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John Oncken: Ag world changes, but it's still about people

John Oncken  —  4/24/2008 8:55 am

April 20, 1990: "This column won't be education, promotion or advertising. It will be about programs, politics and people -- especially people -- in agriculture that may cause you to read and remember and react. And to say, "I didn't know that."

That was the concluding paragraph in the first issue of Cross County, 18 years and 1,007 columns ago.

When editor Dave Zweifel and then business editor Warren Gaskill agreed that The Capital Times would be home to these weekly words from a former farm boy, I doubt that any of us figured it would be around in 2008 -- so-o-o-o far in the future.

Happily, only one issue (in March 2005) was missed. That was the day a nurse at Meriter Hospital said that, after 14 pints of blood, things were getting serious and hauled this writer to the operating room where three and a half feet of colon were skillfully removed and a column was missed. A fair trade!

The farming issues so long ago were not unlike those today: Milk prices, the 1990 farm bill and spring planting were on the minds of farmers. Non-farmers were cheering or booing Gov. Tommy Thompson as he signed a one-year moratorium on selling Bst to dairy farmers: And, a popular book, "50 Simple Things You Can Do to Save The Earth," was the rage. It included recycling aluminum cans, using cloth diapers, bundling newspapers for recycling and reducing meat consumption.

Today, farmers are still worrying about milk prices, the Farm Bill and the lateness of getting into the fields. Popular farm issues in the public discussion center on using corn to make ethanol and eating healthy -- depending on one's version of eating healthy. And of course, saving the environment and world in many different ways is still a popular topic.

Meanwhile, Wisconsin is now the No. 2 dairy state in milk production but No. 1 in family dairy farms. In 1990 the state had 33,900 dairy farms and 1.76 million cows. Today there are 13,900 dairy farms and 1.25 million cows. In spite of fewer dairy farms, milk production has jumped 50 percent from 16.5 billion pounds to just over 24 billion pounds.

Corn is still king on Wisconsin farms and the last two years corn farmers actually made money after many years of government programs keeping them in farming.

Remember the hue and cry during those years from so many who said, "If farmers can't make money raising corn, they should get out of farming. Let supply and demand be king." It was said by people eating their very inexpensive corn flakes.

Today corn has achieved a new status. After years of being listed in the daily commodity markets section of agricultural prices, corn can now almost be considered a specialty crop.

That's for sure if price alone is considered as corn zoomed from the doldrums of decades in the $1.80-$2 per bushel range to the glorious heights of $5 a bushel. Soybeans, the other big grain cash crop, has also taken a major leap upward in price.

Ethanol and world trade are the reasons behind the corn/soybean price boom. Corn became the raw material used to make ethanol and help supplement high-priced gasoline. And ever-richer foreign countries are buying our grains to feed their people.

But it's not all glory for the grain farmer. The two-edged sword of price means that the food processing and marketing industry placed the blame on the grain farmer (and his close to 20 percent of the total food cost) for raising the price of corn flakes. Never mind that the vast food industry, from farmer to trucker to supermarket, has faced higher fuel prices almost daily that savage the bottom line.

High corn prices are also tough on farmers who raise livestock -- dairy cows, beef animals, swine and sheep all eat corn. Many livestock farmers also raise corn which prompts some to say "they don't have to pay for it." Maybe not, perhaps some of these farmers will just sell the corn and not raise the livestock.

Then there is ethanol, a fuel source that's been in the making for decades in Wisconsin. This simple product -- it's just alcohol that you could drink if a small amount of gasoline wasn't added to it during processing -- was used in the first cars made by Henry Ford. It's still a great fuel as the world has discovered.

Enter the basics of economics, as it's called. Ethanol plants were built across the corn belt as demand grew due to the unquenchable desire and need for more and bigger cars, trucks, houses and buildings. Then add the global demand for U.S. grains.

Now the hue and cry has set in across the land. Everyone with a computer, a Web site or a blog is an expert on food prices, fuel, corn and farming and has a solution, however far-fetched, to bring back cheap food (although when compared to other countries, our food is rather inexpensive).

• "You can't use corn for ethanol," they say. "Children are starving somewhere." It doesn't matter that those same starving children never had our grain for one reason or another, whether it was genetically modified organism (GMO) plant breeding, government indifference or corruption.
• Evil plant breeders who don't allow poor farmers to harvest corn seed and use it to plant a new crop are often cited by critics of genetic advances in plant breeding. The truth is that hybrid corn seed is never replanted and hasn't been since it was developed in the 1930s. It's all about how hybrids are made.

Today most of the planted corn and soybeans is genetically modified to resist weeds or insects. Jeff Renk of Renk Seed Company in Sun Prairie says, "100 percent of the soybeans we sell are GMO as is 65 percent of the corn. The GMO seeds are all protected by patent law. However, non-GMO varieties are still available."

• Environmental groups and others suggest using switch grass to make ethanol. It's a great idea with one major problem: There are no acres of switch grass raised commercially anywhere. Even it there was, no one has the equipment to use it.

One of the biggest fields of switch grass (about 50 acres) in Wisconsin is located downhill from the state Department of Ag, Trade and Consumer Protection headquarters on Madison's far east side next to the Interstate. It's a research project run by Agrecol, the Madison-based grower and marketer of prairie grass throughout the Midwest.

Ethanol may be the answer to the biomass needed to make ethanol. Trees are also a possibility. So are whey, manure and alfalfa. Give it another few years of research. As farmers will tell you, "We'll raise switch grass, lots of it, when it's commercially profitable."

In 18 years I've written about many phases of agriculture and its people. It has been a great run!

There is only one sure thing in all the conversations and opinions about farming and food. Long after the bloggers, so-called experts making speeches and writing books, and environmental groups change in name and direction, we the people will absolutely, 100 percent, for sure, without any doubt, continue to eat food. And farmers will be producing it.

Bet on that!

John Oncken is owner of Oncken Communications, a Madison-based agricultural information and consulting company. He can be reached at 222-0624 or e-mail jfodairy@chorus.net

John Oncken  —  4/24/2008 8:55 am