 2004 levels.

In summary, this is what they discovered:

First, the general pattern of corn prices that we saw in the historical period—increasing prices in in 2006 and 2007, a price spike in 2008, followed by a sharp price decline in 2009—would have occurred without ethanol subsidies or even if corn ethanol production had not expanded. Second, investor fervor for corn ethanol in 2005, 2006, and 2007 would have occurred even without subsidies because a combination of cheap corn, a phase-out of MTBE, and higher crude oil prices made ethanol profitable. Thus, ethanol production would have expanded quite rapidly even without subsidies.

Using the 2004 corn price of $2.06 per bushel as a reference, actual corn prices increased by an average of $1.65 per bushel from 2006 to 2009. Only 14 cents (8%) of this increase was due to ethanol subsidies. Another 45 cents of the increase was due to market-based expansion of the corn ethanol industry. Together, expansion of corn ethanol from subsidies and market forces accounted for 32% of the average increase that we saw in corn prices from 2006 to 2009. All other market factors accounted for 68% of the corn price increase.

Corn Growers Aid Japan With Grain Donations

Nebraska farmers are coming to the aid of their customers in Japan by donating grain to support Red Cross efforts to help those impacted by the earthquake and tsunami.

In just the first two days of the program that started April 1, more than 4,600 bushels of grain were contributed in the Cornhusker State and sold for more than $31,000 to donate to the Red Cross. “We’ve seen an incredible response to the grain donation program. It’s the largest program we’ve ever had in our chapter, and dollars generated will go directly to the Red Cross international relief effort,” said Renae Foster, chief operating officer of the Central Plains Regional Chapter of the American Red Cross.

“Japan is one of our important customers, buying more than $370 million in Nebraska agricultural products like corn, beef and pork, last year alone,” said Lynn Chrisp, a farmer from Kenesaw and member of the Nebraska Corn Growers Association. “This is a great way for farmers to help them during this disaster, to be a good neighbor to one of our most important global customers.”

The program allows farmers to make grain donations at cooperative locations or by contacting their grain merchandiser and transferring ownership to the Red Cross. “The more locations there are to deliver corn, the bigger impact we’ll have,” Chrisp said. “In fact, we’re hoping the grain donation program is adopted in other states, too.”

The grain donation program was developed by the Nebraska Corn Growers Association, Aurora Cooperative and the American Red Cross, with farmer-owned KRVN rural radio also supporting the initiative. It is currently scheduled to run through July 30. For more information, contact Mat Habrock at the Nebraska Corn Growers.

Cold, Wet Weather Dampens Planting Party

After getting off to a good start, planting has slowed down around the corn belt, thanks to cold and wet weather. USDA showed progress at eight percent, just a point below normal for this time of year, but way behind last year’s swift pace of 16 percent. Only two states are showing planting ahead of normal right now and they are Missouri and Kansas – both of which made excellent progress last week.

While there is nothing to be concerned about yet, the markets were happy to react early in the week on fears that the delays will reduce yields. That can certainly happen, especially if these cool soil temperatures continue and emergence is delayed. Kansas State University extension specialist Craig Roseboom says if just one out of six plants is delayed by two leaf stages, yields could be reduced by 3-4 percent. “They’re not huge yield reductions, but prices are good and even a three percent yield reduction at 200 bushel corn, that’s $36 an acre in terms of potential gross receipts,” Roseboom says.

But, the forecast is looking better, at least according to the markets which took a dive later in the week on that good news. With as fickle as the weather has been lately, it is certainly way too early to make any predictions about how this planting season will end up. Just keep praying that the good Lord is willing and the creeks don’t rise.