Today, the first field hearing is being held in the home state of chairwoman Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, featuring agricultural representatives of all sectors, from corn and soybeans to cherries and apples. Last week, the committee held its first official Farm Bill hearing, with testimony from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, former secretary Dan Glickman, Michigan farmer Barry Mumby, and others.
While USDA is not planning to propose a version of the Farm Bill as it has in the past, Vilsack recognized the obvious fact that agriculture policy will be affected by budget cuts. “I have no doubts that the next Farm Bill will be smaller than the one agreed to in 2008. In acknowledging that reality, I hope that this Committee will give serious thought to your priorities for American agriculture – your priorities for USDA – and to the values of the American people,” he told the committee.
As Co-Chair of The Chicago Council’s Global Agricultural Development Initiative, Glickman focused his testimony on America’s role in reducing global hunger and poverty through food aid programs included under the Farm Bill, while Mumby urged the committee to protect farmers with an adequate safety net. “I must say that this Committee has a daunting task and every farmer in the US as well as the rest of the world will be watching very carefully to analyze the effects of your Bill on their lives for the next few years,” he said.
Farmers have good reason to be concerned about what Congress will do this time around, since the percentage of dollars allocated to actual production agriculture in the legislation continues to decline to the point where it was only about 10 percent in the 2008 bill. Traditional support programs could very well be in jeopardy, as some are calling for a complete overhaul of agricultural policy. A recent report from the National Research Council Committee on Twenty-First Century Systems Agriculture proposed a “whole-system redesign” of U.S. agriculture that would “incorporate innovative agricultural systems such as organic farming, grass-fed and other alternative livestock production systems, mixed crop and livestock systems, and perennial grains…. it would require significant changes in market structures, policy incentives and public funding for agricultural science.”
The Farm Bill has undergone many transformations over the years, with some programs falling by the wayside and new programs taking their place. Even the name has changed over the years – it actually has never been called the “Farm Bill” – initially called the Agricultural Adjustment Act in 1933 and most recently the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act in 2008.
No matter what the name, the legislation has always recognized the importance of maintaining a strong agriculture industry for the security of the nation, something Congress needs to continue to keep in mind as the process to create a new “Farm Bill” begins.
As summer barbeque season starts, field corn has to tip its hat to little brother sweet corn for making summer just a little sweeter.
At the University of Missouri Bradford Research and Extension Center, there are some folks who specialize in finding the sweetest sweet corn varieties to please the palette. “Some varieties are so good that I’ll eat four ears right off the plant without even cooking them,” says center superintendent Tim Reinbott. “If you ask people what their favorite sweet corn is, many will say Peaches and Cream because that was one of the first bicolor varieties that tasted really good, but actually there are hundreds of sweet corn varieties out there.”
Like Peaches and Cream, many of the varieties have names that sound more like fruits than vegetables. Butter and Sugar, Ambrosia, Maple Sugar and Honey Select could just as well be new varieties of apples or citrus. Some of the more popular listed sound like a horse racing form, with names like Bodacious, Frisky, Gold Nugget and Jackpot.
The center holds a sweet corn tasting event each year where more than 150 people get acquainted with new genetic hybrids as well as old corn mainstays.
“We ask people to rate corn types from 1 to 5,” he said. “Last year we found popular varieties like Peaches and Cream came in at 2.5, varieties like Bodacious and Incredible you often see at farmers markets came in around 3.8, but newer varieties like Honey Select and Vision – which are heterozygous with supersweet and tender genes in them – get 4.6s and 4.7s.”
The results of Bradford Farm’s last two years of sweet corn variety tasting, can be found on-line. It’ll make your mouth water!
The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates that passage of all three FTAs would result in 22,500 new jobs in that sector alone. While this would not return unemployment levels to their pre-crisis lows, it would drastically, immediately change the lives of both the 22,500 hired as well as the approximately 67,500 people who depend upon them. By opening these markets, Congress would directly improve the financial, physical and emotional well-being of 90,000 Americans.
Albeit in a less dramatic manner, the passage of these trade agreements benefits the entire nation. The American Farm Bureau estimates passage of these agreements would generate an additional 2.5 billion dollars in the U.S. economy through agricultural trade alone. If Congress is willing to fight tooth and nail over cutting a few billion dollars from current spending, actually growing the national economy should be a high priority.
A recent Food and Water Watch paper that was extremely critical of the ethanol industry got me thinking about the question, what is the perfect price for corn?
The paper included the following table, which tracks corn prices, cost of production and the difference paid to farmers when input costs are higher. While FWW only focuses on the “pass through subsidies” these deficiency payments represented for ethanol producers, it rightly notes that the farm policy provides benefits for “all industries that rely on corn as a key input.” That includes livestock producers and food processors, two industries that use as much or more corn than ethanol production.
So, between 1999 and 2008, corn prices went from a low of $1.82 per bushel to a high of $4.20. Since 2005, the taxpayer has had to pay nothing for corn because the price has been more than the cost of production – which means corn growers have actually been able to make a profit on their crop instead of just break even. But production costs also continue to rise. If the price per bushel of corn was $1.82 in 2008 and input costs were $3.65 per bushel, the taxpayer cost could have been $1.82 per bushel, instead of zero.
Obviously, any industry that has corn as part of their own input costs, wants it to be as low as possible so they can make a profit, so it is understandable that those in the livestock and food processing business are unhappy with the higher corn prices. But, my question is, what is the ideal price for the commodity that would make everybody happy?
It would have to be at least slightly more than the cost of production for farmers to save taxpayers money, but farmers are impacted by some of the same input costs that affect all other industries, especially energy. As long as prices for fuel and other energy-related costs go up, production costs for every industry will rise.
The latest season-average farm price for corn is projected by USDA to be a record $5.50 to $6.50 per bushel compared with the 2010/11 forecast of $5.10 to $5.40 per bushel. But the cost of production is expected to be close to that, so what is a fair price in terms of the difference?
Please comment if you have an opinion. I’m curious to hear from both corn producers and users.
By now, the number 9,000,000,000 has burned itself into the brains of everyone in agriculture. That’s the number of people the world is estimated to hold by the year 2050. And the constant refrain is “How are we going to feed them?”
However, it’s not a question of how much food we can produce. Enough food is already produced in the world today for everyone to be properly nourished and lead a healthy and productive life. In fact, as the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported recently, we actually waste about one third of the food produced in the world for human consumption every year, approximately 1.3 billion tonnes. Obviously, that is much more than the amount of corn that is used for ethanol that makes critics scream about using food for fuel.
Hunger is caused not by lack of food, but by poverty, and one way to alleviate the poverty could lie in the production of both food and fuel, especially in developing countries. Two days after its report about food waste, the FAO released another report on the potential benefits of growing energy crops in poverty-stricken areas.
According to Heiner Thofern, who heads FAO’s Bioenergy and Food Security, “investment in bioenergy could spark much-needed investment in agricultural and transport infrastructure in rural areas and, by creating jobs and boosting household incomes, could alleviate poverty and food security.”
“FAO has been saying for years that under-investment in agriculture is a problem that seriously handicaps food production in the developing world, and that this, coupled with rural poverty, is a key driver of world hunger,” says Thofern. “Done properly and when appropriate, bioenergy development offers a chance to drive investment and jobs into areas that are literally starving for them.”
This concept was echoed by a couple of experts on a National Biodiesel Board webinar Tuesday. Both Dr. Stephen Kaffka of the University of California/Davis Department of Plant Sciences and Keith Kline with the Center for Bioenergy Sustainability at Oak Ridge National Laboratory talked about how the world can and should produce both food and fuel.
“Biofuel feedstocks or residue use should be considered from a cropping system’s perspective and not just as separate enterprises,” said Kaffka. “It isn’t really a food versus fuel issue but rather a more efficient and environmentally sound cropping system versus those that are less so.”
Kline believes that bioenergy done correctly on a global scale could do much to address food insecurity and poverty. “If we can alleviate poverty, we can probably alleviate a lot of food insecurity,” he said. “Some people in Africa have looked at this and concluded that bioenergy is not only compatible with food production but it could also greatly benefit agriculture in Africa.”
Kline says farmers he has talked to in developing countries want to feed their families and have something they can sell. “If they can grow something that’s good for food, and fuel, and fodder and feed, and anything else that you can imagine, it’s all the better,” he added.
National Corn Growers Association Ethanol Chair Keith Alverson says what ethanol has done for American agriculture and the economy can be done globally as well. “Farmers know that ethanol has a measurable and positive impact on communities, which is greatly needed in today’s economy,” said Alverson. “However, it is nice to see more of the world starting to realize what we’ve been saying and showing for quite some time.”
Farmers in the rest of the world have as much potential to help feed and fuel the planet as American farmers and will if they are given the opportunity.
More importantly, he concluded that there is no evidence that HFCS has a different impact on risk factors for chronic disease. Rippe, the founder and director of the Rippe Lifestyle Institute and professor of biomedical sciences at the University of Central Florida, went so far as to bash popular propaganda in the face by stating consuming HFCS instead of table sugar is no more likely to make someone obese or to make it more difficult for them to lose weight.
So why are we, as a society, becoming so fat? Is it inactivity? A sedentary lifestyle? Mindless snacking? If you ask someone who is actually shocked by Rippe’s results, they might answer that the increased usage of sweetener is to blame. They may even go on to continue pinning the tail on the HFCS piñata by deducing that the supposed sweetener glut foisted upon the American public results directly from the affordability of HFCS.
Again, Dr. Rippe’s research proves the bitter HFCS bashers wrong. Yes, in the past three decades the average American went from consuming 2,200 to 2,700 calories per day – a 22 percent jump. Since just 1999, the average calories from sweetener consumed has dropped 10 percent from 500 to 450.
So what are we eating? Since 1999, average fat consumption has spiked.
Instead of blaming fat though, let’s take a more holistic view of obesity in our country. Let’s admit that it takes a variety of factors to get us on the last loop of our collective belt and realize that only through addressing these issues will we get back into our skinny jeans. It may take restraint, will power and personal responsibility, but only by looking at our lifestyles in a healthy way can we improve our overall health.
It is like mom said. There is no boogie man. What blame throwers don’t want to recognize is the culprits that lie within their heads, not their mouths.
With gas prices on the rise, farmers are helping ease the pain at the pump for consumers across the United States. Ethanol is currently priced roughly 80 cents less per gallon than gasoline. In these rough times, even the relatively minor cost savings that the 10 percent of ethanol blended into the average tank of gas offers are a welcome relief for many consumers.
The question now becomes: how do we use ethanol to further reduce the burden of high gas prices should oil remain high? Many answers provide solutions that could help the average consumer who knows that filling up a car can lead to an empty wallet.
Many major automakers already offer flex-fuel vehicles. These cars and SUVs run on both regular gasoline and on an E-85 blend. Drivers choosing FFVs can save at the pump themselves while easing pressure on the national oil supply.
To maximize the impact of FFVs, blender pump technology must become more readily available. These simple gas pumps, which resemble those already at stations, allow consumers to select the amount of ethanol they put into their tank. FFV drivers have the option of using E-85 fuel. Those with traditional automobiles can opt for up to a 15 percent blend. In offering choice, blender pumps provide options.
Americans know all too well that high gas prices hurt their pocketbooks and their families. Ethanol is one of the many ways American farmers hard work can help make life affordable. By providing options that maximize the potential use of this renewable, clean source of energy, the public can take power back from big oil and take home a little bit more of a paycheck.
Have you ever read a blog and wanted to comment but didn’t? Well no more! Join us this week as the National Corn Growers Association hosts a Social Media Training Webinar featuring a “A Beginner’s Guide to Commenting on Blogs.”
“Time and again, research shows that the best resource farmers have are their own voices,” said Grower Services Action Team Chair Brandon Hunnicutt, a farmer in Nebraska very active in using Facebook and Twitter. “Social media takes our stories and allows us to reach further than we ever could before. I know that finding the right balance when crafting a response to a blog post can be tricky. Through this seminar, we will help clear the confusion and provide simple tips that get results.”
This session will focus on the necessary steps to expand your online influence into the blogosphere. It will cover topics such as how to find relevant blogs and news articles, suggestions about when to comment and when to stay silent, best practices for effective commenting, strategies to help engage with the authors of blogs, how to deal with negative feedback, and more.
The webinar takes place at 10:30 a.m. CDT Thursday, May 19. Follow-up webinars are planned for June 16, July 21, August 18, September 15, October 20, November 17 and December 15. Times for these will be announced prior to the webinars. Click here to register or get more information.
The series is conducted by The Vandiver Group, a strategic communications firm based in St. Louis. Previous webinar presentations are available at NCGA’s Website.
This program is generously supported by Pioneer Hi-Bred, a DuPont Business, and is the fifth of 12 free hour-long online learning sessions underway monthly through 2011.
Pedal tractor racing, corn shucking, and corn hole tossing were just a few of the fun team events that the Iowa Corn Growers hosted with Indy car drivers and representatives from the University of Iowa and Iowa State University this week to promote the upcoming Iowa Corn Indy 250 race on June 25 and their Join The Team program.
In the photo, Indy car driver Ryan Hunter-Reay competes on pedal tractors with Dick Gallagher, Iowa Corn Promotion Board Chairman. Waving the green flag to start is Shannon Textor, Iowa Corn Growers Market Development Director. You may remember that Ryan was once the Indy Team Ethanol car driver and he showed some of his race car driving skills by winning this particular race.
Ryan says he loves coming to Iowa and working for the corn growers in this interview that Chuck Zimmerman did with him.
Chuck also spoke with Kevin Rempp, Iowa corn grower and current Secretary/Treasurer for the Iowa Corn Promotion Board who talks about the Iowa Corn Indy 250, the Iowa Corn Fed program and their new commitment to the Iowa Corn Cy-Hawk Series.
Despite flooding of farm land and delayed planting in many areas, USDA is forecasting a record corn crop for this year.
The World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimate for May represents USDA’s initial assessment of U.S. and world crop supply and demand prospects. The report projects corn production for 2011/12 “at a record 13.5 billion bushels, up 1.1 billion from 2010/11 as a 4.0-million-acre increase in intended plantings and a recovery from last year’s weather-reduced yields boost expected output. The 2011/12 corn yield is projected at 158.7 bushels per acre, 3.0 bushels below the 1990-2010 trend reflecting the slow pace of planting progress through early May.”
The forecast is based on USDA’s March estimate of nearly 92 million acres, but there are concerns that could end up being lowered due to flooding and late planting issues. Al Kluis, analyst for Kluis Commodities, thinks 92 million acres is unrealistic at this point. “More realistic I think would be at least a two million acre drop in there,” he said during a commentary call with the Minneapolis Grain Exchange. “I think we’re going to be fortunate, if the weather starts straightening out, to get 90 million acres of corn planted.” He expects the number to be changed by the June report, but he thinks even by the first week of June, some farmers may not yet know what they will do. “I can envision they do the June report with an asterisk and say we’re going to go out and resurvey people again in July and do an updated acreage number in August,” he added.
The report lowers total corn use for the current year by one percent, increasing use for ethanol by 50 million bushels while decreasing feed use by the same amount and forecasting a decline of 100 million for exports. “U.S. corn ending stocks for 2011/12 are projected at 900 million bushels, up 170 million from the current year projection. Stocks remain historically tight with stocks-to-use projected at 6.7 percent compared with the current year projection of 5.4 percent. The season-average farm price is projected at a record $5.50 to $6.50 per bushel compared with the 2010/11 forecast of $5.10 to $5.40 per bushel.”
Today, the first field hearing is being held in the home state of chairwoman Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, featuring agricultural representatives of all sectors, from corn and soybeans to cherries and apples. Last week, the committee held its first official Farm Bill hearing, with testimony from Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, former secretary Dan Glickman, Michigan farmer Barry Mumby, and others.
As summer barbeque season starts, field corn has to tip its hat to little brother sweet corn for making summer just a little sweeter.
Hunger is caused not by lack of food, but by poverty, and one way to alleviate the poverty could lie in the production of both food and fuel, especially in developing countries. Two days after its report about food waste, the 
Despite flooding of farm land and delayed planting in many areas, USDA is forecasting a record corn crop for this year.