NPPC Asks USDA for Relief from High Feed Prices

July 2, 2008 — Jen Greiner

With feed prices expected to reach record levels because of federal ethanol policy and the recent flooding in the Midwest, NPPC and 20 of its state affiliates - representing 95 percent of the hogs marketed - Tuesday urged the U.S. Department of Agriculture to take steps to ease the pressures on U.S. pork producers. Since October, the pork industry has lost nearly $2 billion. NPPC met with Agriculture Secretary Ed Schaffer to ask that USDA take the following actions:

• Support a waiver of the biofuels mandate (Renewable Fuels Standard) for ethanol as requested by Governor Rick Perry of Texas. If granted, the ethanol mandate for 2008 would be cut to 4.5 billion gallons from 9 billion.
• Support the elimination of or significant reduction in the ethanol blender's tax credit.
• Support the elimination of or significant reduction in the tariff on ethanol imported into the United States.
• Release immediately and without penalty non-environmentally sensitive acres from the Conservation Reserve Program.
• Allow crop farmers to plant (at their own expense) a harvestable crop on those acres that could not be planted this spring due to weather condition, even though the farmer may have collected a disaster payment on the ground. This action also may require congressional approval, and we will ask Congress to act.

Under federal energy policy, the ethanol industry this year is required to produce 9 billion gallons of corn-ethanol. That amount would require about one-third of the 2008 corn crop, which just got smaller because of flooding in the Midwest. Gov. Perry has asked the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to waive the ethanol mandate and to cut the production amount to 4.5 billion gallons. NPPC supports that request.

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Jen Greiner, NPPC Director of Science and Technology