BrownfieldAgNews reports:
St. Louis — The new president of the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA) says farmers are facing many hurdles as his one-year term begins.
Kenneth Hartman Jr., a fifth-generation farmer from Waterloo, Illinois, tells Brownfield, “There’s higher costs when it comes to fuel labor, you know, across the board, everything is more expensive, but yet corn prices are lower.” He says, “So, these are challenges. So, we need to work on ways to get that corn price up.”
He says he wants to build relationships aimed at increasing demand for corn and its products, like ethanol.
“Ethanol is environmentally friendly. We know that.” He says, “It’s a cheaper, more reasonable fuel, so it helps the consumer, and obviously where we’re at right now with carryover corn; we’ve got plenty of corn, and it’s homegrown, and U.S. made.”
Hartman says NCGA is also focused on demonstrating the need for a new five-year farm bill to Congress.
“Our top priority is risk management.” He says, “We’re also looking like I talked about earlier with you know, creating markets, doubling the market development and foreign market development program. And Title One, in that area, when it comes to ARC and PLC, you know, we’re operating on prices and target areas that were set up in 2018. That’s definitely different now.”
Hartman’s term as NCGA’s president officially began Tuesday. He takes over from Minnesota farmer, Harold Wolle, who now becomes the organization’s chairman of the board.
