Protecting Your Farm For the Next Generation

Proposed changes to taxes threaten the financial health of agriculture and the businesses that supply its inputs, transport its products and market its commodities.

National Sorghum Producers urges the Biden Administration and Members of Congress NOT to alter or eliminate the longstanding tax code provisions that are fundamental to the continuation and success of production agriculture.

NSP Supports Tax Code Provisions That:

• Preserve and Support Future New and Multi-Generational Operations
• Safeguard the Viability of All Family-Owned Agricultural Business Entities

Read a letter on tax code provisions supported by NSP.

The Ideal Crop to Be Part of the Climate Solution

Sorghum has many sustainable attributes, and our farmers are on the front lines mitigating and responding to the impacts of climate change while adapting and innovating to keep the lands they steward productive now and for future generations.

Sorghum Sustains by:

• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sequestering carbon. With its dense and robust root structure, sorghum translocates carbon deeper into soils.
• Through breeding innovations, sorghum farmers have successfully adopted no-till or minimum-till practices on approximately 75% of sorghum acres – meaning the sorghum associated carbon is sequestered for longer and deeper than in most cropping systems.
• Sorghum also plays a significant role in domestic biofuel markets, which according to EPA resulted in reduced GHG emissions equivalent to removing 17 million cars from the road.
• Sorghum is a water smart, climate resilient crop, and with the necessary resources to innovate and the incentives to bring those innovations to the market, we can accomplish far more.

Learn more about sorghum’s sustainable qualities here.

Learn more about research efforts to quantify sorghum’s sustainability metrics through KansCAT.

Read NSP’s Comments on the “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad”

Secure Consistent, Tangible Legislative Wins in the Farm Bill and Beyond

NSP represents sorghum farmers and the sorghum industry in Washington, D.C.

NSP works to protect important elements of the farm safety net like:

• Crop insurance
• Ensure meaningful treatment for sorghum when initiatives like the farm bill Price Loss Coverage (PLC) program are implemented
• Preserve funding for international marketing programs
  • Market Access Program (MAP)
  • Foreign Market Development (FMD) program

Additionally, NSP emphasizes the importance of securing appropriations for supporting research to improve sorghum agronomics and the profitability of growers.

Protect Farmers’ Interests in Federal Regulations

While crop improvement remains the Sorghum Checkoff’s top priority, NSP works to help get vital tools and technology off the regulatory agenda and into farmer’s fields.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has moved to a more precautionary approach over the last 10 years on pesticides, which set a dangerous precedent with significant implications for farmers across the United States. As a result, the current regulatory environment threatens to slow down the approval process of new technologies and significantly increase the cost of new chemistries to farmers.

To combat reliance on agenda-driven science, NSP emphasizes science-based approaches to registrations, including considering the benefits of crop protection tools and the impact that losing these technologies would have on our farms to regulators at the EPA, U.S. Department of Agriculture and beyond. NSP educates EPA administrators and staff whenever possible on in-field applications of crop protection products.

Department of Energy

NSP staff and board continue to be active with the Transportation Energy Resources from Renewable Agriculture (TERRA) program to support cutting edge research and were central to the effort to reauthorize the DOE agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, responsible for TERRA.
The reauthorization is for five years and the focus remains on technologies that incorporate state-of-the-art remote sensing that measure and analyze sorghum’s growth and development with unprecedented resolution, speed and accuracy. This technology will provide the sorghum industry with crop enhancements and information for years to come.

Adequate and growing soil carbon is important to both farm productivity and overall carbon intensity. Improving farm productivity adds to profitability, while lowering carbon intensity creates opportunities in sustainability-focused marketplaces like the California ethanol market. Projects in the ARPA-E Rhizosphere Observations Optimizing Terrestrial Sequestration (ROOTS) program aim to harness advanced breeding technologies to increase soil carbon by 50 percent while reducing N2O emissions (298 times more potent than CO2 in terms of environmental impact) by 50 percent and water usage by 25 percent. Of the $35 million dedicated to the ROOTS program, over $6 million is focused on sorghum. NSP was instrumental in shaping the direction of the program and demonstrating the need to quantify soil carbon gains from grain production.

Since 2015, ARPA-E sorghum research received almost $100 million for sorghum research at 13 institutions due to NSP’s involvement and discussions with DOE.

Environmental Protection Agency

The Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) remains the cornerstone of sorghum demand. NSP constantly works to protect it.

After a lengthy EPA approval process, a pathway to produce biodiesel from sorghum oil extracted at ethanol plants was approved in 2018. The effort required significant political and technical efforts, and NSP engaged stakeholders from multiple states and enlisted the help of key legislators and other government officials to move the process to completion.

The pathway will add value to current ethanol plants producing oil from sorghum, but most important to overall sorghum demand will mean certain plants not currently using sorghum will again be able to buy.

California Air Resources Board

NSP scored a major victory in the ongoing discussion related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions associated with sorghum ethanol. After continuous engagement of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and Argonne National Laboratory over the past several years, the updated Low Carbon Fuel Standard (LCFS), set to take effect January 1, 2019, will feature fertilizer application assumptions closely mirroring reality.

GHG emissions are important with regard to the LCFS because fewer emissions mean more value for fuels in the marketplace. The coming change will translate to much fewer assumed GHG emissions for sorghum ethanol and thus more value as well as higher demand for sorghum from ethanol plants. This could mean up to 41 cents per bushel more for the plants to use sorghum.

Promote Sensible Conservation Approaches Reflecting Sorghum’s Environmental Efficiency

Sorghum remains a critical crop for growers as an extremely drought tolerant, water-sipping crop that does a lot with only a small amount of water. NSP works with the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service to provide direct feedback on how sorghum fits in a legislative landscape increasingly focused on conservation, including on programs like the Conservation Stewardship Program.

Additionally, NSP, in conjunction with the Sorghum Checkoff, is partnering with organizations like Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever to promote sorghum as an environmentally efficient choice for producers.

Promote Sorghum as the Premier Energy Crop

Naturally drought-tolerant, sorghum gives ethanol producers in water-stressed areas a smart choice to help farmers preserve regional resources. A diverse crop, sorghum can be used for many different types of ethanol production. A starch source, sugar source and cellulose source all in a single species, sorghum can be used to produce ethanol using a multitude of platforms.

Sorghum and corn are interchangeable in starch-based ethanol production. A bushel of grain sorghum produces as much ethanol as a bushel of corn while using up to one-third less water in the plant growth process. Sorghum DDGS, a co-product of starch-based ethanol production, tend to be lower in fat and higher in protein than corn DDGS.

NSP works to protect its ethanol producer members and advocates for policies like the Renewable Fuels Standard that enable the ethanol industry to break the effective fuel market monopoly held by petroleum-based fuels, promoting cleaner energy and greater U.S. energy independence.

Advocate for Trade Policies That Increase Market Access and Promote Use of Sorghum in International Markets

NSP supports trade policies that keep markets open, level the playing field for U.S. sorghum producers and allows the industry to take advantage of non-traditional and opportunistic markets. NSP also encourages the Executive Branch to actively enforce trade measures and agreements.

In short, NSP wants U.S. sorghum to meet the world’s demand and have the market access to do so.