August 2, 2007

Minnesota lawmaker to introduce bill on grain storage

US Senator Norm Coleman will introduce a bill called Farm Storage for America's Energy Future to further broaden the participation of Midwest grain farmers in the federal loan programme that will create financing to build storage for their production.

According to the Minnesota Corn Growers Association, the bill's key provisions are the following: to expand the loan payoff period from the current seven years to 20 years; switch the loan instrument from including a first mortgage in favour of an "an egress agreement for the collateralized equipment or structure;" and remove the loan limit in favour of rules that allow the financing to cover the construction of storage that can hold three years of farm's average production, minus the storage that already in control of the farm operator.

Coleman said for years, farmers have stored huge volumes of grain in the ground that gets rotten where it could have been used for biofuels. The bill, he said, will hopefully be the answer to maintaining crop quality with efficient grain storage to accommodate the booming ethanol industry as well as for livestock feed. Coleman says this "legislation fixes the FSA storage loan program so it can meet Minnesota's growing grain storage needs."