While farmers are grateful for government assistance through the Farm Bridge Assistance Program, the goal is always to sell more commodities. Kenneth Hartman Jr., now the past president of the National Corn Growers Association, said the organization is always working to open more opportunities for U.S. corn producers.
“Well, obviously, our top priority is creating markets. We did a strategic plan the year before, and it’s all about creating markets. With our prices where we’re at right now, we need to get those prices up, and the only way we can do that is sell more corn and grind more corn. So, we’re very excited about some of the things we worked on when it came to getting more exports with trade agreements, things that we were working on when it comes to, right now, Mexico is our number one customer for corn. Canada is our number one customer for ethanol, and we’ve worked with a lot of countries.”
Other countries are increasing ethanol use, which means more sales for U.S. producers.
“The UK is now in a trade agreement. They’re buying more ethanol. We’ve got some other countries when it comes to working with Vietnam, working with some of these other countries. Colombia is a very good market for us. Japan’s a very good market for us. I know when we were in Japan last year on a mission and talked to them, they’re going with higher blends of ethanol in their automobiles. So, these are all things that I was excited that I got to be involved with. Hopefully, that keeps going this year, when we can get E15 passed. Some of the other things that we were very instrumental in working with MAHA. We do not want to take our tools away from our farmers.”