By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

COLUMBUS, Ohio — There seems little doubt that great possibilities are available to growers and businesses dependent on soybeans. The question is, how to best go about ensuring long-term success?

“There’s a gold rush, dot-com ‘buzz’ about it,” said Mack Findley of Peter Cremer North America, an oleochemical supplier based in Cincinnati, Ohio. “We need to protect ourselves from ourselves.”
“There’s several what I call ‘next steps,’” said John Lumpe, executive director of both the Ohio Soybean Council (OSC) and Ohio Soybean Assoc. The former is responsible for beginning Ohio Soy 2020, an initiative based on the national program Soy 2020, designed to plan for the future of soybean production and marketing.

OSC announced its initiative on Aug. 9 with a meeting presenting a study compiling Ohio’s advantages to be a soybean leader. ABG of Indianapolis, Ind., which did the study, will advise OSC on how to appoint a steering committee, Lumpe explained, to set specific goals to sell to the state’s 26,000 soybean producers.

John Demerly, ABG business development manager, gave an overview of the study and said coming up with a plan boils down to planning for what one doesn’t know with the facts one does know. “It’s ‘What can I do now that will fit in all those worlds?’ (of possibility),” he said.

Potential problems
A major uncertainty is not knowing what innovations in usage of other crops will arise to compete with innovations in soybean usage. Another is cost of those innovations to the public, what with research, the increased cost of growing due to fuel and land prices and the like.

“People love to be green,” said Findley. “They love the three E’s – environment, energy and ecology – but when it costs more money for biodiesel, they need to look at their businesses’ (costs).”
Bhima Vijayendran of Battelle Memorial Institute agreed when the subject came up of using biodiesel for power generation as well as transportation. “A BTU is a BTU – whether you get it from biodiesel, it has to be cost-competitive,” he pointed out.

An Ohio farmer acknowledged this, too. “If you don’t have that one-dollar (federal tax) credit (per gallon for blending), biodiesel in Ohio dries up and blows away,” said Bart Johnson.

Another consideration is soy’s biggest customers: Livestock producers. David White of the Ohio Farm Bureau Federation said the state’s market share of hogs has been flat in growth partly because of objection to expansion or construction of animal-feeding operations, by residents – and crop farmers – because of odor and fear of manure runoff. Before growers can market well to the public, he suggested they settle on mutual goals with livestock producers.

Sheer numbers may also work against attracting growers. Demerly pointed out by 2010, the number of soybean acres nationwide controlled by large growers will more than double. On top of that, the population is aging and young people are not getting into agriculture at a comfortable replacement rate.

“We have a huge generation of farmers who will be retiring in the next few years; what are we going to do?” he asked.

Advantages
But soy has a market share, thanks to the push for multiple uses. Amy Sigg Davis, a farmer-member of OSC and the United Soybean Board, noted it wasn’t long ago soy flour was restricted to health-food shops and soy ink was unheard of. Now, both are widely used.

Growing soybeans requires less cost and maintenance per acre than corn, noted Johnson. “It’s a heck of a lot easier to get 70 acres of beans done in a day; you can’t do that with corn,” he said, adding he plants three years of beans to one year of corn.

Soy oil is part of the public’s consciousness even if they don’t realize it. “It’s like Kleenex is a tissue,” Davis said of use of a brand name along with its chief ingredient. “(Soy) Wesson is an oil.”
She added with new Country of Origin Labeling requirements in the proposed farm bill – given recent news about tainted food and health products from abroad – marketing something as domestically-grown rather than imported could work in its favor.

“How many miles does food travel is becoming a huge issue, and I don’t think that’s going away,” agreed Carl Zulauf, a professor with Ohio State University’s College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. Lumpe noted Ohio is within a day’s drive of two-thirds of the nation’s population.

Even biodiesel byproducts are gaining market share. Findley said the price of soy glycerin is actually rising for the first time, making it profitable.

Another advantage Lumpe noted is that Ohio is poised for increased usage of soybeans in polymers (such as the foam Ford is installing in its 2008 Mustang seats). Ohio’s polymers/chemical business is a $50 billion industry, he said, second only to agriculture in statewide economic impact.

“So, number one and number two are important to work together,” he explained. “Our feeling in Ohio is the farmer grows both (soybeans and corn) – or all three, as is the case with some wheat (usage).”

Developments in disease resistance should allow Ohio to produce more soybeans in the future, too, said Demerly. This should allow farmers to return to more narrow rows, increasing plants and yield even if the number of planted acres continues to decrease.

Zulauf thinks higher yield would be good news. “I don’t want to offend anyone, but $8 soybeans are not good for the future of the industry,” he said, explaining if biodiesel becomes too expensive, it may drive researchers to find yet a cheaper alternative fuel.

This farm news was published in the Aug. 29, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.