Iowa Correspondent

JOHNSTON, Iowa — As the nation’s top corn and ethanol producers, Iowa growers from across the state’s 99 counties have celebrated September as Corn Month.

“In Iowa, it looks like we are going to have a record or near-record yield this year,” said Central City corn grower Larry Jons. “Since Iowa is the No. 1 corn-producing state, it’s important that we have good yields for all of our customers, whether it’s exported to other countries, or used locally for feed or ethanol.”

Mindy Williamson, director of communications and public relations for the Iowa Corn Growers Assoc. (ICGA) and the Iowa Corn Promotion Board (ICPB), said the state’s corn industry is making a difference throughout Iowa and around the world.

“Throughout September, the (ICPB) and the (ICGA) are reminding consumers about the economic importance of Iowa corn and the many products that use corn,” she said. “During Corn Month, Iowa Corn salutes the state’s corn industry and works to help all Iowans understand its importance to their state and their lives.”

The world’s corn-basket

Iowa corn growers harvest nearly two billion bushels of corn each year, or about 7 percent of the world’s total production.

With the increased demand for corn, Iowans have also planted 13 percent more acres of corn this year.

Williamson said, “That crop is then transformed into livestock products that put protein on the world’s dinner plates, ethanol that fuels more cars and thousands of other essential ingredients and products. Corn is used in more than 4,000 food and non-food products and Iowa’s farm sector supplies nearly $15 billion to the state economy each year.”

According to Iowa Corn, Iowa farmers planted an average of 13.9 million acres of corn in the late 1970s and early 1980s, but plantings in the past decade have averaged 12.3 million acres – at the same time, production has climbed more than 30 percent, from an average of 1.6 billion to 2.1 billion bushels per year.

From an infrastructure standpoint, according to USDA’s September Crop Progress Report, Iowa’s 2007 corn crop is expected to yield 182 bushels per acre and top 2.5 billion bushels of total production – and every bushel must be transported from field to storage to final use. In other words, an Iowa farmer with 350 acres of corn and average yields must plan to move 63,700 bushels this fall – or 70 semi loads – on Iowa’s rural roads and bridges.

In all, moving the entire crop from the field will require the equivalent of 2.79 million semi round-trips of varying distance on local roads. This year alone, 991 million bushels, or almost two out of every five bushels in the Iowa crop, are also expected to be delivered to the state’s corn processing plants. Assuming an average one-way trip of 40 miles, that’s almost 1.1 million semi loads and more than 87 million road miles that will be traveled.

In fact, an estimated 780 million bushels, or 30 percent of Iowa’s crop, is projected to leave the state this market year, with most of it traveling by barge down the Mississippi River – which also means new grain storage demands for the 2007 bumper crop.

According to the latest Census of Agriculture, in 2002, Iowa farmers had built on-farm storage for more than 1.5 billion bushels of grain and oilseeds. Since then, many Iowa growers have built additional capacity, and this year new bins have been going up across the state in anticipation of the record crop. But the Iowa Quality Grain Initiative said the state may be short 500,000-700,000 bushels of storage space this year, especially since fewer railroad grain cars would be available for temporary storage.

Iowa Corn officials said a 2007 harvest that produces more than 2.5 billion bushels of corn and nearly 450,000 bushels of soybeans is likely to result in the sight of grain piles in Iowa this fall.

Erosion reduction

Currently, Iowa leads the nation in conservation buffer strips and is the number-two state in wetland restoration, with Iowa corn growers funding research like the Coldwater/Palmer and Lime Creek watershed projects, which have been showing positive results for new approaches to managing erosion and water quality.

Conservation tillage, which was a rare practice in the 1970s, is now widely adopted, with multiple benefits. By working more crop residue back into the soil, Iowa corn growers have indicated that conservation tillage has improved the soil’s ability to hold moisture and nutrients, and has been shown to reduce runoff from rainfall by 60 percent.

Nick Leibold, a New Hampton corn grower and ICPB board director, said with the yields that Iowa growers have achieved, the state could produce record crops without planting fencerow-to-fencerow, which was practiced 30 years ago. ”We can put in the swales and buffer strips that control erosion and limit nutrient runoff, and we can leave more fragile lands untilled,” he said.

Thus far, Leibold said erosion has been reduced as much as 90 percent, which means fewer trips with heavy equipment that would also cut down on fuel use.

“When you work on the land, you can’t help thinking about each decision you make and what it will mean for the future of your farm and your family,” he said.

Iowa growers have also reduced chemical applications, since projects like Integrated Pest Management and new technologies such as insect-resistant corn have meant less use of insecticides. For each pound used on corn in 1978, Iowa farmers now only apply a little over three ounces.

Iowa Corn officials said herbicide use on Iowa corn acres is also down about 30 percent, and farmers’ purchases of two major fertilizers, potash and phosphate, have declined. Nationwide, USDA statistics have indicated that U.S. corn growers now use less nitrogen to produce 50 percent more corn than in 1980, Iowa Corn officials added.

As for Iowa leading the nation in ethanol production, Jons said the rise of ethanol plants in the state has piqued farmers’ interests in investing in them. “This has brought in a better market in the parts of the state that didn’t have the good processing plants we have in the Cedar Rapids area,” he said. “It has also produced a good supply of DDGs for feed lots in these areas.”