Corn growers all over the country are preparing for the 2010 Commodity Classic next week in Anaheim where important policy issues facing farmers and ranchers will be discussed.
Members of the Missouri Corn Growers Association got in the mood this week by holding their annual meeting in Jefferson City and going to talk with state lawmakers about the importance of keeping agriculture in the hands of farmers. National Corn Growers Association president Darrin Ihnen (right) was guest speaker at the Missouri luncheon. With him pictured is Mike Geske, former president of the Missouri Corn Growers now serving on the 15-member National Corn Board.
I interviewed both Darrin and Mike about some of the issues important to growers right now and topping the list is the threat posed by the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), which is in the process of working up a petition drive in Missouri directed at dog breeders – lumping them all in the unsavory category of “puppy mills” – kind of like they lump all of agriculture under “factory farming.” Mike says that is why all agriculture groups in the state are working to keep legislators informed about how food is produced and the importance of the industry to Missouri. “We feel that once they get past the dog breeders they are going to be headed for commercial agriculture,” he told me.
Darrin says the threat posed to animal agriculture in individual states by groups like HSUS ultimately impacts all of agriculture across the country. “It’s very important that we help defend them,” Darrin says. “We can’t be separated when it comes to agriculture. We need to work together.”
This is just one of many important policy issues that corn growers will discuss at Classic next week, the annual meeting that also includes soybean, wheat and sorghum producers. Others include the indirect land use issue, climate legislation, increasing the ethanol blend rate and extending the blender’s tax credit for ethanol.
Listen to back to back interviews with Darrin and Mike here:
The Center For Consumer Freedom is turning up the heat on the Humane Society of the United States. This week they took out a full page ad in the New York Times that highlights “the failure of the Humane Society of the United States to devote a significant amount of money to supporting America’s underfunded pet shelters. The ad explains that HSUS shares only 1 dollar out of every 200 dollars it collects with local, hands-on pet shelters.” That is graphically reflected with 200 little puppy paw prints, just one of which represents the money that goes to help homeless pets.
The ad reads:
Shouldn’t the “Humane Society” do better?
The Humane Society of the United States is NOT your local animal shelter. In fact, it gives less than one-half of one percent of its $100 million budget to hands-on pet shelters.
Meanwhile, this wealthy animal rights group socked away over $2.5 million of Americans’ donations in its own pension plans.
Surprised? So were we. The dog-watchers need a watchdog. Join the discussion at HumaneWatch.org.
Are today’s farmers feeding and taking care of their animals properly?
It seems to come down to who you trust.
Marcia Gorrell, agriculture reporter for The Marshall Democrat-News in Marshall ,Missouri, is today’s guest blogger, and offers the following commentary on the confusing and contrary information bombarding consumers regarding our foods origin and safety.
Do you believe the family farmers who have spent their whole lives producing food? The farmers who have built modern farming techniques, step by step, generation by generation — building on the lessons, failures and successes of those who farmed before them?
Do you believe the scientists or researchers who have spent their entire careers studying animals, nutrition and food safety? Do you believe the USDA or the FDA who are tasked with making our food supply safe?
I have as much suspicion as anyone when it comes to the government, but in the case of food safety, I can’t argue with the results.
While the rest of the world’s agriculture has been ravaged by outbreaks of Mad Cow Disease and Bird Flu, we in the United States have not. Somebody is looking out for us and doing a good job. (more…)
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.
Total U.S. corn use for 2009/10 is increased 5 million bushels. Feed and residual use is projected 50 million bushels higher reflecting the higher forecast yield and crop.
Joe Victor with Allendale, Inc. says this reflects optimism in the poultry sector. “If we are going to take combined corn and meal and take 1.8 pounds of feed fed for a pound of protein meat gained for those birds in the broiler sector, we are seeing a similar trend to what we had in 2007 before the big crash in 2008,” Victor said in a Minneapolis Grain Exchange crop report conference call on Friday. “It is the poultry sector that is the number one user in the feed use column for soybean meal and the number two user for corn.”
USDA also increased food, seed, and industrial use for corn by 5 million bushels on higher expected use for sweeteners with tight sugar supplies, but ethanol use remains unchanged at 4.2 billion bushels.
Offsetting most of the increase in domestic use is a 50-million-bushel reduction in projected exports. Increased supplies of feed grains in Canada and larger world wheat supplies are expected to increase competition for U.S. corn exports. Corn ending stocks for 2009/10 are projected 37 million bushels higher and just below the revised estimate for the 2008/09 marketing year. The 2009/10 marketing-year average farm price projection is unchanged at $3.05 to $3.65 per bushel.
Efforts to use Social Media to educate the public on Ag issues continue to gain steam especially on Twitter and Facebook. One of the biggest issues facing us right now is the economic thumping the pork industry is taking in part due to misinformation regarding H1N1.
This Friday, Sept. 11, you can help by pushing information out to all of your friends via Facebook. Participants in the online H1N1 online activism effort are being asked to cut and paste the logo you see here and the message below on their Facebook Page profile.
Stop the hogwash! Call it H1N1, not “swine flu.” You cannot get H1N1 from eating pork, and the misnomer is hurting pork producers financially.
Join me in the fight against bad farm facts. Copy this entire message into your profile status and leave it there all day. Then click “like” on the Illinois Farm Bureau Fan Page status to show that you participated. Thank you for supporting U.S. agriculture.
Ok everyone, now stop stressing, let’s take this effort nationwide….and go eat some bacon!
Farmers and ranchers need to get fed up and fired up by the attacks on modern agricultural production. Enough is getting to be more than enough when PETA is handing out “Unhappy Meals” to children portraying Ronald McDonald as a knife-wielding murderer.
Missouri farmer Blake Hurst wrote an excellent essay in the Journal for the American Enterprise Institute called the “Omnivore’s Delusion” that fights back against the “agri-intellectuals” like PETA and HSUS and Michael Pollan who criticize modern agricultural production. Blake writes:
I’m so tired of people who wouldn’t visit a doctor who used a stethoscope instead of an MRI demanding that farmers like me use 1930s technology to raise food. Farming has always been messy and painful, and bloody and dirty. It still is.
Blake talks about the realities of modern day livestock and poultry production compared to the realities of say, trying to raise free range turkey who get eaten by weasels and drown in the rain. Or piglets that get squished or eaten by their mommies if not in farrowing pens. Blake also takes on Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma” and points out all of the modern agricultural techniques that farmers employ which have not only increased food production, but protected land and water resources as well.
Blake concludes his defense of modern agriculture saying, “We have to farm “industrially” to feed the world, and by using those “industrial” tools sensibly, we can accomplish that task and leave my grandchildren a prosperous and productive farm, while protecting the land, water, and air around us.”
Amen, hallelujah! Read Blake’s essay and pass it on to everyone, especially those omnivores you know who are not in agriculture.
“While consumers in Japan always say that safety is a top priority, we have found that they actually respond more positively to messages that convey quality and wholesomeness,” said USMEF Japan Director Gregory Hanes. “This type of image helps us subtly address consumers’ safety concerns, but do so in a more positive and appealing manner by stressing the quality of corn-fed beef and pork.”
Earlier this summer, a delegation of producers representing the Iowa Beef Industry Council, the Iowa Corn Promotion Board, the Nebraska Beef Council and the Nebraska Corn Board went to Tokyo on a trade mission organized by USMEF to promote U.S. corn-fed beef in both Japan and South Korea.
Alan Tiemann, a corn and soybean farmer from Seward, Nebraska was on that mission and says that USMEF’s promotional efforts are paying off in Japan. “In the grocery stores, markets and restaurants where USMEF has promotions going on, U.S. beef is very well-received,” he said. “We see a lot of meat going off the shelves where they are doing promotions, and it’s been fun to watch those programs produce results.”
The bad news is that between the overall economy and low prices in key export markets, U.S. beef and pork exports have been down this year. Add in the H1N1 problem and pork exports were down about 30 percent in June of 2009 compared with June 2008.
The National Pork Producers Council today urged the USDA to help U.S. pork producers to help recover from the economic crisis that has caused them to lose an average of more than $21 on each hog marketed for the past two years. Among other things, NPPC wants USDA to work with the U.S. Trade Representative to open export markets to U.S. pork. Several countries, including China, continue to impose unwarranted bans on U.S. pork because of the H1N1 flu.
Rest assured that corn growers will continue to do what they can to help open markets and increase meat exports as well.
Corn’s Biggest Customer Gaining Momentum in Response to Critics
“We must individually and collectively police ourselves and — and I know some of you will recoil in horror when I say this — we must “police” our neighbors to ensure we consistently perform as an industry as best we can,” so says Steve Kopperud , of Brownfield Network.
“Just as we must constantly strive to improve our operations, we must constantly strive to help others in our industry do so as well. If a bad actor won’t accept the help that’s offered, and law enforcement or the media get a hold of the situation, then after investigation and the weighing of evidence, if the actor truly is “bad,” then we must be the first to stand and tell the consumer, “This is not business as usual for our industry. We do not tolerate such practices,” he says in his column.
This message needs to be shared as broadly as possible. Most of these bad actors are not hiding in the closet. Their neighbors know who they are and should work locally to clean house. The good news is they are a minority that can be managed if the whole industry makes the commitment. They exist on the cropping side too. I don’t think self regulation will completely silence critics who are clearly agenda driven, but it does provide great ammunition for our friends to continue to support the industry.
Meanwhile in Washington, DC “The Hill,” a Capitol Hill newspaper ran a special section on “animal welfare.” The special issue contained a guest column by Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-Ohio), who notes, “It is easy to forget that the reason we raise hogs, cattle, and chicken is for human consumption. That fact is often glossed over by animal rights activists. If there were no market for meat, there would be no supply.”
These animals are not the pets we so love but part of our national and global food chain.
“If you choose not to eat meat that is, of course, your right. But we must not allow some well-intentioned activists to play with public misconceptions to treat animals that are grown for slaughter as we would treat our pets. We should instead focus on how we can make our food supply the healthiest, most nutrient-rich food supply in the world,” says Schmidt, ranking member of the Horticulture and Organic Agriculture Committee in the House Agriculture Committee.
And finally, hats off to Ohio Corn Growers Association, Ohio Farm Bureau Federation (OFBF) and all their supporters for the newly created Center for Food and Animal Issues. The education program just got a significant boost thanks to a $100,000 donation approved by the Board of Directors for Farm Credit Services of Mid-America.
The Center was created in May to bring together diverse interests including farmers, consumers, zoos, hunters, researchers and pet owners to make sure all voices are heard as decisions about animals are considered. The Center will develop programs and partnerships that promote dialog among all stakeholders who benefit from animals in their lives.
Here’s one case in point. This provocatively posed porker is part of an ad campaign by Rachachuros Seasoning that also includes similar sexy shots of a duck and a chicken.
Another case in point: Top Chef ’s Padma Lakshmi steamy Carls Jr. burger commercial that got quite a bit of attention when it came out earlier this year. Before that it was Paris Hilton soaping up and wolfing down a hot and spicy burger for Carls Jr. Then came the controversy a few weeks ago over Burger King’s racy ads in Singapore.
Laurie Johns with the Iowa Farm Bureau did a great commentary column last week titled “Meat is Sexy.” Here’s a little taste:
“Young Idols With Cleavers Rule the Stage” screamed a recent New York Times headline. Apparently, in places where customers are not likely to ever see a cow or farm in their lives, meat is cool and the men who serve it up, sexy.
Maybe it’s a ‘New York Thing’ I thought as I finished the article which described the virtuosity of their butchers’ chosen profession: the heavy lifting and swinging scabbards which brought them rippled forearms and an indie band, cult-like status. But, there’s no denying it; our nation is in the middle of a ‘meat renaissance’.
No longer confined to the footnotes or Lifestyle sections of the newspapers, there’s plenty of ink for steak-grilling, rib-eating and barbeque festivals—not to mention, glowing testimonials for candied bacon ice cream, bacon brownies, even bacon martinis.
She concludes that places like New York, as well as Los Angeles, “birthplace of PETA protests and purse dogs, is clearly starving for something to really sink their teeth into; thank goodness, nothing satisfies like meat.”
Members of the Missouri Corn Growers Association got in the mood this week by holding their annual meeting in Jefferson City and going to talk with state lawmakers about the importance of keeping agriculture in the hands of farmers. National Corn Growers Association president Darrin Ihnen (right) was guest speaker at the Missouri luncheon. With him pictured is Mike Geske, former president of the Missouri Corn Growers now serving on the 15-member National Corn Board.
The 
James McWilliams, author of the opinion column “Freakonomics” on the New York Times blog, has a great article this week on 
USDA increased the projected use for livestock feed in the 
Efforts to use Social Media to educate the public on Ag issues continue to gain steam especially on Twitter and Facebook. One of the biggest issues facing us right now is the economic thumping the pork industry is taking in part due to misinformation regarding H1N1.
Missouri farmer Blake Hurst wrote an excellent essay in the Journal for the American Enterprise Institute called the 
A campaign sponsored by the 
Here’s one case in point. This provocatively posed porker is part of an ad campaign by Rachachuros Seasoning that also includes