INTEREST IN ETHANOL DRIVES UP CORN CROP

By Rick Joslin/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF

“...The times, they are a-changin’.”

— Bob Dylan, 1964

Don’t be surprised if a slightly revised cheer erupts at some future Arkansas Razorback football games.

“Hey hey, ho ho, Arkansas to the ... Corn Bowl?”

In Arkansas and across the South, cotton production is a shrinking enterprise. But throughout the state and around the nation, the number of acres being devoted to corn is — pardon the pun — a-poppin’.

The driver? Ethanol, which is elevating corn prices and prompting growing interests in building ethanol or biodiesel production facilities in Southeast Arkansas. The future of alternative fuels is seemingly illuminated with flashing dollar signs.

State farmers signaled intend to plant 560,000 acres of corn this year, the most since 1956 and a 195 percent increase from last year. Also, grain sorghum acreage is expected to more than triple to 200,000 acres from last year’s 63,000.

Arkansas’ cotton acreage is expected to fall by 29 percent to 830,000 acres, and a 13 percent decline in rice acreage is projected.

“Cotton is going down and corn acres up because our growers can see a true profit potential with corn over cotton this year,” said Jefferson County Agent Don Plunkett of the University of Arkansas Cooperative Extension Service.

“Soybean acres in some counties have moved into corn production, according to our specialists. Industry sales reps are also bemoaning the loss of soybean acres to corn south of here. They are making reference to ‘a lean year’ sales wise for soybeans.

“Company reps who had corn are beaming because they have moved so much seed.”

Jefferson County’s corn acreage had declined to under 10,000 acres for the past several years, but may increase by as much as 300 percent this year, Plunkett said.

“We have some tremendous soil for growing crops,” he pointed out. “Cotton is grown on the best silt loam soils and corn grows very well on those soils as well.”

The news of the boon in corn production isn’t sweet to all ears, however.

Cattle ranchers and hog and poultry producers have felt financial stings due to a resulting cost hike on corn and feed since old and new crop corn, grain sorghum and soybeans prices have risen.

A transformation to corn isn’t the norm in neighboring Arkansas County and other locales where little cotton has been produced in recent years.

“Most of our farmers here are staying with rice,” said Arkansas County Agent Ken Adams of the extension service’s DeWitt office.

“We have only five or six farmers planting corn this year.”

While the Port of Pine Bluff is considered a perfect spot for an ethanol or biodiesel plant, alternative fuel endeavors aren’t without critics.

Many claim the costs of researching and producing biofuels are too high for the field — now federally subsidized — to be considered a viable alternative to gasoline.

The fact that those expenses carry over into other concerns — including feed for livestock producers — intensifies the opposition.