France’s top administrative court on Monday overturned a government order banning French farmers from planting genetically modified crops France’s agriculture ministry imposed a ban in February 2008 amid concerns over public safety, but its decision had already been called into question by the European Court and has now been annulled by the State Council.
Truthfully, their ongoing and Zombie-like fight against proven GMO technology has been like watching a bad movie that you just can’t stop watching. The ludicrous and persistent effort has been watched by farmers, scientists, regulators and some consumers without cable TV around the world. And one might suspect there might even be some betting pools initiated regarding who would finally put a bullet in the head of this persistent, riveting political theatre. (Ok, I have France planting their first GMO crop in 2013 with 3-1 odds).
Both courts overturned the national ban declaring the French Government presented no scientific evidence of any risk to health or the environment from these crops. EuropaBio’s Director of Green Biotechnology Europe, Carel du Marchie Sarvaas, said: “These judgments from the highest European court and the highest French court send one message loud and clear: bans of GM crops cannot be based on political dogma. As both judgments state, no ban on planting GM crops can be declared without valid scientific evidence, something that France and other European countries have not produced.”
Even if French corn growers don’t get to enter the modern world of corn production in 2012, this is yet another positive sign that the belabored and disingenuous GMO soap opera is on its final legs. Forgive me for saying this but I can hear the EU fat lady signing.
The French court’s decision also offers support for what U.S. scientists, regulators, and industry have been saying all along….there has been copious scientific testing and years of actual use in the real world and the GMO bogeyman remains firmly in the closet where he belongs. However, evidence rises that France will launch new restrictions. French president Nicolas Sarkozy said this week the government was preparing a “new safety clause” to forbid sowing of MON810 produced by Monsanto.
“The French government keeps and will keep its opposition against the cultivation of the Monsanto 810 maize on our soil,” Sarkozy said during a visit in southwestern France. Why do I have this feeling that President Sarkozy DVR’s the “Walking Dead?”
A new USDA report gives even more credit where credit is due to the value of the ethanol co-product known as distillers grains or DDGS in livestock and poultry feed.
The major finding of the report is that a metric ton of DDGS can replace an average of 1.22 metric tons of corn and soybean meal feed. “We found that, on average, for the past 5 crop years (2006/07-2010/11), 1 mt of distillers’ grains substitutes for about 1.22 mt of corn and soybean meal combined in the United States,” concludes the Economic Research Service (ERS) report. That means that almost a full 40 percent of the corn used for ethanol goes directly back into the feed supply.
As of 2010/11, DDGS replaced soybean meal as the number two feedstuff fed, and is second only to corn. An increasing amount of soybean meal is being replaced over corn in livestock rations. The report also found that as DDGS market share for beef cattle have declined, market shares for dairy cattle, swine, and poultry have increased. Beef cattle’s DDGS substitution rate for corn is remains higher than any other type of livestock/poultry but is the lowest for soybean meal.
“This report reiterates what we have been saying for years: ethanol produces both fuel and food, in the form of high protein animal feed known as distillers grains,” said Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis, noting that distillers grains cost livestock producers about 25 percent less. “This valuable feed displaces a greater volume of field corn and soybeans, is less expensive to the producer and is much more nutritious for the animal.”
Geoff Cooper, Renewable Fuels Association Vice President of Research & Analysis, believes the report has important implications regarding ethanol’s impact on feed grains availability, feed prices, land use effects, and the greenhouse gas (GHG) impacts of producing corn ethanol.
“USDA’s new analysis clearly shows the importance of accurate DDGS accounting,” Cooper said. “The Environmental Protection Agency and CARB should immediately adopt these new findings into their GHG modeling for the RFS2 and LCFS. The resulting decrease in ethanol’s lifecycle GHG emissions could be significant.”
Earlier this year, RFA compared the production of DDGS to only the amount of corn used for feed. With estimated production of 39 million metric tons of distillers grains for feed in the current marketing year, that is the “equivalent to the 4th largest corn crop in the world, and is enough feed to produce 50 billion quarter-pound hamburgers – seven patties for each person on the planet – or enough to produce one chicken breast for every American every day for a year.” Accounting for soybean meal substitution, that makes even more!
What we call DDGS in general can also include a number of other individual ethanol co-product. There’s a whole alphabet soup of them – DDG, DWG, DDGS, DWGS, CDS, corn gluten feed (CGF), wet corn gluten feed (WCGF), and corn gluten meal (CGM). The report suggests that future industry surveys could be more precise if they estimated the effects of all the different ethanol coproducts on the U.S. feed complex.
This report includes some of the most specific and well-researched data on distillers grains production, consumption and the ratios by which it is being used in the different livestock and poultry markets. Read it here.
More corn stocks than expected showed up in the latest report out from USDA on Friday, which was a big surprise for many of the market watchers.
Despite the fact that corn stocks are reported to be 34% lower than a year ago, it was expected to be much worse, even just a few weeks prior to the Friday Grain Stocks report. Earlier this year, USDA was predicting corn stocks would finish the year at just 675 million bushels, less than a three-week supply. But as of September 1, stocks instead totaled 1.13 billion bushels, with summer disappearance indicated at 2.54 billion bushels, compared with 2.60 billion bushels during the same period last year.
The report left even USDA’s Chief Economist Joe Glauber scratching his head. “Obviously our analysts are going to be looking at those numbers, but it poses a puzzle in that regard,” said Glauber. Some think the numbers are just off, while others think it could be that livestock producers are using less corn for feed than expected.
That leads us to say don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, because having corn stocks higher is a good thing for everyone. “Pushing corn stocks back above one billion bushels is important for the psyche of the market,” said Renewable Fuels Association Vice President Geoff Cooper. “Having more corn available should somewhat ease supply concerns brought on by poor growing conditions this year and provide more of a buffer until farmers complete the harvest of this year’s crop.”
With corn prices higher this summer, livestock producers may have been using more distillers grains (DDGS), the by-product of ethanol production. When the amount of corn used for ethanol feed co-products is combined with feed and residual demand, total feed demand becomes 6.35 billion bushels, or 47 percent of expected use in 2011/12.
So, if we did look that gift horse – or cow or pig – in the mouth, we might just find more DDGS than corn there. Surprise!
Probably because they know that “curtailing” policies created to promote domestic, sustainable, renewable energy will fatten the wallets of their benefactors, not the animals they feed. If these poultry pushers and meat marketers have their way, the production of corn-based ethanol will cease altogether.
Not only would this flood the market with unsustainably cheap corn, it would impact what consumers pay at the pump. In modern America, almost every citizen relies on motorized transit, be it public or private. As studies have shown , without ethanol consumers will pay more for every gallon of fuel thus negating grocery aisle savings.
Higher fuel prices impact more than the cost of filling up the family car. Nearly all goods purchased in the United States are transported to the final point of sale from another destination. Higher fuel prices mean that each of these products will reflect the increase. By channeling all corn from ethanol production, they would have us trade a more reasonable fuel cost felt throughout the economy for momentary meat savings. But then again, poultry and meat are trucked to grocery stores too.
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.
We often hear about friction between the producers of corn and livestock over the growth in the production of ethanol. One Iowa farmer had an idea to diversify his operation and do both! Judging by the tour that the TATT Global Farmer to Farmer Roundtable participants received at his farm, Couser Cattle Company, he’s doing it very successfully.
Our host was Bill Couser. Bill conducted a fascinating presentation about his marriage of row crop farming (corn/soybeans), livestock production and ethanol production! You can see a portion of his explanation in the video below. He used a long table to display all the products he produces starting with an ear of corn and winding up with ethanol (2.81 gal/bushel of corn) as well as by-products like DDGS and ultimately fine quality beef. I loved his description about the whole food vs. fuel debate, “It’s rubbish!”
During the 2008 food price scare corn found itself squarely in the crosshairs of public indignation. Technically it was the growing use of corn for ethanol fuel that fanned the flames and coined the phrase “food vs. fuel.”
Then the public ire moved to the soaring cost of petroleum as the true culprit. And that was partially right too. Many experts ultimately said a combination of factors caused the jump in food prices. (Corn prices were near the bottom of the list). Problem was the explanation was months late and the media attention was wimpy at best. Corn and ethanol had been tarred and feathered and the damage done.
The cheap corn mafia led by the Grocery Manufacturers Association eventually confessed, albeit in a whisper, ethanol was one of seven factors having a role in higher food prices. Even the World Bank, the culprit that leaked an erroneous report triggering food vs. fuel, later said “the effect of biofuels on food prices has not been as large as originally thought, but that the use of commodities by financial investors (the so-called “financialization of commodities”) may have been partly responsible for the 2007/08 spike.”
Once again we see corn prices on the rise, topping $5 a bushel last week, and talk about food shortages and skyrocketing grocery bills popping up. This time oil prices are relatively high but stable so what the heck is going on?
Once again probably more than meets the eye but this we do know; the rally has been fueled by USDA forecasts of smaller U.S. corn yields than expected and reports of drought losses in Russia’s wheat crop.
Hafez Ghanem, Assistant Director-General for Economic and Social Development with the United Nation’s Food & Agriculture Organization offers some important perspective: “The market fundamentals are sound and very different from 2007-2008. Despite the shortfall in Russia’s wheat production, this year’s cereal harvest was the third highest on record and stocks are high. Under these conditions we don’t believe that we are headed for a new food crisis, but we will continue monitoring the situation closely.”
Other key points that should help keep irrational fear at bay:
Even if the U.S. corn crop is reduced further we will still be harvesting the 8th record corn crop in the last 8 years. We will have a carryover of ending stocks of 1.1 billion bushels.
World wheat stockpiles are expected to be 174.8 million metric tons in the 2010-11 season, comprised of local marketing years, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That’s 40 percent more than in 2007-08.”
Last month USDA reported food price increases in 2010 would be minimal. The Consumer Price Index for all food increased 1.8% in 2009 and is forecast to increase 0.5 to 1.5% in 2010.
Future prospects for corn supply and ethanol look good. Ethanol production tripled from 2002-2009. During the same time period, corn production met increased demand from ethanol and produced an additional 21% more corn for other needs.
New jobless claims took another jump last week and unemployment for the month of March continued to be just a couple of ticks below 10 percent nationwide. That’s a whole lot of people out of work.
But it is interesting to note that four of the six states with the lowest unemployment rates are top ethanol producing states (IA, NE, SD, and KS).
The 2010 Ethanol Industry Salary Survey by Ethanol Producer Magazine, estimated that the ethanol industry is directly or indirectly responsible for almost 500,000 jobs nationwide. More than 75% of those workers earn at least $50,000 per year and virtually every one of them has health care benefits. Many of those jobs are in rural areas that have literally been revitalized by ethanol plants, as Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen noted in a January editorial in the Huffington Post. Towns like “Janesville, Minn., where a new 120 million-gallon-a-year ethanol plant is now not only the town’s largest employer, second only to the school district, but also one of the biggest property taxpayers in the county.”
These are real jobs for real people in real America. But recent studies indicate they could be lost if the ethanol tax incentives are allowed to expire at the end of the year.
A study prepared by IHS Global Insight determined that eliminating import tariffs could cost as many as 160,000 full and part-time jobs. Another study, done by the University of Missouri’s Community Policy Analysis Center, found that six states would see the largest declines in jobs due to removal of the ethanol import tariff – NE, IA, IL, MN, IN, and SD. Three of those are states that currently have unemployment levels as much as half the national average.
More research done by economist John Urbanchuk shows that even non-traditional ethanol producing states like California, Texas, Georgia, Colorado, and Tennessee would be hit by job losses due to the expiration of the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC). The number of jobs losses ranges from as few as 16 in Louisiana, to nearly 30,000 in Illinois.
Amazingly, the coalition that includes the Grocery Manufacturers Association, the American Meat Institute, and other groups representing food corporations, oil companies, environmentalists and boat manufacturers is now claiming that corn ethanol is bad for rural communities! That claim is backed up on their new website – FollowTheScience.org (or is it FollowTheMoney?) – by a single study done by AMI and the poultry industry that alleges some 5500 jobs were lost in 2008 when meat processing plants closed because ethanol made the price of feed too high. Yet the Congressional Budget Office report released in April 2009 and a recent report from the UK found that it was mainly higher oil prices that drove prices for both food and feed higher in 2008. That was proven true last year when the amount of corn used for ethanol increased from 2008, but feed and food prices went down.
At a time when America is bleeding jobs, we can’t afford to lose good ones like those created by the ethanol industry. Renewing the VEETC and the tariff will help retain those jobs – increasing the blend rate to 15 percent will help increase them. Ethanol – Real Jobs for Real People!
The adoption of distillers grains feed product from the ethanol industry is making the nation’s beef supply better, higher quality and recent numbers show the trend first noted last fall is continuing.
While many debate the pros and cons of corn or grass fed beef, the nation’s cattle producers continue to do what they do best which is provide tasty, nutritious and relatively inexpensive beef and with the help of a distillers grain, a co-product of making ethanol fuel from corn.
A research review by Certified Angus Beef’s Larry Corah and Mark McCully released last fall point to improvements in genetics and ration changes made possible in part by increased supplies of DDGS as drivers for the improved quality.
Critics of corn-fed beef have been having a field day in recent years thanks to the like of folks like Michael Pollan – author of Food Rules – who argue grass fed beef is superior to those who are finished on corn prior to going to market. This despite abundant research that shows the differences between conventional, organic, and grass fed beef regarding nutrient composition and nutritional quality are few and insignificant in terms of human nutrition.
The nation’s beef quality has continued its rise in recent weeks, with nearly 65% of federally graded cattle grading Choice — an increase compared to 60.1% reported July 2009, according to Certified Angus Beef LLC (CAB).
The numbers add to a trend ending a 30-year decline — a trend that’s likely to continue, said Larry Meadows, chief of USDA’s meat grading and certification branch.
“There has been a huge progression of selection tools to allow breeders to make improvement on carcass traits impacting both quality and yield grade potential,” according to Dr. Sally Northcutt, American Angus Association® genetic research director.
Selection tools like those offered by the American Angus Association now include high-accuracy genomic-enhanced expected progeny differences (GE-EPDs) incorporating Association pedigree, carcass and ultrasound performance data, with genomic profile results to produce EPDs for carcass.
The claims of food naturalists about the grass-fed beef cattle of yesteryear may be somewhat mythological.
James McWilliams, author of the opinion column “Freakonomics” on the New York Times blog, has a great article this week on “The Myth of Grass-Fed Beef.” McWilliams notes that the environmentalists who favor grass-fed beef as more natural and sustainable claim that “Before WW II, most Americans had never eaten corn-fed beef.”
Yet McWilliams finds references from agricultural journals as far back as 1822 promoting corn as a means of fattening cattle for meat. Not taking sides on the debate of whether grass-fed beef is healthier or more sustainable, McWilliams is just interested in making sure the truth is told. “I’m only suggesting to advocates of the grass-fed option that, if they feel so compelled to draw on the past to support the present, they should start by providing some footnotes,” he writes. “The romance of a pasture-fed past will only take the story so far.”
Actually, the widespread use of corn as livestock feed is a relatively recent development that allows us to enjoy a wide variety of fresh and affordable meat and poultry on a daily basis. Before World War II most Americans did not have that luxury. Animals eat about half the corn we produce every year and turn it into a tasty source of protein for us. And that is no myth.
France’s top administrative court on Monday overturned a government order banning French farmers from planting genetically modified crops France’s agriculture ministry imposed a ban in February 2008 amid concerns over public safety, but its decision had already been called into question by the European Court and has now been annulled by the State Council.
“This report reiterates what we have been saying for years: ethanol produces both fuel and food, in the form of high protein animal feed known as distillers grains,” said Growth Energy CEO Tom Buis, noting that distillers grains cost livestock producers about 25 percent less. “This valuable feed displaces a greater volume of field corn and soybeans, is less expensive to the producer and is much more nutritious for the animal.”
Despite the fact that corn stocks are reported to be 34% lower than a year ago, it was expected to be much worse, even just a few weeks prior to the 
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James McWilliams, author of the opinion column “Freakonomics” on the New York Times blog, has a great article this week on 