July 12, 2010
Where’s the corn ethanol land rush?
Published in Minnesota Corn Growers
For the second year in a row, America’s farmers planted fewer acres to the nation’s principal crops, according to the June 30 acreage report from the USDA. Farmers planted 318.9 million acres of crops, down from 319.2 million acres in 2009 and just under 325 million acres in 2008. All told, it’s a 6.1 million acre or 1.9 percent drop in crop acreage over the past two years.
Those principal crops are: corn, sorghum, oats, barley, winter wheat, rye, Durum wheat, other spring wheat, rice, soybeans, peanuts, sunflower, cotton, dry edible beans, potatoes, sugarbeets, canola, proso millet, hay, tobacco, and sugarcane.
Planted corn acreage saw a modest increase—two percent above the previous year nationwide (a 1.39 million acre jump). This year’s planting remains well below the record of 93.5 million acres, set in 2007.
Minnesota was among the states that saw a corn acreage drop from the previous year—from 7.6 million acres in 2009 to 7.5 million. Iowa saw the largest decrease—400,000 fewer acres planted to corn, and both Nebraska and South Dakota corn plantings dropped by 350,000 acres.
Anti-ethanol activists champion a hypothesis called Indirect Land Use Change. As if to directly challenge the unproved premises of the hypothesis, American farmers planted more soybean acres right alongside the increase in corn.
“We have heard an awful lot from the anti-ethanol crowd about how ethanol is bringing more agricultural land into production, but we can see from this report that ILUC proponents have a flawed model of what’s going on—where’s the corn ethanol land rush that they claimed was going to have such dire consequences?” said DeVonna Zeug, president of Minnesota Corn Growers Association, and a farmer in Redwood County. She said, “Even while ethanol production capacity is growing by about 2 billion gallons a year, and it follows that corn acreage increases to provide for that need, soybean acreage is growing at the same time.”
Both corn and soybean crops appear to be buying acreage from wheat, rather than bringing any overall increase in U.S. planted acreage.
Based on historical data, NASS experts predict that the 87.8 million acre corn planting will translate to 81 million acres of harvested corn this fall. If producers were able to match last year’s nationwide average yield of 164.7 bushels per acre, the 2010 corn crop would yield a corn crop of 13.34 billion bushels, which would be a record.
“Once again we’re seeing farmers putting a plan into action to satisfy all the consumers who need corn,” said Zeug. “And we are doing so without putting the environment at risk.”
See the full USDA ....
