$4 corn and smaller pork chops
21 November 2006US - Experts at a National Pork Producers Council session on how the ethanol boom affects hog-producers served up a message of leaner times ahead Monday.
Hog farmers will have to compete with a tax-subsidized ethanol industry that can pay up to $4 a bushel for corn at today's petroleum prices, they learned at a meeting in Des Moines, Iowa, that was also sponsored by the National Corn Growers Association, the Renewable Fuels Association, Monsanto and Iowa corn, pork and agribusiness groups.
Those producers will be using more distillers grains from that ethanol industry and will have to know their suppliers well to be assured of getting quality feed. And they're likely to feed pigs to lower finishing weights to offset higher feed costs.
Sometime in the next decade, the ethanol industry is likely to make about 13 billion gallons of ethanol and use nearly five billion bushels of corn, said William Holbrook of the ProExporter Network.
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Source: Agriculture Online
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