$7 Corn Makes Chicken Producer Pinch Pennies

High-speed dryers will replace paper towels in company washrooms at Pilgrim’s Pride Corp. as the chicken producer looks to save money as the price of feed corn rises. Rival Tyson Foods Inc. is replacing freezers with more efficient models, streamlining production, and reducing product movement between plants to help offset feed costs. U.S. chickens consume

The Food Versus Fuel Debate Continued

With all the strange and highly unpredictable events in the global economy, the tension between economics and politics in the U.S. is making things even more interesting. Consider this: a highly indebted U.S. government pays ethanol producers 45 cents for each gallon they produce, while at the same time imposing a 54-cent tariff on imports.


Syngenta To Go Ahead With Ethanol-Specific Corn

Amonth after receivi ng regulatory approva l , Swiss agricultural company Syngenta is starting to sign up U.S. farmers to grow its new biotech corn seed aimed at ethanol production, but expects to enrol fewer than 20,000 acres in a contracted growing arrangement this spring, a top company executive said Mar. 16. Syngenta is meeting

Hog Producers Ring Alarm Over Possible Feed Shortages

North America’s pork producers have issued a dire warning about a looming continental feed grain shortage that may jeopardize meat supplies and animal welfare in the coming year. Leaders of the Canadian Pork Council, the U.S. National Pork Producers Council and the Confederacion de Porcicultores Mexicanos last week issued an urgent call for government action


Cheap Food Versus Expensive Oil

You can’t have cheap food and expensive oil. It just doesn’t work. For hundreds of millions of people who earn only a dollar or two a day, increasing prices for staple foods like grains, pulses, rice and cooking oil is a big deal. Canadians spend only about 11 per cent of their disposable income on

U.S. Ethanol Incentives Under Scrutiny

Reform of U.S. ethanol incentives could save up to $5.7 billion a year, a congressional watchdog said March 1 as ethanol critics called on Congress to let the tax breaks expire at the end of this year. In an examination of federal spending, the Government Accountability Office said the ethanol tax credit and a federal


U.S. Ethanol Policy Roundly Criticized

If the United States reduced the amount of corn required for its ethanol requirements by just one per cent, it would double Zimbabwe’s entire annual corn consumption and save American taxpayers $50 million a year. Bill Lapp, a U.S. market analyst, tossed those statistics out at the annual GrainWorld conference in Winnipeg last week to

Corn Stocks To Rise If Ethanol Tax Credit Cut

Stockpiles of U.S. corn would begin to rebuild if Congress allows tax credits for ethanol to expire at the end of the year, a key group of economists at the University of Missouri said March 7. The university’s Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute, or FAPRI, forecast corn stocks at the end of the 2011-12


Worries Aside, U.S. Has “Foot On The Gas” On Ethanol

The United States “can do it all” – turn more corn into ethanol without running short of food, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Feb. 24, as oil prices soared and the government raised its forecast of food price increases this year. “There is no reason for us to take the foot off the gas,” said

Cellulosic Ethanol Another Income Stream For Corn Farmers

Cellulosic ethanol production using corn stover as the feedstock is going commercial, but over the short term it won’t make any more grain corn available for human or livestock use, according to Kyle Althoff. It will however, provide additional returns to farmers in the form of stover payments and potential agronomic benefits. “We don’t see