Consolidation, technology expected to change farming

Consolidation, technology and new uses for corn and soybeans will change the face of Iowa agriculture over the next decade.

That prediction was expressed Friday by panelists at an Iowa City Area Chamber of Commerce Economics of Agriculture breakfast at Hills Bank & Trust in Coralville.

Mark Stutsman, precision ag agronomist with Eldon C. Stutsman Inc. of Hills, said it won't be long before an Iowa corn farmer will annually plant and harvest between 25,000 and 40,000 acres, up from an average 350 acres today.

“Consolidation will follow suit with seed, fertilizer and equipment suppliers,” Stutsman said. “We're not many years away from having four or five John Deere dealers in the state of Iowa and four or five cooperatives.

“We will no longer have corn and soybean producers. We're going to have producers of proteins, starches, oils, sugars, vitamins, enzymes, fuel and fiber - all with a specific end use that's determined before the seed is put in the ground.”

Stutsman said anhydrous ammonia, a source of nitrogen for corn made with natural gas, likely will be phased out within a decade as corn plants - like soybeans - draw nitrogen from the atmosphere. Applications of insecticides and fungicides will no longer be necessary as seed trait manipulation continues.

Stutsman said corn and soybeans will be planted with 100 percent of the crop under contract to a processor. He said corn byproducts and forage will be fed to livestock because the grain will be too valuable to bypass the human pipeline.

“Not many years from now, much like our predator drones flying over Pakistan, our tractors will be driven from the living room,” Stutsman said. “With an exploding world population and the rising personal income of developing nations, it's going to drive a huge increase in demand for protein.

“I think food will become more important than our political party, fossil fuels, military might or material possessions.”

Mike Klauke, manager of the Syngenta seed plant in Lone Tree, said corn yields will need to keep rising above 300 bushels an acre to feed a projected world population of 9 billion people by 2050.

“We will have to feed 2 billion additional people or 2.5 million per day with the same amount of land,” Klauke said. “We need to do it without ruining the environment and we need to find innovative ways to use marginal land. Access to water will be a major concern because crops require a tremendous amount of water to grow.”

Jeff Quint, owner of Cedar Ridge Vineyards, Winery and Distillery in Swisher, said micro distilleries will provide a new value-added use for Iowa's corn crop.

“As the corn state, we should be an exporter of distilled spirits, rather than a net importer,” Quint said. “Our Clearheart vodka is 90 percent Iowa corn and 10 percent apples, which come from an orchard near Vinton.

“Our Clearheart gin is a 100 percent Iowa product, except for the botanicals in it.”