03/13/08 Changing the Climate

Changing the Climate. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. The National Ethanol Conference was recently held in Orlando. This year's theme was "Changing the Climate" and attendees got the latest information on the renewable industry and the strides being made. Bob Dineen is the Associations president and CEO. During his talk he said that the ethanol industry is becoming the change we want to see. DINEEN: Today's U.S. ethanol industry is bringing about revolutionary change. It is reshaping our rural landscape, revitalizing communities and providing the most significant value added markets farmers have ever seen. Even more dramatic is the change that ethanol is bringing to U.S. motor fuel markets. Ethanol is now a ubiquitous component or the U.S. motor fuels supply, blended in more than 50% of the nations gasoline and will soon be in virtually every gallon of gasoline sold from coast to coast and border to border. Dinneen says the biggest challenge to the ethanol industry is those who see nothing but negative. DINEEN: This past year saw the emergence of a food versus fuel debate. As if we need to choose. As if farmers are incapable of supplying the growing needs for food, fiber and fuel. The chattering class of naysayer's ignore that bio-refineries produce both fuel and food, that we only process starch leaving the high value protein to be market to livestock and poultry. This past year the U.S. ethanol industry produced more than 14-million metric tons of high quality distillers feed taking the fallacy of food versus fuel to a contrived conclusion. Some argue consistently that rising corn prices are at the heart of rising consumer food prices. Addressing further the food versus fuel debate was National Corn Growers Association CEO Rick Tolman who compared the amount of acreage planted to corn in 1944 to the same acreage planted to corn in 2007. TOLMAN: Both years we had 85-million harvested acres. The average price in 1944 was $1.03, the average farmgate price in 2007 was $3.04. Those are USDA statistics. If you deflated, actually the price was higher in 1944 than it was in 2007. But on that 85-million acres we harvested 2.8 billion bushels of corn in 1944 and in 2007 we harvested 13.1 billion bushels. 33 bushels to the acre in 1944 and 151 bushels to the acre in 2007. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.