U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer traveled to Florida to address the third annual Florida Farm to Fuel Summit in Orlando.
“This is the theme park capitol of the world, it is a city of dreams and the power of imagination,” Schafer told the group. “As we sit here in the land of imagination and dreams, it’s up to all of us to meet the needs of the future through renewable fuels and we can change from wild imagination to realizable dreams.”
“Biofuels are an important part of the solution to our nation’s energy challenges and they are an important part of the economic future of rural America as well,” Schafer said. “That means that agriculture is going to be right in the middle of the game.”
“Here in Florida, the sheer variety of agriculture really make you a state that is a great laboratory for the future,” he added. “When breakthroughs come, I’m really counting on Florida to lead the way.”
He commended Florida Governor Charlie Crist, Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson and the state legislature for the state’s efforts to stimulate innovation with the Farm to Fuel program.
A group of major players in the agribusiness sector have joined together to highlight the ability of American agriculture to meet both food and energy needs.
The alliance asserts that “By growing more crops and developing more efficient ways of processing them, we can produce enough food to meet the world’s needs. The Alliance for Abundant Food and Energy understands that innovations in Agriculture can support the development of greater productivity, enabling farmers to effectively supply both the world’s growing food and energy demands.”
The companies involved have contributed towards a fund that will be used for national advertising and lobbying efforts on Capitol Hill.
Presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain spoke to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Council of Presidents meeting in Washington DC last week by teleconference about various issues of importance to agriculture, including it’s role in America’s energy needs.
McCain heralded his “Lexington Project” to make America energy independent which includes alternative fuels, ethanol, nuclear and offshore drilling. The plan includes calling on automakers “to make a more rapid and complete switch” to flex-fuel vehicles, as well as increase support for second generation ethanol, that would involve eliminating “mandates, subsidies, tariffs and price supports that focus exclusively on corn-based ethanol and prevent the development of market-based solutions which would provide us with better options for our fuel needs.”
Obama stated that his goal would be to phase in a 2 billion gallon cellulosic ethanol renewable fuel standard into the nation’s fuel supply by 2013.
“I am not interested in rolling back the renewable fuel standard. I think it is something that is critically important to supporting the agricultural sector and rural America, and I think that the use of ethanol as a scapegoat for rising fuel prices is misplaced. If we don’t invest in American grown biofuels and advanced technologies, our nation is never going to be energy independent. And that is why I am proud to have been a consistent supporter of biofuels and I will continue to be so in the future.”
At the Iowa Speedway yesterday, the Iowa Corn Growers Association held an outdoor press conference. They used it to help educate media about corn usage by placing banners on the side of a grain trailer showing the relative percentages of corn used for different purposes like livestock feed and ethanol.
I did a short interview with Gary Edwards, ICGA board member. Ken Root, WHO, also participated. Gary farms in Animosa, IA which is in one of the most flood impacted areas of the state. He says that although corn growth is behind schedule and there is a lot of land impacted, he expects that the state will still have a good crop. He wants people to keep in mind that last year they had a record corn crop and this year still has the potential to be one of the biggest. He says the water levels have gone down significantly already and he expects that a lot of those fields will dry out and be re-planted. He has no doubt that they’ll be able to provide all the corn needed for both food and fuel again this year.
The ethanol industry is mad and they’re not going to take it anymore.
That’s how BBI International president Mike Bryan summed up his feelings about the attacks on ethanol during the opening general session of the 2008 International Fuel Ethanol Workshop on Tuesday in Nashville.
“What bothers me most is the abuse that agriculture is taking,” Bryan said. “We cannot allow that to stand. We can take the heat in the ethanol industry, but by God, we should not stand by and let agriculture be vilified for finally being able to make a living like everyone else on Main Street.”
Bryan and his wife Kathy started the Fuel Ethanol Workshop 24 years ago and have been pioneers in the ethanol industry on a global scale. Kathy is missing the conference this year for the very first time as she is battling cancer, but she was keeping track of the proceedings from home and Renewable Fuels Association president Bob Dinneen led the crowd this morning in a special greeting to Kathy with best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Listen to Mike Bryan’s opening address to the 2008 FEW here:
Ethanol production as it relates to high feed costs was a major topic of discussion at the World Pork Expo in Des Moines last week, but pork producers understand that there are other factors impacting their input costs.
“This is not specifically an ethanol problem,” said National Pork Producers Council president Bryan Black. “The world demand for grain, the total energy price crisis and shortages of grain across the world have led to this situation and we are not pointing the finger at any one particular one.”
The NPPC has created a brand new task force to look at new feed alternatives to help them deal with the rising cost of corn and soybean meal, which have been the primary source of feed for hogs.
During a speech to pork producers at the expo, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner admitted that ethanol is a factor in the higher prices. “Ethanol is a new demand factor in the corn market, to the tune of about a third of our production going forward,” Conner said. “Fortunately, we did produce 13 billion bushels of corn and so despite large quantities going to ethanol, we actually did feed more corn to livestock than in previous years, so we managed to grow that market for both feed and ethanol.”
“We do recognize that there is some hurt out there in the livestock sector and with 70 percent of the cost of pork production going to feed, we know that you are first in line to get clipped,” said Conner. That is why USDA is buying pork for food assistance programs, which is helping the pork industry while at the same time helping the needy.
Conner said that USDA is also opening up some Conservation Reserve Program acreage to haying and grazing, which is primarily a direct benefit for cattle producers but it indirectly benefits hog farmers by increasing the amount of feed available to the livestock industry.
The Nebraska Corn Board and Nebraska Corn Growers Association (NeCGA) announced today that they applaud the bipartisan group of Senators who have spoken out against the misinformation campaign that targets corn producers and the corn ethanol industry as being behind a rise in food prices.
The group of six Senators, organized by Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley (R), met in Washington D.C. to discuss many of the issues raised by ethanol critics and to help set the record straight on the benefits of biofuels. This is in response to the reported anti-ethanol campaign being brought about by the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA).
“Study after study has demonstrated that high fuel and energy prices are a major factor in higher food prices. If you take away ethanol, fuel prices will increase even more and food prices will follow,” said Jon Holzfaster, a corn and cattle producer from Paxton and chairman of the Nebraska Corn Board. “That is one of the important points the Senators made, and we couldn’t agree more.”
Randy Uhrmacher, president of NeCGA and a corn producer from Juniata, said that attempts to mislead the American public are unfortunate because they create turmoil in a food supply system that provides the safest and cheapest food in the world. “Food companies and farmers would be better off working together to find solutions to the real cause of higher food prices – our reliance on oil,” he said.
NeCGA and the Corn Board said they will continue providing the facts about food and fuel on their internet sites, www.NebraskaCorn.org and www.NeCGA.org, and in other communication efforts.
The ethanol industry in Brazil has been developing some major traction. Marcos Jank, President of UNICA, says the demand for ethanol in Brazil is now matching that of the demand for gasoline. He says ethanol is gaining ground and Brazil “won’t move back to gas.”
Marcos was one of seven speakers at today’s Ethanol Summit held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway today. General Motors sponsored the event. The object of the Summit was to explore Brazil’s strong and sustained success with ethanol while also taking a look at where and how the U.S. ethanol industry has room to grow.
Marcos and Indy racing legend Emerson Fittipaldi - a Brazilian ethanol producer - highlighted a number of milestones the Brazilian ethanol industry has already attained:
All fuel sold in Brazil contains a 20 to 25 percent blend of ethanol
The unsubsidized ethanol industry offers a fuel that is on average one dollar below the price of gasoline
Virtually all 33,000 gas pumps offer E100
Just one percent of the 40 percent of arable land in Brazil is being used to produce sugarcane ethanol
Forty-five percent of fuel for cars is from sugarcane
Sugarcane ethanol production is 100 percent self-sufficient
The food industry is growing faster than the ethanol industry
Ninety percent of all new automobiles sold are flex-fuel automobiles
One-hundred percent of GM vehicles produced in Brazil are flex-fuel
Twenty percent of all cars are flex-fuel vehicles today
Fifty percent of all cars will be flex-fuel vehicles by 2012
Three percent of electricity is from sugarcane
Honda and Yamaha are introducing flex-fuel motorcycles this year
The 2008 Indy Pace Car corvette wasn’t the only shiny new toy to check out at the giveaway this morning. The Indiana Corn Marketing Council debuted its new interactive mobile marketing unit complete with videos detailing the production of ethanol and a database of local fuel retailers that offer E10 and E85 fuel blends. Visitors can even print off a list of local stations.
I caught up with Indiana Corn’s Mark Walters again, as well as ICMC’s Mike Shuter (pictured), the council’s President and a Frankton, IN farmer. We talked about the new mobile marketing unit, the truth about ethanol as they see it and how IN corn fits into the ethanol industry. You can listen to my interview with Mark and Mike here:
The latest U.S. Department of Agriculture forecast calls for enough corn and soybeans to meet both food and fuel needs.
The May supply and demand report released on Friday based predictions for the 2008-09 marketing year on an expected corn crop of 12.1 billion bushels, down 7 percent from last year’s record crop.
USDA is expecting total U.S. corn use in 2008-09 to be 2 percent lower than the current marketing year, which ends in August. The report calls for reductions in feed and residual use and exports to more than offset a continued expansion in ethanol production.
Feed and residual use is projected down 14 percent as corn feeding declines with increased production of distillers grains, higher corn prices, and reduced red meat production. Corn exports are projected down 16 percent as U.S. supplies face increased world competition with increased foreign production and a sharp drop in EU-27 imports. Ethanol use is projected at 4 billion bushels, up 33 percent from 2007/08. The slowing pace of plant construction and expansion, and lower capacity utilization are expected to modestly dampen growth in ethanol corn use. With total corn use expected to exceed production by 635 million bushels, ending stocks are projected down 45 percent. At 763 million bushels, ending stocks would be the lowest since 1995/96.
Meanwhile, on the soybean side, production is expected to be up by 520 million bushels this year, but biodiesel production is expected to be only slightly higher in the coming marketing year. USDA is projecting biodiesel will use 15 percent of total soybean oil production in 2008-09, compared with 14 percent this year.
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U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer traveled to Florida to address the third annual Florida Farm to Fuel Summit in Orlando. 
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A group of major players in the agribusiness sector have joined together to highlight the ability of American agriculture to meet both food and energy needs. 
McCain heralded his 
2 Comments
At the Iowa Speedway yesterday, the 
The ethanol industry is mad and they’re not going to take it anymore. 
“This is not specifically an ethanol problem,” said 
During a speech to pork producers at the expo, Deputy Agriculture Secretary Chuck Conner admitted that ethanol is a factor in the higher prices. “Ethanol is a new demand factor in the corn market, to the tune of about a third of our production going forward,” Conner said. “Fortunately, we did produce 13 billion bushels of corn and so despite large quantities going to ethanol, we actually did feed more corn to livestock than in previous years, so we managed to grow that market for both feed and ethanol.”
The ethanol industry in Brazil has been developing some major traction. Marcos Jank, President of 
The 2008 Indy Pace Car corvette wasn’t the only shiny new toy to check out at the giveaway this morning. The 
I caught up with Indiana Corn’s Mark Walters again, as well as ICMC’s Mike Shuter (pictured), the council’s President and a Frankton, IN farmer. We talked about the new mobile marketing unit, the truth about ethanol as they see it and how IN corn fits into the ethanol industry. You can listen to my interview with Mark and Mike here: 
USDA is expecting total U.S. corn use in 2008-09 to be 2 percent lower than the current marketing year, which ends in August. The report calls for reductions in feed and residual use and exports to more than offset a continued expansion in ethanol production. 