IL Corn Pictures Advancements in Farm Policy

Jul 26, 2024

By Haley Bickelhaupt

As Maddie Toman sat down in the Longworth Capitol building for her last Congressional visit of the day, a photo in the nearby display case caught her eye.

The picture featured the Representative, whose office she sat in, standing outside the Capitol with students in corduroy blue jackets. She smiled as the photo made her feel quite at home and comfortable speaking up about her FFA and agricultural experiences on Capitol Hill.

A senior at Midland High School, Toman was one of 28 Illinois FFA major officers and section presidents to represent farmers alongside IL Corn in Washington D.C. this July. The IL Corn Growers Association (ICGA) and FFA leaders met with 18 Congressional offices and attended the National Corn Growers Association’s annual Corn Congress.

“It was really neat, seeing her with us in the photo,” Toman said. “It helped me understand we do have support and they know what we do. It was kind of a full circle moment.”

During a hot week in D.C. IL Corn directors, staff, and FFA leaders brought the association's 2024 policy priorities before congressional staff. ICGA articulated a well-written farm bill including crop insurance provisions for corn farmers is of utmost importance to its membership. Additionally, support for trade through increased funding for the Foreign Market Development and Market Access Programs are also non-negotiables for IL Corn.

Ethanol and the preservation of the internal combustion engine were key areas of concern for the association. ICGA requested Congressmen sign on to the Next Generation Fuels Act, and join the fight for cleaner, less expensive transportation. The bipartisan piece of legislation gives renewable fuels the opportunity to decarbonize travel and preserve ethanol demand.

Lastly, ICGA points to the energy bill as a way to combat the Environmental Protection Agency’s multipollutant emissions standards. The EPA rule, electrifying American’s vehicle fleet, is currently being challenged in court by ICGA, a large coalition of oil representatives.

ICGA President Dave Rylander said corn farmers throughout the country continue to have a voice in legislative and legal circles. “Our coalition against the EPA’s emission standards puts front and center the concerns of real Americans. We are pushing back against a one-way solution and highlight biofuel’s role in supporting our rural economies and a lower carbon future.”

Timing is critical in politics and IL Corn was well positioned to request support for lock and dam improvements during the fly-in. Prior to the association’s meetings in D.C., the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee passed the Waterway Resources Development Act (WRDA). ICGA supports two funding requests included in the Senate’s bill.

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Video: The 15-Year Bet Behind Every New Variety!

Canada is trying to decide how much agricultural research capacity it can afford to lose. Brian Rossnagel believes the better question is whether the country can afford to rebuild it.

The longtime barley and oat breeder makes the case with a simple fact about his profession: the consequences of today’s decisions may not become visible for 10 or 15 years.

“Pick the right parents. That’s the biggest thing,” Rossnagel says. “If you pick the wrong parents, you’re not going to get anywhere—and you don’t know that until 10 years, 15 years later.”

That warning carries particular weight as Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada moves to reduce spending and streamline parts of its science operations. The department’s 2026–27 plan anticipates the loss of approximately 665 positions by 2028–29 and says some research will be reduced where capacity exists in academia or industry. AAFC says the changes will make its science operations more cost-effective over the long term.

For Canada’s seed industry, Rossnagel’s career illustrates what is at stake.

This fall, the retired University of Saskatchewan breeder will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame. During his 35-year career at the Crop Development Centre, he helped develop more than 100 barley and oat varieties, including CDC Austenson—one of Western Canada’s most widely grown feed barleys. His induction recognizes not only those varieties, but the collaboration and research system that made them possible.

Rossnagel is quick to emphasize that none of it was the work of one person.

“The first thing I thought about was all the other people who contributed to whatever success I and my program had over the years,” he says. “We know that it’s not an individual who does this. It’s a group—a team.”

That team extends well beyond the breeder whose name appears beside a variety. It includes technicians, pathologists, quality specialists, statisticians, regional testing sites, seed growers and industry partners. It also includes the breeders who came before and those who will carry the germplasm forward.

CDC Fraser barley, for example, moved through three breeding careers. Its parents came from Brian Harvey’s program. Rossnagel advanced the material after Harvey retired, and Aaron Beattie later guided it through registration and release.

That kind of handoff is normal in plant breeding. The person who makes the original cross may never see the resulting variety reach farmers.

It also explains why lost research capacity cannot simply be switched back on when budgets improve.

“If you shut it off, it’s very, very difficult—and particularly costly—to start it up again,” Rossnagel says. “If you have to start from scratch, it’s going to be at least 10 years before anybody notices whether you’re getting anything done or not.”

The concern is not simply how many experimental lines Canada can process. Modern equipment, statistical tools and genetic technologies allow today’s breeding programs to evaluate tens of thousands of lines—far more than Rossnagel could handle when he entered the field in the early 1970s.

But efficiency and automation do not generate every idea.

“If you pare back down, and instead of having six or seven individual scientists concentrating on wheat breeding, you go down and say three people could handle all this, well, that’s half the ideas gone,” he says. “Particularly if you happen to lose the three people who had the really neat and innovative ideas, boy, that’s a problem.”

It is a timely distinction for Canadian agriculture. Consolidating programs may preserve the volume of material moving through a system, at least initially. It may not preserve the diversity of thinking, regional knowledge or willingness to pursue unconventional crosses.

That regional knowledge matters because Canadian agriculture is not one uniform production environment. A variety suited to southern Alberta may face different disease, moisture and maturity pressures than one grown in Manitoba, Ontario or Atlantic Canada.

“Agriculture is applied biology,” Rossnagel says. “Biology, all around the Earth, moves from the poles to the equator. It does not move from Newfoundland to B.C. like politics do.”