NCGA president lists priorities

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — Trade, transportation and biofuel were top topics when the National Corn Growers Association president gave the group’s priorities at a meeting of Illinois farmers.

Tom Haag was among the speakers at the Illinois Corn Growers Association annual meeting. He is a fourth-generation family farmer near Eden Valley, Minnesota. He and is son, Nathan, grow more than 1,700 acres of corn and soybeans in south-central Minnesota.

He credited ICGA members for their work promoting ethanol and successfully urging Congress to fund lock and dam modernization.

Among NCGA’s priorities is supporting passage of the Next Generation Fuels Act introduced in the House by U.S. Rep. Cheri Bustos, D-East Moline.

The legislation would transition gasoline and vehicles to low-carbon, high-octane fuel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and meet future needs of more advanced vehicles by taking advantage of the benefits of higher ethanol blends.

“The bill received bipartisan support and that’s one of the main things because as corn growers we have to work on both sides of the aisle, we’re bipartisan and that was good,” Haag said in an interview with AgriNews.

“It was introduced in the Senate last summer, and so we’ve got a start, but now we’ll have to get it reintroduced again and we hope that some of the sponsors who were on the bill before will get that going so we can get this Next Generation Fuels Act in play again and show that we can compete and be on a level playing field with the electric vehicles that are being promoted right now.

“The bill never came to a vote in the House but we’re hoping it gets to committee and go forward. We think we can get enough support there because of the positive things on our end, with ethanol that cuts emissions. We can compete with electric vehicles if we’re on the same playing field.”

Farm bill

The current farm bill expires in 2023 and Haag said the NCGA want to make sure Congress leaves crop insurance alone.

“Crop insurance is a great tool for farmers. Don’t mess with it. It works. It’s a public/private entity,” Haag said.

“With the House changing to Republicans on the Agriculture Committee side, Rep. G.T. Thompson, R-Pa., was elected chair of the House Ag Committee. He’s made comments that he’d like to get the farm bill done in 2023 before the current one expires.”

Mexico

Another concern for corn growers is Mexico’s pending decree that would ban imports of biotech corn beginning January 2024.

“We’ve written letters to the U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai to make sure she knows about it. We’ve talked to her counterparts in Mexico about it. We’re also making sure that they follow the rules of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement. That’s why we have to make sure our government officials are aware of this because it would be a major blow. They’re a large importer of GMO corn,” Haag said.

Water Transportation

The NCGA president also commended ICGA members and leadership for their years of work pushing for the modernization of the locks and dams in the Illinois and Mississippi rivers.

The success story includes funding to upgrade Lock 25 on the Mississippi. The lock and dam near Winfield, Missouri, was completed in 1939. Congress allocated $732 million earlier this year to replace 600-foot lock chambers with 1,200-foot chambers.

“That’s a start but it’s only the beginning. We have a lot more infrastructure that needs to be replaced and lo and behold who would have guessed that all of our rivers at one time are now low because of the drought,” Haag said.

“You get south of St. Louis on the Mississippi River and there are a lot of barges parked or limited loads half the normal amount due to low water levels. That increases the price to ship everything. It can really damper the amount of grain going down and things coming back up.

“The issue is getting things down and back up the river. I’m from Minnesota and we rely on a lot of our fertilizer shipped to us up river, and that could be a concern going into spring.”