Most farmers are focused on harvest right now, but the new president of the National Corn Growers Association has his sights set on next year, with grinding more corn and market recovery as top priorities.
“We’re engaged with most of our folks in the value chain of corn, and they’ve willingly come along. We’ve looked at where the market is today and where the bright spots are and who’s recovering quickly and going to find those places where we can assert energy behind and try to enhance the curve of which we come out from under this,” John Linder, the Ohio farmer who assumed the role of President of the NCGA on Oct. 1, said. “That Market Recovery Plan is really something we needed yesterday. To that end, I have set a personal goal of doing everything in my power to help our industry recover and grow and in that process, we’re going to leave no stone unturned.”
Linder says that one opportunity to find ways to improve demand and increase corn grind is through the Next Generation Fuels Act, which was introduced by Illinois Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos.
“Supporting higher blends of ethanol into the liquid fuel market will grind more corn but we also know the recovery comes when we engage on trade by working to expand access to U.S. corn in places like southeast Asia and other growth markets for us,” he said. “We need to strengthen our competitiveness in that arena by leveraging our sustainability of U.S. corn to build preference for a product. That will actually gain us more access to compliment the trade deals as we get them.”
With so much bad news receiving attention in 2020, Linder says that there are many bright spots, including work by NCGA to find new uses for corn.
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