Corn stocks may be a little tight right now, but National Corn Growers Association CEO Rick Tolman thinks that is probably a short term situation
“Still our biggest challenge is that we can overproduce the market,” Tolman said during an interview after a presentation at the National Ethanol Conference on Monday. “Farmers respond to incentives, there’s an incentive right now to produce. I can guarantee we’ll have a big crop in 2011.”
Tolman makes that confident prediction after an informal survey of the NCGA farmer board members, who are mostly ahead of the game right now as far as being ready for spring planting, compared to where they were a year ago. “We had a great fall, farmers got their crop out of the field, they did their fall tillage, they did their application of inputs. We’re coming into the season in about as perfect a condition as you can have,” he said, adding that odds favor significant yields in 2011 and a larger carryover in 2012.
Tolman says NCGA is in the midst of a study commissioned by Informa Economics to look out to 2020 with different scenarios, including one in which there would be 20 billion gallons of corn ethanol produced. “The key point here is, even under a 20 billion gallon scenario, we see stocks continuing to grow because of this productivity equation,” Tolman said during his presentation.
Listen to or download my interview with Rick Tolman here: Rick Tolman Interview
Listen to or download Tolman’s presentation: Rick Tolman NEC Presentation