Can The Pork Industry Compete Against The Ethanol Industry?
If you are a pork producer, how are you going to survive the ethanol onslaught? Cowboys can feed distillers’ grains with a less expensive ration to send beef to market. That is not an opportunity for the pork industry, which has to buy corn, and will have to bid for it against ethanol plants where prices are buoyed by the price of oil. So the question is, how will the pork industry survive competing against ethanol for corn? It may be the pork industry that puts up some major challenges to US ethanol policy. Distiller’s grains are a challenge in a hog ration. There is a sufficient amount of energy, with lower phosphorus content, but amino acids pose a problem and there is a quality variation among suppliers. So most pork producers will opt for the corn constant and have to pay the bill to get consistency. At Purdue, Livestock Marketing Specialist Chris Hurt says our current pork market environment will collide with the ethanol bandwagon and it will not be pretty. It is all summarized i
