Murphy raised his hogs as they had been raised down the centuries: in a mud pit sprinkled with plenty of corn feed.
That means farmers will be devastated and consumers could see higher prices at the grocery store for corn, soy and wheat products, as well as meat from animals raised on corn feed.
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Still, the group this week joined other animal producers in calling for a reduction in corn ethanol production mandates, saying pricing and availability of corn for feed is threatened by the combination of a small corn crop this year and the government mandate, which will use about four of every 10 bushels of corn.
Livestock farmers who use corn to feed their animals could see higher costs, but most have contracts with processors who provide their feed grains.
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Problem is you guys force cows to eat corn instead of grass, I even remember as a kid during my first vacations in the US when some waitress at an upscale restaurant was bragging about their AAA grade corn-feed beef steak, which was only slightly less chewy than leather.
Additionally, heavily subsidized corn and soy feed to livestock contribute to massive deforestation in the developing world.
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Walking through his lab a decade ago, he had an epiphany: He envisioned an entire process by which he could feed corn sugar to lactobacilli that would exude ideal, highly concentrated lactic acid.
It seems that the use of (heavily subsidized) corn as a cheap universal feed for chickens, for cows, and even for fish, not to mention the corn products that seep into candy, soft drinks, cheese, and almost everything else, has made that particular package of starch nearly inescapable.
The company needs to raise prices to offset rising commodity costs, namely the corn it uses for feed.
But since corn is used to feed livestock, any increase in its price will also cause the price of beef, pork, poultry and dairy products to rise.
Weather isn't just about what to wear, although that matters, but about livestock: hay supplies, feed and corn, deicers and water flow, shelter from the wind and wet.
Soya beans and corn make oil and animal feed, as well as ethanol, to some controversy.
Regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and UK Food Safety Agency have established recommended maximum fumonisin levels in food and feed products made from corn.
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They eat corn, cereals, wheat and other feed grains and they eat quite a lot.
Recently these scientists concocted a strain of corn that will be fit for animal feed even after its starches have been harvested for ethanol.
Of course, higher corn and grain prices produce ag losers, too, as feed costs climb.
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Take maize (corn, to Americans) which is used both to make ethanol and to feed livestock.
Increasing feed costs, in combination with withering grasslands in the Great Plains and Corn Belt regions, are prompting ranchers to downsize beef and dairy herds.
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Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican, says giving up 20 percent of America's corn crop to make ethanol has unintended consequences, like spiking the cost of livestock feed.
GreenShift is working on technology to feed carbon dioxide to algae and then harvest the algae as if they were corn stalks.
After beef cattle have grazed on pasture land for a year or two, they are usually sent to feed-lots, where they are fattened on a diet of hay and corn to prepare for slaughter.
Eventually, says Gruber, his fermenting process will be adapted to use corn stalks or wheat straw--known as stover and now sold as cheap animal feed or plowed back into soil--to further knock down the cost.
One of its brands of insect-resistant corn, StarLink, was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration only for use in animal feed.
Because corn is increasingly used for ethanol production, it has decoupled from historical livestock cycles and changed the margin relationship between feed costs and the sale of livestock products.
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