John Bode, president of the Corn Refiners Association, celebrated National Ag Day in Washington, D.C. He talked about one thing that would make National Ag Day even better than it already is.
“Bold, new market opportunities. That’s what American food and agriculture needs. Broadly, we need stronger markets, domestically, export, and markets of the future. Let’s fuel the bioeconomy.”
The Corn Refiners are one of many groups that combine to produce the Feeding the Economy Report.
“This major report that measures the impact of American food and agriculture on the economy, and this year, it found a $10.4 trillion impact, and that is a growth over last year, and shows that food and agriculture accounts for 20 percent of the American economy.”
The Feeding the Economy Report is available for everyone online, and he urges all ag stakeholders to look at the information and share it with as many people as possible.
“We get it to policymakers. We also put it up on FeedingTheEconomy.com. I encourage everyone to go there. It is a rich source of data. It’s broken down by state and congressional district, so members of Congress can look at the impact in their district, and the information is very detailed. So, for example, in the agricultural manufacturing sector, the manufacturing of American agricultural production is 2.3 million jobs. That is over twice as many jobs as automobile manufacturing in the U.S. It is the largest segment of the manufacturing sector.”