Ag Matters Spring 2019
Shaw Media photo/Dave Cook
A cute piglet was popular with the students who attended the 25th Bureau County Ag Fair held March 14 at the Bureau County Fairgrounds in Princeton, but the little porker seemed more intent on visiting with the pig in the next stall.
• A photographic farewell to a farm leader of impact............. 2 • LaMoille family has raised sheep for four decades.............. 6 • State’s new ag director talks trade, Farm Bill..................... 10
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AGRICULTURAL LEADERSHIP
Spring 2019
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Photo (left) courtesy Bureau County Farm Bureau; photo (right) from Shaw Media archives
LEFT: In a photo of Illinois Farm Bureau presidents, Harold Steele of rural Dover is second from the right. Steele served as president and CEO of both the Illinois Farm Bureau and Country Companies from 1970 to 1983. Steele died Feb. 1, 2019. RIGHT: Harold Steele (left) speaks while well-known farm broadcaster Max Armstrong (right) stands by.
Farewell to a farm leader of Steele Photographic tribute to Harold Steele, former president/CEO of the Illinois Farm Bureau
T
he Illinois Valley lost an outstanding farm leader and lifelong farmer when Harold B. Steele, 96, of Dover died on Feb. 1, 2019. Here are some of Steele’s agricultural accomplishments: • Named an Outstanding Young Farmer of Illinois in 1956. • Served as a board member and president of the Bureau County Farm Bureau from 1956 to 1968.
• Named a Master Farmer by Prairie Farmer magazine in 1970. • Elected to the position of president and CEO of both the Illinois Farm Bureau and Country Companies, serving from 1970 to 1983. • Served as a member of the American Farm Bureau from 1971 to 1983, serving on its executive committee in 1981 and 1982. • Received the University of Illinois Distinguished Service Award in 1984.
• Nominated by President George H.W. Bush, and confirmed as chairman of the board, to the Farm Credit Administration from 1989 to 1992. • Recognized by The Lincoln Academy of Illinois for his contributions to agriculture in 2000. Using photos supplied by the Bureau County Farm Bureau and from the archives of the Shaw Media, here is a photographic tribute to the memory of Mr. Steele.
Bureau County Farm Bureau photos
LEFT: Harold Steele and his wife, Margery (right), during a humorous moment on their rural Dover farm. Harold, a decorated Army veteran who served in the European Theater during World War II, and Margery met in Vienna, Austria, after the war and were married there in 1946. RIGHT: With a brightly painted barn in the background, Steele poses for a photo on his farm.
Bureau County Farm Bureau photo
Harold B. Steele as a young farmer at his farm near Dover. In 1956, Steele was named an Outstanding Young Farmer of Illinois.
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Bureau County Farm Bureau photo
Harold B. Steele (seated, right) appears at a press conference with John Block (seated, left), who served in the Reagan administration as U.S. secretary of agriculture.
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SALUTE TO AGRICULTURE BREAKFAST
The story of Marquis Energy’s ethanol plant Jason Marquis describes facility at annual ag event BY JIM DUNN jdunn@bcrnews.com PRINCETON — One of the leaders of Marquis Energy talked about the company’s ethanol plant in Hennepin at this year’s Princeton Area Chamber of Commerce’s Salute to Agriculture Breakfast. Jason Marquis, a 2004 graduate of Bureau Valley High School and 2008 graduate of the University of Illinois, was keynote speaker for the event, which attracted about 320 people to The Barn at Hornbaker Gardens on March 15. Marquis Energy’s Hennepin plant opened on April 20, 2008, after several years of construction. A second plant was built between 2014 and 2016. The company now produces 1.1 million gallons of fuel-grade ethanol a day.
See MARQUIS, Page 5
Shaw Media photo/Jim Dunn
Jason Marquis (standing, fourth from left) poses for a photo with FFA members after speaking at the Princeton Area Chamber of Commerce’s Salute to Agriculture Breakfast on March 15. Marquis detailed the history of Marquis Energy, a huge ethanol producer situated in Hennepin.
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• MARQUIS Continued from Page 4
Costs and revenue To operate an ethanol plant, 70 percent of the cost is corn, Marquis said, with other costs being electricity, natural gas, enzymes and labor, which amounts to two or three percent of operating costs. Regarding revenue, Marquis said 75 percent comes from the sale of ethanol, 20 percent from the sale of dried distillers grain, which is used for animal feed, and five percent from the sale of distilled crude corn oil. The plant, which employs about 250 people, takes in corn from about 560 trucks a day, six days a week. Marquis described what goes into the fermentation process, commenting, “It is a huge moonshining facility,” to the chuckles of the audience. He was quick to add that a little gasoline is mixed in with the finished ethanol product to make it unfit for
human consumption. Marquis said five members of the Marquis family are involved in leadership of the company. Mark Marquis is CEO, Tom Marquis is vice president and director of marketing, Alex Marquis handles most of the ethanol logistics and marketing of their products from the company’s Necedah, Wis., facility (north of Wisconsin Dells), and Ben Marquis is involved in information technology and multimedia for marketing and training. Marquis said the company’s leaders use science and data to drive their decision-making. Future plans are to isolate specific elements of dried distillers grain so they can be sold separately and help diversify the plant’s revenue. Along with finding new products, Marquis Energy hopes to find new markets for ethanol. Marquis noted that 10.8 percent of U.S. gasoline consists of ethanol, while in Brazil it is 50 to 60 percent, but in the rest of the world, it is less than two percent. Marquis pointed to China, which he said put more than 20 million new vehicles on the road in each of the past three years, as a potential market for ethanol exports for fuel. The U.S., by comparison, never puts more than 15 million new vehicles on the road in any given year. Tariffs and business climate will have an impact on the ethanol business, he said.
IN BRIEF NRCS announces cutoff dates for special initiatives CHAMPAIGN — State Conservationist Ivan Dozier announced the U.S. Department of Agriculture – Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) of Illinois will offer funding for the following Landscape Conservation Initiatives throughout the state: the Mississippi River Basin Healthy Watersheds Initiative and the National Water Quality Initiative. Producers who have agricultural, pasture, or forest land in an established initiative project area can apply for assistance through the Environmental Quality Incentives Program. Among the initiative projects where 2019 funding is available is Crow Creek West/Clear Creek, which includes portions of Bureau, LaSalle, Marshall, Putnam and Stark counties. To compete for funds in the initiative project areas, producers must complete and submit an application by one of two cutoff dates, April 19 and May 17. Contact a local NRCS field office to obtain more details.
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Marquis Energy, which has become a “powerhouse for renewable fuel production,” chose Hennepin for a number of strategic reasons, Marquis, the company’s chief operating officer, told the audience. First is the availability of corn. Marquis said in the eight or nine counties surrounding Hennepin, about 360 million bushels of corn are grown by farmers each year. Marquis Energy buys about one-third of that amount, 120 million bushels, to turn into ethanol. Second is the availability of natural gas. Pipelines that cross the vicinity offer several options to buy this fuel. Third is electricity. The nearby Hennepin power plant means electricity for ethanol production is consistently available. Marquis said Illinois’ deregulated electricity market is also an advantage. Fourth is the local and regional highway network such as Interstate 180, which goes right to Hennepin, Interstate 80 and Interstate 39, for corn to be hauled to the plant, and products to be hauled away. Fifth is the availability of rail transportation, particularly because railroads here offer connections to the East Coast, where millions of people in need of energy live.
The sixth reason is the availability of water transportation. Barges that go down the Illinois and Mississippi rivers to the Gulf of Mexico allow for cost-efficient hauling of Marquis Energy’s products. Marquis said 60 percent of the ethanol the Hennepin plant produces is shipped by barge, as is 90 percent of dried distillers grain, a byproduct of ethanol production that Marquis Energy also sells. Put it all together, and Hennepin proved to be an excellent location for producing ethanol.
LIVESTOCK PRODUCTION
Slutz family has raised sheep for four decades Longtime breeder sees changes in industry over time
Spring 2019
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head of breeder sheep, mostly ewes, in 15 different states from Montana to Georgia to Maine. We had about 90 lambs last year and only about 15 percent go to market. We sell mainly to breeders, while our son sells some of his sheep to 4-H’ers,” he said. “We enjoy it,” he added. “We don’t go golfing, hunting or fishing.” Slutz’s son, Brad, lives in Kane County, and raises sheep there with their grandchildren, Jaedyn and Drake. Brad met his wife, Carol, at a county fair when she was showing sheep. “You have to enjoy raising sheep,” he said. “it is not a one-person project. It is a family project.” Another change for the Slutz family over the years is installing barn cameras to help, especially during lambing times to see how the ewes are doing. Now, instead of waking up in the middle of the night, getting dressed and trudging out to the barn to check on the ewes, Slutz can just pull up a camera feed on his tablet inside the house. Tom and Connie Slutz also have a donkey, Emma, which they use as their “guard dog.” “I don’t want to keep a dog tied up, and guard dogs tend to roam,” he said. “Guard dogs would roam uptown, which is not good for us. We had one lamb killed three years ago by a coyote, and that is when we decided to get a donkey. We had numerous dogs over the years, but no guard dogs.”
BY LYLE GANTHER For Ag Matters
Lyle Ganther/For Ag Matters
Tom Slutz of LaMoille holds a newborn Shropshire lamb at City Limits Sheep Farm.
LAMOILLE — Tom Slutz of LaMoille has seen many changes in the sheep industry in the 40-plus years he has been raising sheep at City Limits Sheep Farm and showing them at fairs and shows. “Sheep breeds are smaller in size with more meat and muscle than they used to be,” he said. “The industry has changed from requiring sheep to have wool on them to having slick-sheared sheep.” It used to take 1 or 2 hours per sheep to prepare them for a show, trimming their wool with hand trimmers, compared to about 30 minutes each for slick-sheared sheep. “When our kids were small, we would go to 15-17 county fairs, three state fairs and the national show,” he said. “We made money for the kids to be able to keep the flocks. Now, we go to maybe two county fairs, two state fairs and the national show.” The Slutz family used to have four breeds of sheep, but now they have one breed (Shropshire). “We sell our sheep nationally. We sold about 40
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AG MATTERS| Spring 2019 Photos by Lyle Ganther/For Ag Matters
LEFT: Tom Slutz of LaMoille pets his guard donkey, Emma, at City Limits Sheep Farm in LaMoille. RIGHT: Tom Slutz of LaMoille stands by some of the many banners his family has won for showing their Shropshire sheep at county fairs and livestock shows over the past 40 years.
• SHEEP Continued from Page 6 The Slutz family artificially inseminates about half of their ewes each year to better control the length of lambing season from
about 10 weeks to now about one week or two. “Artificial insemination is very costly, and lot of steps are taken during this process,” he said. “It’s not done by the average sheep farmer.” Last year was one of the best
years for the Slutz family in selling and showing their sheep, especially at the two-day national show in Louisville, Ky. “We won in the junior and open show with the same ram and same ewe, which is difficult because you have two different judges and two
different opinions,” he said. “We also had the superior champion among 14-15 different breeds in Wisconsin, the first time we have done that in a major show. We also had the champion ram and ewe at Sedalia, Missouri,” Slutz said.
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COMMENTARY
Big Ag playing a bigger and bigger role with farmers ‘Town boy’ reflects on changes he sees down on the farm
B
ased on what I hear from atop my perch in rural central Illinois, I worry that my farmer friends may become but serfs to Big Agriculture. That is, farmers provide the labor, soils and risk in service to a very few global chemical and other ag companies. The farmers must buy their inputs from these few companies, yet the companies call most of the shots, it seems. I grew up a “town boy” in a tiny farm town; never knew much about ag, still don’t. After a career away, I moved back to my hometown. I love my farmer friends and appreciate the bounty of American agriculture, so I yearn to be proved wrong about all this. The following is what I observe and also hear from my farmer friends at the back table at Connie’s
UNDERSTANDING ILLINOIS Jim Nowlan Country Kitchen in my town. The farmers buy seeds, but don’t own them; they cannot plant with seed they have harvested. They used to own and work on their equipment; now farmers often lease because it’s too expensive to buy. Well, you say, at least farmers can decide what crops they want to plant. Yes, to paraphrase Henry Ford, they can plant any crops they want as long as they are corn and soybeans. That is because nothing else is protected by subsidized government crop insurance, which includes some price protection. Thus, the bankers who hold the loans on land and for spring planting needs insist that the farmers buy this insurance, which also indirectly protects Big Ag. Down the road a piece, my friends Lyndon and Kymberley Hartz farm
15 acres of greens, vegetables, fruits and more in a sustainable way. They produce $15,000 per acre in product each year, 11 months a year, versus about $800 per for corn or beans, yet the couple are offered no government risk insurance. What really sets me off on this topic is dicamba, a herbicide from German global giant BASF. Dicamba kills all broadleaf plants in its path — except soybeans from seeds from another German company, Bayer/Monsanto, and a couple of other seed giants. Their seeds are genetically modified to block dicamba. Unfortunately, the spray from applying dicamba sometimes drifts over nearby farmers’ fields, where it kills their crops as well — unless of course those farmers also plant Bayer-Monsanto seeds. I heard a recent NPR report in which a farmer said his local seed salespeople were marketing these dicamba-protective seeds — as the only defense against dicamba! “Buy from us, or else!” If there is anything to this, it illustrates the word predatory.
Further, I have an agronomist friend who ran a successful soil-testing business for decades. My friend provides this background: After helping wage World War II by building huge stocks of munitions, chemical companies had to look elsewhere to develop uses for their chemicals. They turned to pharmaceuticals and agriculture. Since then the companies, consolidating along the way into a handful of behemoths, have directed their research — and that of our land grant ag research schools — toward how to use more of their chemicals to grow ever more bountiful crops. But my agronomist friend worries that we have transformed our natural biosystem, with its rich, water-retaining organic matter, into unnatural chemical factories. As a result, organic matter in the soil is down, critical water retention rates are therefore also down, and the once-spongy soils are now susceptible to compacting into concrete-like surfaces.
See NOWLAN, Page 10
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State’s new ag director talks trade, Farm Bill BY PETER HANCOCK Capitol News Illinois phancock@capitolnewsillinois.com SPRINGFIELD — After 16 years in the Illinois General Assembly, former state Sen. John Sullivan is settling into his new role in state government, that of acting director of the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Sullivan was tapped by Gov. J.B. Pritzker to head the state’s agriculture agency, succeeding the former director, Raymond Poe. Sullivan also served on the transition team with a group of other officials focusing on agriculture and rural development. Speaking to reporters during a news conference at the agency’s headquarters on Jan. 28, Sullivan said that experience on the transition team taught him about the diversity of agricultural interests in the state. “When I talk about the diversity, we had folks representing urban ag, we had folks obviously from all the different commodity groups, we had rural development folks, we had economic development folks,” Sullivan said. “And everybody, when we made our introductions, we laid out what our goals were for the group, everybody put their own issues aside and
• NOWLAN Continued from Page 8 Maybe drenching the soil in multiple chemicals every year is for the best. Yet, there are consequences; note the expanding aquatic dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, spawned by nitrogen fertilizer runoff in the Midwest, which ultimately reaches the Mississippi. Farmers have always been vulnerable to the vicissitudes of weather, market speculators, supply-and-demand volatility. So, maybe most farmers appreciate having others make all the big decisions for them. Yet there is much media chatter about how farmer profits are down
Capitol News Illinois photo by Peter Hancock
Former state Sen. John Sullivan was appointed by Gov. J.B. Pritzker to lead the Illinois Department of Agriculture. tried to move forward with a plan that we can present to the governor that would improve agriculture, and we expanded it to not only include agriculture but rural development.” Sullivan, a Rushville Democrat who represented the 47th Senate District from 2003 to 2017, is no stranger to the agriculture community in Illi-
or negative, while Big Ag prices for inputs, as well as their profits, have soared in recent years. I have questions, not answers: Can and should farmers share more in the fruits of their labor? Can American farmers create big cooperatives that would own input production and share profits with farmer-owners? Should the handful of global Big Ag companies be broken up? What is the future for the yeoman farmer? And whither are we tending with all our chemicals, and with our soils? Maybe we will conclude that all is hunky-dory. Yet this town boy worries about the future for his friends at the back table at Connie’s Country Kitchen.
nois. He and his family have operated a family farm in west-central Illinois, and he has been involved in a family-owned auction and real estate business. Now as he prepares to lead a state agency charged with regulating and promoting the state’s agriculture industry, Sullivan said three major issues have already risen to the surface. “I’d say number one, broadband out in the rural areas of the state was just an issue that came up over and over and over again,” Sullivan said. “I can speak to that from our own home and family location as well as our own business. Trying to get high-speed internet is very frustrating out in the rural areas of the state, and it is absolutely a hindrance to trying to do business. “Other areas, hemp was certainly on everybody’s radar,” Sullivan continued, referring to the state’s recent action to legalize the production of industrial hemp. “I certainly feel like there’s going to be a lot of opportunities there. “I’d say the third area would be ag education,” he continued. “We had a lot of folks from the education field that were on our panel. Certainly, offering programs in-person or online, and that gets back to the high-speed internet.”
See SULLIVAN, Page 11
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Sullivan also responded to questions about the overall state of agricultural production today, both in Illinois and nationally, especially in light of new trade tensions between the United States and China. “We spent literally decades and decades building those trade relationships with China and other countries, and to have, so to speak, the rug pulled out from under us with regard to trade,” Sullivan said, “we’re going to have to turn around and redevelop and rebuild the trust with those other countries and those organizations.” Sullivan also said the recently passed federal Farm Bill should provide producers with a degree of regulatory certainty for the next few years, allowing them to make planting and investment decisions. But he said all that could change if there is another partial shutdown of the federal government like the month-long shutdown that just ended last week. During that shutdown, he said, state agriculture officials were forced to step in and fill the void of federal workers to make sure health and safety inspections were still being conducted at slaughterhouses and meat processing plants. “In the big picture, if there’s
another shutdown, we actually had some discussions (recently) about coming up with some ways that we can make sure it does not impact farmers and producers here in the state,” Sullivan said. The state’s agriculture industry also stands to be affected by Gov. Pritzker’s vow to put a renewed focus on environmental protection and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions in Illinois. “Last week, the department put on a program with producers around the state that were trying to reduce soil erosion,” Sullivan said. “We’re trying to reduce nutrient runoff, trying to conserve resources. I think that’s a small step that we as a department can take.” In January, Pritzker announced that his administration was joining the U.S. Climate Alliance, a bipartisan group of states that have vowed individually to pursue the goals of greenhouse gas reductions outlined in the 2016 international pact known as the Paris Agreement, despite President Donald Trump’s announced plan to pull out of that agreement. And while Pritzker’s comments at the time focused mainly on carbon emissions from the state’s power plants, Sullivan acknowledged that the state’s livestock industry, also another major source of greenhouse gas emissions, could be asked to take part in the effort.
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