Ag Industry News and Events - Page 24

Iowa Corn is proud to sponsor Iowa Corn Day at the Iowa State Fair on Friday, August 19. This year’s activities will include a family friendly scavenger hunt where fair goers locate five stations scattered throughout the fairgrounds, take a selfie and post them to social media using hashtag #CornItsEverything to receive a free t-shirt and a chance to win KISS concert tickets and Cy-Hawk game tickets. Also, new to the fair is the highly-interactive Iowa Corn Mobile Education trailer.

Where else would a more than 1,000-pound beautiful beefcake of a steer go to strut his stuff than the Iowa State Fair? The Iowa Corn Promotion Board (ICPB) is proud to sponsor BoBo the Corn-Fed Steer at this year’s Iowa State Fair Governor’s Charity Steer Show on Saturday, August 13. Accompanying the steer will be ICPB President Mark Heckman, a farmer from West Liberty. Proceeds of the show go to the Ronald McDonald Houses of Iowa.

Iowa Corn announced today the results of the Board of Directors elections for the Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA) and Iowa Corn Promotion Board (ICPB).

Iowa Corn members as well as directors of the Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA) convened in a particularly quiet Washington, D.C. this week as part of the National Corn Congress. This was due to Congress being on recess and the Republican National Convention – many of the Iowa delegation were not available for meetings.  Members of ICGA still had the opportunity to speak on behalf of all Iowa corn farmers to non-Iowa, non-corn states.

Delegates attending the 2016 National Corn Congress today elected Chris Edgington of Mitchell County and Kevin Ross of Pottawatomie County to the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) Board for a three-year term. These two Iowa farmer-leaders will join 2015 elected NCGA Director Bruce Rohwer from O’Brien County.

Agricultural exports help drive the U.S. economy. For instance, exports of U.S. corn and corn products generated $74.7 billion to the U.S. economy in 2014, according to a new analysis by Informa Economics. This is why Congress every year appropriates federal funding for the Market Access Program (MAP) and Foreign Market Development (FMD) program which supports the promotion of corn, corn products as well as value-added U.S. red meat products in international markets. These two Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS) programs leverage farmers’ checkoff funds and agribusiness investments to build an active outreach program in more than 50 countries.

STATEMENT FROM PRESIDENT BOB HEMESATH
On behalf of the Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA), I would like to thank Congress, especially the entire Iowa delegation (both House and Senate), for their support in the passage of the GMO labeling agreement. We urge President Obama to sign this legislation into law as soon as possible so that there are no negative consequences from Vermont’s labeling law which will hinder interstate commerce, severely disrupt the U.S. farm and food industry, and raise food prices.

Iowans driving flex fuel vehicles received good news this week as  Iowa Governor Terry Branstad signed into law a bill extending tax provisions for fuel retailers providing Iowa motorists with homegrown, renewable ethanol and biodiesel.

Senate File 2309 is an act that extends the per gallon income tax benefits for retail stations who choose to offer higher blends of ethanol (E15 and E85) and/or biodiesel (B5 and B11) to their customers at the pump through 2024. This bill passed by the legislature this session, with bipartisan support in both the Iowa House and Iowa Senate.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced last week it will make available $250,000 to match checkoff investments from the Iowa Corn Promotion Board (ICPB), Illinois Corn Marketing Board and Nebraska Corn Board for phenotyping research.  This is part of a larger $130 million research initiative announced by USDA to fund research, education, and extension projects. ICPB initiated the a phenotyping research initiative, known as Genomes to Fields, to expand our understanding of interacting effects that corn genetics and crop environments have on corn yields.

While the U.S. Environment Protection Agency’s (EPA) announcement of the proposed Renewable Volume Obligations (RVOs) moved in a more favorable direction today, we are disappointed that the agency chose to set the 2017 number well below the statute.