Corn and soybean growers adjust to changes
By SCOTT SIEVERS
News-Gazette Correspondent

   SAVOY – Before corn and soybeans fueled cars and trucks, before scientists synthesized seeds, before farmers in East Central Illinois competed with farmers in east central South America, there was Lloyd Phipps.
   Phipps of Champaign still grows crops on the Ford County land his father once farmed. He and many other area farmers have seen stunning changes in the business of corn and beans.
   "Back in 1934, I was at home on the farm at that time. My dad said, 'That field of corn is the best field of corn we've ever raised.' So we went out and husked it in the fall of the year by hand – we didn't have corn pickers at that time. It made 40 bushels to the acre. It was the best yield he'd ever gotten off that field," Phipps said. "This year I got 204-and-a-half bushels per acre off of that same land, that same field."
   Phipps knows the reason. "That's due to genetics, better (seed) varieties, better use of fertilizer, better use of herbicides, better use of pesticides," said the retired University of Illinois agricultural education professor and current chairman of the Champaign County Corn and Soybean Marketing Club.
   "If you go back to, say, 1930, we went out in the fields and selected open-pollinated corn for seed," Phipps said. "Today we've got many, many varieties of corn seed to select from. We have test trials on yields, droughts, resistance – all kinds of things.
   "So if you think you're going to have a dry year, you select your seed, you select your variety that will withstand some drought, and if you think you're going to have a plentiful rainfall, then you select the seed varieties that you think will get the maximum yield."
   Phipps isn't alone in parlaying high science into high yields. Tom Wilson has had similar success on his corn and soybean farm south of Sidney in Champaign County.
   "When I started in '68, probably getting 40-bushel (per acre) yields would have been a good yield on beans," Wilson said. But new, higher-yield seeds helped him set a record yield of 63 bushels per acre in 1999.
   Growing corn and soybeans has changed in other ways.
   Twenty or 30 years ago, "farmers weren't growing for any particular market. You can say they were growing to sell it to the (grain) elevator," said Marvin Paulson, a UI professor of agriculture engineering. "The mentality then was that all corn was alike. ... (Farmers) had very little knowledge as to how their corn was going to be used. Now people have a strong feeling that all corn is not alike. It's sort of looking more at what the consumer wants than we have in the past."
   In the past, all of Wilson's harvest went to a grain elevator. Now his corn is contracted to Frito-Lay. "It's food-grade white corn," Wilson said. "It goes into chips and, well, Frito-Lay products."
   Wilson has contracted to grow another specialty crop: soybeans geared to be turned into tofu – a bland, cheese-like food favored by vegetarians and popular in Asian cooking.
   "I did raise some of those a year ago, and they went straight to China or Japan," Wilson said. He harvested that crop in the fall of 1998 and pocketed the premium price but hasn't planted it since. "There was a good special then, nice, (but then) the market dried up."
   Phipps also has targeted the tofu market. "We contracted to grow 80 acres of those beans, and then we planted a certain variety," he said. "We had to keep those beans identity-preserved – in other words, we couldn't mix them with any other beans. We had to put them in a special bin, so that they wouldn't get mixed up with any other commercial beans because they have to have certain qualities if they're going to be used for food in Japan. We don't eat tofu in this country very much, but they do over there, see."
   Farmers keep learning about more versatile uses for their corn and soybeans than just food and animal feed.
   "I think we've proven in the last 20 or 30 years you can do amazing things with corn and soybeans," said Steve Sonka, director of the National Soybean Research Laboratory at the UI and a professor of agriculture, consumer economics and business administration.
   Scientists have been using the crops to make such items as cooking oil, corn syrup, newspaper ink, "peanuts" for protective packing and ingredients for paint and glue.
   "They're putting (soybeans) more in food products and crayons and things you don't even think about," said Bonnie Wurmnest, a bookkeeper who has worked at the Sibley grain elevator in Ford County for 20 years. "Maybe it makes people more aware when they go to buy something. Now they'll look at the label and say, 'Oh, this was made with corn or soybean, so yes, I ought to buy this because it's my product,' and you're helping yourself."
   "They even make candles out of soybeans," Phipps said. Sonka says a lighted soybean candle has "a nice scent to it."
   Researchers even are finding ways to make medicines out of corn and soybeans, Phipps said.
   However, Sonka said, "None of those things has made major market impact to the extent that ethanol has."
   Nearly half of all gasoline sold in Illinois contains 10 percent ethanol, according to the Illinois Corn Growers Association and the Illinois Corn Marketing Board. About 17 percent of the state's corn crop goes to produce ethanol. The state of Illinois vehicle fleet includes more than 350 Chevrolet Lumina and Ford Taurus autos that are fitted to run on fuel that's 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent unleaded gasoline.
   Researchers have used soybeans to produce a fuel called biodiesel, which is completely biodegradable and can run on unmodified diesel engines, according to the Illinois Soybean Association and Illinois Soybean Checkoff Board. A popular fuel blends regular diesel fuel with 20 percent biodiesel.
   Such alternative uses for corn and soybeans might rely on only a small share of the harvest, but they create new demands that can substantially lift sagging crop prices, Sonka said. However, he added, traditional food and feed markets are likely to remain "the 800-pound gorilla" for corn and soybean growers.
   Phipps, however, bets that the new uses will make a big difference.
   "I think the future of agriculture in the United States will be very dependent on the scientific development of additional uses of corn and soybeans," he said. "Agriculture will prosper if we're able to use more of the product in ethanol and biodiesel fuel."
   Tom Bollinger hopes Phipps is right. Bollinger grows corn and soybeans near Taylorville in Christian County. Nearly all of his crop goes to Archer Daniels Midland Co., the Decatur-based agribusiness conglomerate.
   "They use it for ethanol and corn sweeteners and feeds and several things – lots of different values in it," Bollinger said in February while attending the recent Midwest Ag expo at the Gordyville complex near Gifford.
   But with crop prices at a 25-year low and stiff competition
   from farmers in South America, Bollinger isn't sure soybean
   farming can survive in central Illinois.
   "I would say that it's very possible we won't be raising soybeans here in 10 years because of the pressure from Brazil," he said.
   That a corn-and-soybean farmer's world has entirely changed in the last few decades becomes clear just from adjustments in Phipps' daily routine.
   "We had a little run-up in soybean prices in early January because (of) the dry weather scare in South America, and then the soybeans started to go down. Any day it rains in Brazil, soybean prices this time of year will go down," Phipps said. "So the first thing I do every morning is check what the weather is in Brazil, Argentina, South Africa – see, those are big corn- and soybean-producing places in the world."

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