Posted By Cathryn December 30, 2011
Sometimes nostalgia gets the best of everyone. Through the rose-tinted spectacles of memory, people tend to remember a time when life was safer, things were more affordable and a simpler way of doing things produced a better result. No longer reserved for elderly grandmothers, this form of wistful longing for a bygone era now permeates popular culture as Williams and Sonoma schleps replica Star Wars lunch boxes to prematurely jaded Gen Xers who hold onto compuserve email addresses as a badge of “authenticity”.
While a desire to identify with a younger version of self may be natural, it can also wreak mental havoc as less-favorable aspects of the idealized period fade. As the facts are obfuscated, the ability to maintain a clear perspective of the present is lost. This inability, if left unchecked, has real world implications.
Today, there is a growing sense that food used to be somehow safer. From the bologna sandwiches that filled the original sci-fi themed lunch boxes to the milk grandma drank nearly straight from the cow as a girl, the deeply imprinted memories created when first smelling and tasting a favorite food can bring back a flood of emotion and create a strong picture of a better world.
This innate response is then compounded by media-driven fear. In a race for ratings, news programs sensationalize report of food borne illnesses which, in said yesteryear, would not have warranted more than a passing mention. Fanning the flames of hysteria, reporters search out the culprits behind each outbreak much as they would a serial killer. Snippets of information briefly interrupt the barrage of infographics that fly across the screen as blaring music, which has the calming effect of the average tornado siren, pushes more delicate members of the viewing public toward collapse.
Is food borne illness a serious matter? Certainly. Should everyone follow proper food safety protocol? Definitely. Does it make sense to pay careful attention to recall alerts? Without a doubt.
Is the general impression that food today is unsafe well-founded? Absolutely not.
Sepia-toned memories and frantic media sideshows aside, the facts show food in the United States is actually safer today than at any other point in documented history. In fact, the FoodNet 2010 report, a report card on America’s food safety created for use by the Centers for Disease Control, its partners and policymakers, shows a downward trend in food borne infections. Their website offers the real facts and shows that now, more than ever, Americans enjoy a safe supply of quality food choices.
It is time that conversations about food look toward the future and examine the real world steps that consumers and farmers can take together to even further improve food safety. Progress, in its essence, is forward facing. So, take off the rose-tinted hippie glasses of the past and put on some readers. It is time to bone up on modern agriculture.
Posted By Cathryn December 29, 2011
As Corn Commentary prepares for the New Year, our bloggers look back at some of their favorite posts about agriculture that appeared on other blogs throughout the year. In April, The Farmer’s Life ran “Corn Use, Food Prices and Ethanol,” which offered insight into the food versus fuel debate from a fresh perspective. This insightful piece, authored by a farmer from northwest Indiana, injects nuance and insight into the conversation.
Corn Use, Food Prices, and Ethanol
High commodity prices have reignited the food versus fuel debate. Not that it ever really went away, but with farmers reaping high prices for several months now you can see how it’s easy for those who don’t have the right information to make the connection that high commodity prices directly lead to high food prices. Makes sense right? If the price of ingredients goes up, then the price of food must go up too? Well, it’s not that simple.
Let’s talk about corn because it’s the one crop that is at the heart of this debate. If you follow any discussion about the price of corn it won’t take long before you find talk of the price of oil. Corn prices follow the same trends as oil, and at the same time corn will do the opposite of what the value of the American dollar is doing. Those are two of the biggest reasons corn prices are so high right now. Another problem is we’ve have a couple years of tough weather robbing some yield which puts in a situation today where we have tight carry over stocks of corn. The Middle East, source of much of the world’s oil supply, is going through some significant political shifts in many countries and it’s affecting the flow of oil out of those countries. At the same time the value of the dollar is dropping. Now that we have a very basic understanding of why commodity prices are soaring let’s get back to the food versus fuel deal. Proponents and opponents of ethanol often agree that 40% of US grown corn goes to ethanol production. I was at a marketing meeting a while back and the speaker put it another way. Four out of every ten rows of the corn we grow is taken to an ethanol plant. That statement allowed me to visualize that statistic in a very real way. Four out of every ten? That sounds like a lot!
OK, you probably think that sounds like a lot too, and I won’t argue with you, because I think it does too, at least on the surface. Critics of biofuels will often stop their argument right here. 40% of the crop going to ethanol, no wonder food prices are rising! Once again it’s not that easy. Ever heard of dried distiller’s grains or DDGs? This is the by-product of corn ethanol production. It’s a concentrated feed stock that is sold to the livestock industry. When you take into account the amount of DDGs going to livestock, therefore putting that corn back into the food market you bring that 40% of corn going to fuel down to 23%. So we’ve cut that usage number nearly in half, and we’re just talking about the United States. If we look at grain use on a global scale, only 3% of grain is going to ethanol production. And don’t forget, we export corn in this country, which means we’ve got product left over after we get what we want out of it to sell to countries all over the world.
The Renewable Fuels Association has written a post entitled Understanding the 2011 Planting Outlook, Ethanol and Food Pricing covering all these figures and how farmers are producing more on the same amount of total acres year after year. You can see in the RFA chart that planted acres haven’t changed in 15 years. As farmers continue to adopt new technologies in seed and equipment, and increase the use of more and more environmentally friendly practices like cover crops, they are going to keep getting more productive in the future.
So you don’t need to worry that you’re starving children in underdeveloped countries if you top off your tank with E15, E85, or biodiesel. It’s more likely those kids are starving due to regional economics and politics, not because American farmers are greedy.
Posted By Cindy December 23, 2011
Posted By Cindy December 22, 2011
There’s a hot new craze called the “Ethanol Shuffle” sweeping seaports from Sao Paulo to Los Angeles as tankers carrying Brazilian sugarcane ethanol bound for California pass those carrying corn ethanol bound for Brazil.
Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) Vice President of Research and Analysis Geoff Cooper wrote about the “Ethanol Shuffle” last week on the RFA E-xchange Blog. Basically, we are shuffling sugarcane ethanol from Brazil to California to meet that state’s Low Carbon Fuels Standard (LCFS) – while at the same time, Brazil is importing lower priced corn ethanol from the United States to make up for not only the ethanol it is exporting to California, but the shortfall that country has experienced in ethanol production recently.
So, that’s how the “Ethanol Shuffle” works. California imports sugarcane ethanol from Brazil rather than corn ethanol from Nebraska or Kansas; and in turn, corn ethanol from the Midwest travels to Houston or Galveston via rail, then is shipped to Brazil via tanker to “backfill” the volumes they sent to the U.S. Picture the irony of a tanker full of U.S. corn ethanol bound for Brazil passing a tanker full of cane ethanol bound for Los Angeles or Miami along a Caribbean shipping route.
This is more than ironic, it’s just plain ignorant. First of all, sugarcane ethanol costs more than corn ethanol. According to Cooper, the ethanol California has been importing from Brazil has been an average of $1.56 per gallon MORE than corn ethanol from the Midwest. “As far as E10 goes, that’s about a 16 cent per gallon differential,” said Cooper.
The reason California prefers sugarcane ethanol over corn is because they claim it is better for the environment, a claim which can be disputed, depending on how the life cycle analysis is determined (see previous post). But, even if sugarcane ethanol actually does have a better carbon footprint than corn ethanol, that advantage is lost in the transportation shuffle. “If we were serving the California market with corn ethanol from Nebraska and the Brazilians were satisfying their own demands with their own fuel, the emissions related with moving that fuel are about half of what we’re seeing with this shuffling dynamic,” said Cooper.
Listen to an interview with Cooper about the Ethanol Shuffle here: Geoff Cooper on the Ethanol Shuffle
Posted By Cathryn December 21, 2011
Recently, Market Watch from the Wall Street Journal published a paid press release talking about two new studies that the Sugar Association touts as defending their position that high fructose corn syrup is intrinsically different from the processed cane and beet sweeteners they promote.
Reference to a scientific study which neither mimicked an actual human diet nor compared the metabolic equivalence of HFCS to that of cane and beet sugar aside, the Sugar Association presented some very credible evidence. The confusing messaging they present to consumers about the differences between sweeteners does actually confuse said consumers.
Their argument is simple: Consumers do not want high fructose corn syrup in their foods. Noting the consumers prefer not to eat this as they think it may affect their bodies differently than what they view as sugar, the group advocates disallowing HFCS to be identified as corn sugar. Implying that HFCS is not as “natural” as the refined products their organization touts, the bitter sugar advocates continue to obfuscate the facts by hiding behind consumer preference.
Here is the rub. The campaigns that brought about this supposed preference were run by sugar-backed groups. Without noting supportable data that can be verified, they have flaunted the simple fact that their products name sounds more natural and preyed upon confusion created by their promotion of long-discredited studies.
Congratulations! A campaign designed to confuse consumers worked. Now, sugar seeks to use this self-generated preference largely-based in confusion to maintain an image based in fiction.
Seriously?
Do not let this cycle of deceit continue. Expert after expert after expert has gone on record explaining that both molecularly and metabolically sugar is the same, be it from cane, corn or beet. No one sensible claims that overindulging in any one of these products is necessarily the best basis for a diet. Reasonable, well-informed experts know instead that they are equally good alternatives that can be consumed in moderation.
Do not let sugar schleppers pull a fast one on the American public. Get the facts and show them that U.S. consumers are smarter than falling for tricky tactics and circular logic.
Posted By Cindy December 21, 2011
A new study shows that sugarcane ethanol may be dirtier than some believe.
A research team from universities in California, Iowa and Chile have found that sugarcane ethanol production creates up to seven times more air pollutants than previously estimated, according to news from the University of Iowa.
The researchers used agricultural survey data from Brazil to calculate emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases from the entire production, distribution, and lifecycle of sugarcane ethanol from 2000 to 2008. They determined that estimated pollutants were 1.5 to 7.3 times higher than those from satellite-based methods.
Greg Carmichael, Karl Kammermeyer Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering in the UI College of Engineering and co-director of the Center for Global and Regional Environmental Research (CGRER), and UI assistant professor Scott Spak note that the findings reflect continued practices and trends that are a part of the production of sugarcane ethanol. These include the practice of burning sugarcane fields before harvest, as well as the fact that sugarcane production in Brazil continues to grow.
“We found that the vast majority of emissions come from burning the sugarcane fields prior to harvesting, a practice the Brazilian government has been moving to end,” says Spak. “However, the sugarcane industry has been expanding rapidly and moving into more remote areas, which makes it much more difficult to enforce new regulations over this growing source of air pollution and greenhouse gases.
“As people try to determine how to integrate biofuels into the global economy, Brazilian sugarcane ethanol has often been considered a more environmentally friendly fuel source than U.S. corn ethanol. In fact, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers sugarcane ethanol an ‘advanced biofuel’ with fewer greenhouse gas emissions than conventional biofuels like corn ethanol. These new findings help us refine those estimates and move closer to making more informed comparisons between different fuel sources, and ultimately make better decisions about how to grow and use biofuels,” Spak says.
The study, titled “Increased estimates of air-pollution emissions from Brazilian sugarcane ethanol,” is featured in the Nature Highlights section and published in the Dec. 11 Advance Online Publication of the journal Nature Climate Change.
Posted By Cindy December 14, 2011
According to USDA, global corn production for 2011/12 is projected at a new record high of 867.5 million tons, despite a smaller crop here in the U.S. Our crop was down 3.5 million tons compared to last year, but foreign corn production is expected to be 43.4 million tons higher, with China alone up 7.3 million tons this month based on the recently released government estimates.
The latest World Agricultural Supply Demand report also showed an increase in domestic corn ending stocks for 2011/12 of 5 million bushels to 848 million, thanks to an equal decrease in corn food, seed, and industrial use with early marketing-year corn use for sweeteners down slightly.
As farmers are starting to look ahead to the 2012 season, they will respond to the market signals like they always do. “I think you’re going to see the emphasis going to corn acres and I think the price is probably going to reflect that going into spring planting intentions,” said Jonah Ford of Ceres Hedge in Minneapolis in his evaluation of the report. USDA now forecasts the 2011/12 season-average farm price for corn to be about 30 cents lower than previously, but that is still a strong $5.90 to $6.90 per bushel.
As we head into 2012, one wild card in the corn demand situation is likely to be ethanol, with the expiration of the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC) at the end of this year. “That could potentially change how much ethanol is blended into gasoline,” said USDA chief economist Joe Glauber. “There are mandates in terms of overall production that has to be blended into gasoline, the issue is how much gets produced above and beyond the mandates.” However, industry analysts expect ethanol prices are expected to drop 30-40 cents per gallon at the wholesale level after the blenders tax credit expires, which should be incentive to blend more.
Ethanol production hit an all time high for the week ending December 2, according to the latest figures from the Energy Information Administration, averaging 954,000 barrels or over 40 million gallons daily, up about 2.5 percent from the previous record. Production this year could top 14 billion gallons, maybe a billion more than last year – but corn for ethanol production is actually down from last year at 5 billion bushels even. As a percentage of daily gasoline demand, daily ethanol production is nearing 12%. Meanwhile, U.S. ethanol exports have already doubled last year and are expected to hit 1 billion gallons this year.
All this is just a bunch of numbers, but the bottom line is that corn farmers, both here and abroad, are meeting increasing demand – and they will continue to do so. “We always hold that, no matter the challenge we face, the global marketplace will respond to make sure all needs are covered,” said National Corn Growers Association President Garry Niemeyer.
I’m reminded of a quote from the classic Saturday Night Live character Father Guido Sarducci in his bit about the “Five Minute University” where you learn what the average college graduate remembers after five years out of school. “Economics? Supply and Demand.” It’s really that simple.
Posted By Chuck December 13, 2011
Today the St. Louis Agribusiness Club presented its annual Agribusiness Leader of the Year Award to Rick Tolman, CEO, National Corn Growers Association. Here’s Rick with his award which was presented by past St. Louis Ag Club President Stephanie Regagnon, Solutia, Inc.
I spoke with Rick right after he received his award. He says that he’s “very moved and surprised and it’s a great honor.” He also says that it’s a tribute to the National Corn Growers because I have a great group of volunteer leaders that I work with and a staff that I work with and they make me look good and make the organization look good. But it’s a real honor for our association to be recognized.”
I asked him about the 2012 Commodity Classic since registration just recently opened. He says it’s going to be a good one with a record number of exhibitors already signed up. He also talks about priorities in the coming year for NCGA.
You can listen to my interview with Rick here: Rick Tolman Interview
You can find more photos from the meeting here: St. Louis Agribusiness Club Meeting Photo Album
Posted By Cathryn December 12, 2011
Imagine how differently a day at the office might have been in 1961. A secretarial pool takes the place of word processing software. Googling a subject might take hours and physical labor sifting through back editions of the paper or encyclopedias and still yield limited results. Email communications require a phone call, paper memo or even a written letter sent through courier or mail without the Internet. Once out of the office, communication ceases unless a coworker dials a landline nearby.
While most people have capriciously wished for an end to modern technology following a particularly annoying late-night text from an employer, only the smallest minority actually advocates a return to the workplace technology of 50 years ago.
So, why do so many people outside of agriculture think that a return to equally antiquated technology would actually improve farming?
Recently, a column in Stock and Land magazine examined the impact of a large-scale return to the farming methods of our forefathers, a romantic notion with dismal consequences. Instead of growing a crop large enough to share with the world, U.S. farmers would produce only enough food to feed half of the country’s current population. Maintaining levels of dairy, meat and milk production would require two-thirds more land. Increased environmental degradation and social unrest further complicate this already hungry scenario.
Simply, removing technology and scientific advances from modern life seriously damages productivity and effectiveness whether done in corporate or agrarian America. Notably, the negative impact on farming creates a food shortage thus depriving an incredible number of those in towns and cities of the sustenance needed to survive.
Instead of buying into the soft-focus vision of farming that replaces knowledge and understanding with a vague sense of nostalgia, get the facts. Question the farmers and ranchers who produce food about how and why they use the technology and practices that they do. Look at the bounty of healthy options U.S. agriculture offers. Become part of national discussion about food that seeks a better tomorrow instead of a rose-tinted version of the past.
Posted By Cindy December 12, 2011
Corn grower organization representatives from eight states just returned last week from a trade mission to Japan, Vietnam and China sponsored by the U.S. Grains Council.
Among the many stops on the 2011 Corn Mission was the Kushiro Port in Hokkaido, the heart of Japan’s major dairy producing area, where the group pictured here heard about plans to expand the port’s capacity to accommodate larger vessels. “Japan is our number one market for corn,” said Tom Mueller with the Illinois Corn Marketing Board. “This expansion and work to accommodate the larger vessels will help to ensure that Japan will continue to be a reliable customer.”
Mueller notes that they saw three different types of markets on the trip. “We saw a very mature market in Japan, one that we’ve established for a very long time,” he said. “The second market we saw was in China and it’s a fast growing market and we’re making inroads there. The third market was Vietnam and that country’s economy is just booming. We’ll have to work hard to provide them enough grain to take care of all their livestock.”
Commenting about the trip on the way home, Randy Woodruff of the Wisconsin Corn Promotion Board said they learned just how big the demand is for U.S. corn in the Asian markets. “It’s not going away, it’s going to expand every year,” he said.
Kurt Hora with the Iowa Corn Growers Association was impressed by the importance of personal relationships in the Asian markets. “They value that a lot,” he said. “The quality of grain is important but, in the long run, they really want to buy grain from somebody they know and trust.”
Others who took part in the trade mission were Bruce Wetzel from Texas; Pat Feldpausch of Michigan; Paul Herringshaw of Ohio; Rob Korff from Missouri; Kelly Brunkhorst, Ag Program Manager with the Nebraska Corn Board; and Nancy Kavazanjian, Communications Director, Wisconsin Corn Promotion Board. You can see photos and watch some short video clips of growers’ impressions of the trip on the USGC Flickr photo album set from the 2011 Corn Mission.
