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NCGA, Checkoff Money Benefits Growers Through Research (7-09-01)
While ethanol has
received the lion's share of attention recently, it is by no means the
only iron in the fire when it comes to research projects being conducted
by the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA). Thanks to funding from
corn farmers who are represented by the 20 checkoff boards, NCGA is
able to research new markets for corn. NCGA leverages several hundred
thousand dollars of that checkoff money for use in multi-million dollar
research efforts.
NCGA Corn Action
Team Vice Chairman Boyd Smith said there are several ongoing projects
in the works. "Our goal with those projects is to build an industry
of renewable products with corn as the chief feedstock to not only increase
corn usage, but to increase profits for the grower as well. If corn
were the feedstock for 10% of the chemical markets it would mean 50
cents per bushel of 5 billion dollars."
Currently, NCGA
research is divided into three categories: Basic Leadership, Specific
Problems and Exploratory.
The Basic Leadership
category consists of areas where NCGA provides industry leadership and
includes research into genome and ethanol, as well as Ag Vision 2020,
a project designed to increase the market share of renewable chemicals
from 2% to 10% by the year 2020. Currently, there are two $1.7 million
dollar, three-year projects funded by AgVision.
The Specific Problem
category is made up of particular issues that the NCGA has a unique
opportunity to address, such as projects involving degerm and fiber
fermentation.
The final category
is Exploratory, which researches new markets for corn and explores potential
uses to increase demand for corn and value-added methods for commercialization,
such as polyols, 1,3-propanediol and fiber utilization among others.
"Our growers
are leaders in this industry," said Smith, "and have over
the past several years built an innovative, forward reaching research
and development program that will lead to many promising results in
the future."
Last
reviewed July 9, 2001
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