Iowa farmer Chris Edgington took over as president of the National Corn Growers Association in October 2021.
Edgington raises corn and soybeans along with his dad, brother and son in St. Ansgar, Iowa. He and his wife, Vanessa, have two children, Alex and Elizabeth.
IFT: How are things going on your farm this year?
EDGINGTON: The crops around northern Iowa actually look pretty good. We’ve been one of the fortunate ones. Things to the west and southwest are a lot drier, but we might be in one of the better spots this year. We are still behind for this time of year, so we need a strong finish. We need September to be good with no surprises.
IFT: Crop prices are doing well, but input costs have been high this year. What is the outlook ahead of the winter and 2023 spring season?
EDGINGTON: There’s a bit of improvement from last spring. Probably the most noticeable is in nitrogen products. There hasn’t been much downward movement in potash and phosphorus, but nitrogen products are off their high. They are still up substantially from last year.
Seed costs haven’t come out yet, so we aren’t sure what they will be quite yet. All of the rumors going around would say that seed costs are going to be going up. That was one of our bright spots last year, with seed costs not changing much.
IFT: We are seeing a lot of inflation worries as well. There has been some legislation passed recently in the hopes of curbing that, but is that why we are seeing costs rise?
EDGINGTON: Agriculture is usually working on its own cycle. We had prices going up a year ago when we had no inflation issues at all. Our inflation started a year ago, or more than a year ago in some cases. For the general consumer a lot of it didn’t really happen until last winter into spring.
If you look at a study of history, going in and out of recessions and boom cycles, agriculture doesn’t always move with the rest of the economy.
IFT: The registration for the herbicide atrazine is being examined by the EPA for revision. What changes are expected and how might it affect farmers?
EDGINGTON: We would have preferred they left it alone, obviously. It was at 15 parts per billion, as measured in aquatic water situations and we can work with that. They are taking it down to 3.4 with their proposal and we (NCGA) are campaigning against that. We have call to actions going on, because that would make it very restrictive on 70% of the corn acres in the U.S.
On the business side, atrazine saves farmers money, which means it could save consumers money. It’s a great synergistic component in a mixture of chemicals that are sprayed on for weed control. If you lose that ability and you are having to use full rates of other products, the business side suffers.
The other impact is that tillage will probably come back into some operations, which is exactly the opposite of what they want us to do. They want us to do no-till and cover crops and conservation, but they are trying to take one of the tools out of the toolbox that helps us do that.
The comment period has been extended to Oct. 6 or 7, and we are weighing in on that in a big way. They are also doing an environmental, scientific review process that might take eight months to a year, so we will be at this for a while.
IFT: Based on the timeframe you mentioned, there might not be many changes for the next growing season.
EDGINGTON: That’s the projected timeline I’m aware of and not to say things don’t change, but not a lot happens that we wouldn’t be aware of.
IFT: Looking longer term, a new farm bill will be discussed in 2023. What are some of the top priorities you’d like to see in the next farm bill?
EDGINGTON: There’s no question crop insurance is still at the top. That is one of the best safety nets, public or private, we have in agriculture. We do not want conservation practices to be tied to crop insurance, especially when you have a different organization trying to take tools out of the toolbox that people use to improve conservation practices. We want to keep those things separate.
There will an election coming up, so who knows who will be in charge. There will be discussions around base acres and reference prices and loan rates, as well as discussion about the energy title in the farm bill and where renewable fuels play into that. There have already been several hearings in the house on various titles in the farm bill.
A lot of the discussions involve supplemental nutrition, and that’s a really vital program. There’s always discussion by someone that we should separate these, but people in agriculture have to say no. They both involve food. When people look at the farm bill they think of the big crops, but all of the commodity groups are touched by the Farm Bill.
IFT: I’ve seen many corn farmers discuss higher blends of ethanol on social media this summer. Gas prices have been going down lately, but how did the fuel price spike impact ethanol’s outlook?
EDGINGTON: There’s nothing like a major change in prices for people to reevaluate what they are using. I know people who have flex fuel vehicles and until this summer had never put E85 in. They always used 20 or 30. I know consumers that had never put E15 in their vehicle. I think we’ve got more people interested, and the California market is growing robustly for E85.
I heard the other day that there’s not hardly a used flex fuel traded in anywhere in the Midwest that doesn’t end up in California because of that demand. If you are trading in a used pickup or car, there’s good odds it will go there. They are saving anywhere from $2-4 per gallon by using E85. I think it’s been good for the ethanol industry because we have picked up some consumers that learned this product really does a lot of work for them.
