Column: A Wisconsin corn mill

By Scott Walker, M.D.

Dear Neighbors,

Happily, humans grow enough food to feed the world.  Sadly, we grow more food than hungry people can afford.  Farmers share a commitment to grow that food.  To guide them on their way in that commitment is the hard, cold fact that they have to make a living and sustain the soil for the future.

Any government will fall that allows its people to go hungry (don’t ask me to explain North Korea).  Our government has kept food prices low by subsidizing agriculture in multiple ways, including direct payments to farmers (“price loss coverage” and “Agriculture Risk Coverage”).  

Subsidies for crop insurance make it cheaper for farmers to get crop insurance and stay in business through bad years.  One of the principal price supports for corn is a government regulation (is that a bad word?) requiring the use of a large amount of ethanol in gasoline production every year.  What would happen if this government regulation went away?  

Well, if the producers see it the way analysts do, there is no market advantage to using ethanol now, at its current price.  If the price of corn were to increase to accommodate the loss of those federal subsidies, growers would need to raise prices by forty to eighty cents per bushel, to stay afloat.  The refineries are not going to pay another dime for corn if they aren’t required to do so. 

For that matter, if the coming trade war drops the price of crude oil, while corn prices stay the same, the sensible refineries will again choose to eliminate ethanol.  Who is going to buy our corn crop, if one-third is no longer going to ethanol?

Southwest Wisconsin needs a corn mill.  A state of the art, 100 ton per day corn mill could convert one-half of Crawford County’s annual corn crop into masa flour, for use in making corn flour dishes, as well as the snack chips that Americans consume endlessly.  (During my time in rural Alaska, I visited some villages whose village store ran short on produce and dairy due to bad weather.  But they always had snack chips and pop.)  And I do mean the current corn crop:  while the Mexican market prefers white corn, the wet grind masa flour process works perfectly well on field (“dent”) corn, which is fine for many consumers.  

Currently, most American-produced masa is exported and that should continue.  During these times of troubled trade, foodstuffs should cross the border most easily; humanity, if nothing else, dictates.  

For human consumption, it’s cheaper to ship masa than it is to ship corn.  Also, much of the world consumes corn flour as a dietary staple.  Yet three quarters of America’s food aid in the past has been wheat.  Let’s make masa flour, from Crawford County corn, an alternative for a greater number of our foreign aid recipients.  When addressing the domestic market, a new mill will offer a competitive price and the cache of being local.

A big construction project and another market for our farmers’ corn. Are there other benefits to hosting a corn mill?  Yes indeed!  Stay tuned.

Part one of a two part series.