AgWeb
03-22-07
NPPC Details Ethanol Concerns To Energy Group
AgWeb.com Editors
The National Pork Producers Council continues to express its concerns about the
adverse affects on pork producers of the rapid expansion of the corn-based
ethanol industry, yesterday outlining its apprehensions at an energy meeting
sponsored by the 25x’25 Alliance. The goal of the group of mostly agriculture
organizations is to get 25 percent of the nation’s energy from renewable
resources such as wind, solar and bio-fuels by 2025.
NPPC, at the alliance’s third national 25x‘25 renewable energy summit, raised
the issue of corn availability for livestock feed, pointing out that the ethanol
industry is projected to use more than 5 billion bushels of corn once ethanol
plants now under construction come online. The U.S. produced 10.75 billion
bushels of corn last year, with the livestock industry using more than 6 billion
bushels. More than 1.3 billion bushels were processed for food and industrial
uses, and about 2 billion bushels were exported.
“Pork producers continue to have the jitters over the rapid expansion of the cornbased ethanol industry and the challenges that expansion presents to
maintaining our competitiveness with domestic and international meat protein
competitors,” Joy Philippi, immediate past president of NPPC and a producer
from Bruning, Neb., said at the energy summit. “Additionally, we are concerned
about not having an adequate transition period to adjust to the rapid expansion of
the ethanol industry.”
Also, said NPPC, the high demand for corn has pushed the per-bushel price up
to $4 from $2 last summer, raising pork producers’ feed input costs to $65 per pig
from $35. With that increase, pork production may need to decline by as much as
15 percent to allow the industry to recoup higher production costs, according to a
November 2006 study by Iowa State University’s Center for Agricultural and
Rural Development. CARD also estimates that a 30 percent production-cost
increase will raise retail prices for pork, beef, dairy and chicken by 7.5 percent.
Corn availability and price concerns prompted pork producers at NPPC’s early
March annual business meeting to approve several resolutions related to
ethanol, including supporting the incremental early release – without penalty –of
Conservation Reserve Program acres back into crop land to boost corn
production and allowing the 51-cent per gallon ethanol blender’s tax credit and
the 54-cent tariff on imported ethanol to expire. The blender’s credit is set to
expire Dec. 31, 2010; the import tariff Dec. 31, 2008.
Philippi told the energy summit meeting: “Pork producers believe that to maintain
a healthy rural economy – indeed a healthy economy in general – market-based
bio-fuels policies and regulations must ensure a balance between the food, fuel
and feed needs of the country.”