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Jul. 20, 2012
By Gale Lush, Chairman
WILCOX, Neb. – July 20, 2012 – “Two negative, corn and ethanol
demand-restricting bills introduced by Representative Goodlatte
of Virginia aimed at reducing or eliminating volumes of ethanol
use connected with the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) are sadly
reminiscent of bad demand/trade restrictive export policies used
first by President Richard Nixon in 1973 to curb U.S. soybean
exports to Japan and then again used by President Gerald Ford on
September 9, 1975 when he suspended grain exports to the Soviet
Union,” says Gale Lush, Chairman of the American Corn Growers
Foundation (ACGF), Wilcox, Nebraska corn, soybean and wheat
farmer. “America doesn’t need attacks on renewable fuels at the
same time the U.S. House of Representatives dithers and fails to
move a new farm bill during the most serious U.S. drought in the
past fifty years. The House of Representatives is already trying
to severely weaken the Senate version of the new farm bill. We
don’t need members of Congress attacking our best domestic corn
market, which is ethanol. Where are the farm state Congressional
leaders of the U.S. House majority party when farmers need them?
What’s holding up this key farm bill passage when rural state
economies are in serious trouble and need fast, decisive
action?”
“Even the ‘E’ word, which stands for export embargo, has popped
up here and there in some news reports. American political
leaders should have learned the devastating lesson from grain
embargoes back in the 1970s when President Nixon embargoed
soybean exports to Japan to supposedly protect consumers from
higher food costs,” said Lush. “In response Japan made massive
investments in Brazilian soybean production and created a
permanent and major export competitor for U.S. farmers and
American agriculture. We don’t need any of that knee-jerk
nonsense as a response to a temporary drought situation. The
U.S. corn farmer is still only getting 10 cents of the $4.20
cost for a box of cereal at the grocery store and very little
yellow field corn is used in cereal. The vast majority of U.S.
yellow field corn production has always gone to livestock feed.
It still does, after the ethanol is removed. Furthermore, an
Iowa State University and University of Wisconsin study shows
that U.S. consumers paid about $1.09 per gallon less for
gasoline because ethanol is in the U.S. fuel supply pipeline.
That study shows that ethanol in the U.S. fuel mix resulted in
each U.S. household saving about $1,200 in 2011.”
Lush added, “Big corporate livestock interests from Texas and
states like Virginia and the big corporate-agribusiness meat and
poultry trade organizations that those corporate interests
control are again pushing to weaken the ethanol-driven demand
for corn. Livestock feeders still get the vast majority of the
protein, minerals and oil feed value that was in the corn to
begin with, from dried distiller’s grains (DDGS) and/or corn
gluten feed and meal, because the ethanol plants only use the
starch component of the corn kernel to produce ethanol.”
The photos pasted below depict the process/path corn takes with
livestock still getting the feed and only corn starch going to
ethanol.
Left to Right: Yellow field corn;
DDG’s from ethanol plant; high protein gluten feed/meal from
ethanol processing plant goes to cattle feed yard; ….only starch
goes to ethanol.
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