Nine potential Republican presidential candidates were asked their opinions on various agricultural issues at the Iowa Ag Summit in Des Moines on Saturday.
Comments made by at the event by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, former New York Gov. George Pataki, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker are still generating stories from major national news sources.
Over 270 journalists who attended the event, representing most if not all of the major news outlets nationwide, heard about some of the top issues for agriculture including trade, regulations, conservation, food safety, biotechnology, renewable fuels, and immigration as each taking candidate sat down on a stage with agribusiness entrepreneur Bruce Rastetter for about 20 minutes.
The main focus of the event was to get the potential candidates to take a stand on the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS). Six of the nine expressed at least conditional support, including Wisconsin Governor Walker who recently had been criticized by biofuel producers in his state for not taking a stand on the law. Three of the candidates - Cruz, Pataki, and Perry - came out firmly against the RFS, while at the same time saying they supported ethanol and other renewable fuels.
The summit was organized with the support of America’s Renewable Future, a quasi-political campaign for the RFS introduced earlier this year. Co-chair Bill Couser, pictured here with Sen. Cruz, says their goal is to educate potential presidential candidates.
“Show them why we do this, how we do this, and say what do you think?” said Couser, an Iowa cattle producer and ethanol advocate. “I can say, let’s go look at a corn field, let’s go look at a feedlot, let’s go look at some windmills, let’s go look at Lincolnway Energy, and then let’s go to the DuPont plant right next door and I’ll show you what we’re doing with the whole plant and being sustainable.”
Couser says they plan to approach all potential presidential candidates individually and invite them to visit and learn more about agriculture and renewable energy, including Hillary Clinton. “Wouldn’t that be something if she showed up?” he said.
The 2016 presidential campaign is starting to percolate and in Iowa the biofuels industry is making the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) their candidate.
Iowa Governor Terry Branstad last week announced a major new bi-partisan campaign called America’s Renewable Future that will promote the RFS to both candidates and caucus-goes for the 2016 Iowa Presidential caucuses.
“I’m very passionate about the Renewable Fuel Standard,” said Governor Branstad during a conference call to announce the effort. “It’s made a real difference for farm income and good jobs, reducing our dependency on foreign oil, improving the environment - so I’m really excited to see this strong, bi-partisan effort being made to educate people that come to Iowa and presidential candidates.”
Coordinating the effort will be Governor Branstad’s son Eric, a public affairs specialist and campaign operative. “We have partners coming in from all over the country and those partners have committed millions to fund this effort,” said Eric Branstad. “We are designing it to look like a presidential campaign and the RFS is our candidate.”
America’s Renewable Future is co-chaired by former Iowa State Representative Annette Sweeney, a Republican, and former state Lieutenant Governor Patty Judge, a Democrat, as well as Iowa renewable fuels industry leader Bill Couser. The effort “will wage a mulitimillion dollar, multi-platform effort” to educate presidential candidates about the benefits of the RFS and ask them to take a stand.
That effort kicked off last Friday with an ad in the Des Moines Register as potential Republican presidential candidates began to gather for the Iowa Freedom Summit.
Still, the RFS went largely unmentioned during the Saturday summit. Asked about the RFS in an interview with the Des Moines Register on Friday, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas said he would continue his opposition to the law as “a matter of principle.”
Former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum was the only one who showed up at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Summit on Tuesday, even though all potential candidates were invited, and he did show his support for the RFS, calling it “pro-environment, pro-competition and pro-American jobs.”
Gov. Branstad says Iowa is still an important state for a presidential candidate and the RFS is important to Iowa. “This is one of the battleground states that’s going to, I think, determine who’s going to be the next president of the United States,” said Branstad. “I think it would be a disadvantage in Iowa to not support the Renewable Fuel Standard,” Branstad said.
The Couser operation has been a stop for the TATT Roundtable pretty much since it started in 2006 and while you would think the visit would focus on cattle, it’s really more about corn and getting more out of every kernel. “It’s no different than a barrel of crude. We don’t just get gasoline from a barrel of crude. We take it apart and get many different things,” he said. “When we look at corn, we can feed it, we can take it to ethanol plants, we can sell it domestically, we can sell it abroad.”
As one of the founders of Lincolnway Ethanol plant in Nevada, Bill is really excited about the cellulosic project with DuPont using corn residue. “We’ve got the residue there and if we manage it correctly, we have a new cash crop,” he said. Interview with Bill Couser
Bill put together a little powerpoint presentation that shows the multiplier effect of a single acre of corn going to an ethanol plant. When he figured that final amount corn was $7 a bushel and it added up to over $12,000 per acre. But even at $3, it’s still nearly $8,000. Watch the video to see how he determines that.
The list continues to grow of newspapers, organizations and companies opposed to California’s Proposition 37, that would require the labeling of any foods containing genetically modified crops.
“It’s just awful in my opinion,” said Truth About Trade & Technology (TATT) Chairman Emeritus and former American Farm Bureau president Dean Kleckner. “It’s as though there’s something wrong with biotech. Seventy percent of the food that we buy in the supermarket in this country has some element of biotechnology in it - could be corn oil, could be soybean oil.”
“Biotech is here to stay,” Kleckner added. “It’s the new conventional agriculture, really.”
TATT hosted its annual Global Farmer Roundtable at the World Food Prize in Iowa recently, which featured a visit to the seed lab at Iowa State University and Couser Cattle Company adjacent to Lincolnway Energy ethanol plant in Nevada, Iowa. Participants at this event included 17 producers from Canada, Honduras, India, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Swaziland, United Kingdom, Uruguay, US, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Kleckner says most farmers in the world want to use biotechnology and those living in countries where the use of biotech crops is prohibited believe they are at a disadvantage. “And I agree with them that they are disadvantaged against the U.S. and Argentina and Canada and South Africa and other countries that do use biotechnology.”
Exposing producers in other countries to the advantages of using distillers grains as livestock feed is also important, which is why the visit to the Couser operation is a regular feature for roundtable participants.
“I’m a believer in ethanol from corn,” said Kleckner. “The corn that is used for ethanol, a lot of that comes back to farmers in the form of distillers grains.”
Couser Cattle Company owner Bill Couser was instrumental in starting the farmer-owned Lincolnway Energy ethanol plant, which is located next to his operation so he can take full advantage of using distillers grains as feed for his livestock.
You can see more photos from the TATT Global Farmer Roundtable on their Facebook page.
With harvest nearing 90 percent completion, many news stories address the impact of the drought in the past tense. The drought hit farmers. The drought impacted yields. The drought of 2012 did this or that.
According to climatologists and meteorologists who know what is needed to grow, farmers across the Midwest should be praying for nine inches.
Why is that the magic number?
According to Iowa State Climatologist Harry Hillaker and DTN Senior Meteorologist Bryce Anderson, the areas of the Corn Belt still categorized in some form of drought required nine inches of rain before the new year to ensure sufficient soil moisture for spring planting in 2013.
While these experts note that the likelihood of this happening is statistically slim, some areas of Illinois have gotten more than two inches of rain in the past 24 hours. With a few days of showers in the five-day forecast, some hold out hope for clouds on the horizon.
Many farmers have already begun purchasing next spring’s inputs and, for some, the risk of continued drought seems significant enough to factor into planting decisions. Yet, even for those with a less optimistic outlook, new varieties of drought resistant corn developed through biotechnology offer hope unimaginable only one generation ago.
“I know when I had my first drought in 1977 that we actually had three bushels to the acre,” said Nevada, Iowa farmer Bill Couser in a recent interview with the Kansas City Star. “If I would have had the hybrids today back then, we would have never had that kind of a drought, because with the hybrids today it’s just amazing what they’re pulling through.”
Whether more rains come or farmers consider corn designed to tolerate a drought, U.S. corn farmers are preparing to put 2012 in the past, resiliently looking ahead toward the 2013 planting season. Hope remains that Mother Nature may yet give them what they need, but America’s farmers will be ready to meet the challenge with the help of technology should the drought persist.
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!”
A Washington Post reporter asked the musical question “What’s So Bad About Corn?” in an article that features Iowa Corn Growers Association president Tim Recker and Iowa Corn Promotion Board chairman Julius Schaaf.
“I got 225-bushel corn that I’m doing right now, which is phenomenal,” Recker said by cellphone from a field near the town of Arlington. That’s 225 bushels per acre. For a corn farmer, that’s living in the tall cotton.
And yet, despite the fabulous harvest and the boom in ethanol made from corn, corn farmers often sound beleaguered and aggrieved. Corn, they say, has been getting a bad rap.
“You have to wear a flak jacket,” said Bill Couser, who farms 5,000 acres here in the central Iowa town of Nevada (pronounced ne-VAY-da). “When we planted this crop, people said we were the villains of the world.”
The article, which talks about the criticisms leveled against both corn and corn ethanol, does a pretty good job of presenting both sides of the issue.
“The thing about ethanol: It’s not a perfect solution for our energy, but it’s a pretty good one. You don’t throw out the good in search of the perfect,” said Julius Schaaf, who farms 4,000 acres in Randolph, Iowa, and is chairman of the Iowa Corn Promotion Board.
Nine potential Republican presidential candidates were asked their opinions on various agricultural issues at the Iowa Ag Summit in Des Moines on Saturday.
A Washington Post reporter asked the musical question “What’s So Bad About Corn?” in 
