|
|
|
|
|
|
| ISA backs Hoosier livestock industry in new ad campaign |
|
|
|
| By LINDA McGURK
Indiana Correspondent
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The biodiesel industry in Indiana keeps growing, and so does the availability of a coproduct – soybean meal. The new Louis Dreyfus processing plant in Claypool, Ind., alone will produce one million tons of additional soybean meal per year. So where will the excess go?
The Indiana Soybean Alliance (ISA) believes the answer can be found in an expansion of Indiana’s livestock industry, and has launched a media campaign to educate people in rural communities about large-scale livestock operations.
“Livestock and biodiesel complement each other,” said Chris Novak, executive director of ISA and the Indiana Corn Growers Assoc. “We use (soybean) meal for livestock and (soybean) oil for biodiesel, and as we grow the biofuels industry in the state, we also need to look at how to grow the livestock industry. Most people don’t think about this interdependence.”
Novak added that 98 percent of the soybean meal in the United States is consumed by livestock.
The initiative is part of ISA’s Growing Indiana Agriculture (GINA) program and is funded by soybean checkoff dollars. Although ISA’s history of partnering with the livestock industry goes back several years, Novak said the current campaign is the most comprehensive to date, featuring radio spots, newspaper ads and newspaper inserts that highlight local livestock producers.
By targeting farmers, as well as non-farming residents in rural areas who may worry about the impact of having a confined animal feeding operation down the road, ISA ultimately hopes to reverse the decline of the Indiana livestock industry.
“First and foremost, we need a climate that’s open to livestock expansion. People need to understand the benefits of the industry,” said Novak. “There has been a trend toward tighter EPA and IDEM regulations the past 10 to 15 years, and that makes livestock operators better environmental neighbors than they’ve been in the past.”
During the 10-year period of 1994-2004, Indiana lost one-third of its beef operations, 40 percent of its dairy operations and 70 percent of its swine farms, according to Novak.
Even though some of the remaining livestock operations grew bigger, Novak said Indiana lost 1.2 million heads of hogs during the 10-year period.
“Part of the equation for this, as we’ve lost the livestock industry over the past decade, is that the demand has moved. The soybeans we produce here are shipped across the country and the world, and the transportation cost works its way back to the farmer,” Novak said.
According to Michael Boehlje, a professor of agricultural economics at Purdue University, it looks like Indiana’s hog and dairy industries have already entered an expansion phase, while the poultry industry is maintaining its size.
“Pluses for our pork industry are the Logansport and Delphi processing facilities. They give the Indiana pork industry an advantage compared to when we didn’t have those facilities 20 years ago,” he said.
Boehlje said the price and availability of a certain feedstuff is important for the location of a livestock operation, but he cautioned against giving too much weight to soybean meal from Indiana’s new biodiesel plants.
“Not all the meal used in the livestock industry in Indiana is from here. It’s a national market and soybean meal can be transported at a reasonable price,” he said.
In terms of cost of production and the farmer’s profitability, Boehlje thinks the price of corn is a more important factor than local production of soybean meal.
“Livestock farmers have more competition for corn from the biofuels industry, which is increasing the cost for the feedstuff. Corn prices are the driver,” he said.
More information about ISA’s livestock campaign can be found at the GINA website at www.growinginagriculture.com under “News & Resources.”
This farm news was published in the Sept. 19, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 9/19/2007 |
|
|
