Obama’s choices for cabinet jobs have been surprising to date, … and maybe another one is coming. Yesterday Reuters reported that Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell confirmed that the state’s ag secretary, Dennis Wolff, was bing considered by the Obama transition team as a possible USDA Secretary. Wolff is a 6th generation dairy farmer, … and ethanol worries him. See below:

Ethanol jacking up cost of fertilizer
By ADAM WILSON, Reading Eagle
Published: Monday, April 16, 2007
Updated: Monday, April 16, 2007 1:00 AM EDT

With more than 90 million acres of farmland devoted to the profit-rich crop nationwide, the rush to grow corn for ethanol is squeezing Pennsylvania’s agricultural life blood, Dennis C. Wolff, Pennsylvania secretary of agriculture, said.
Instead of enjoying profits from record corn prices, the states predominantly dairy and livestock farmers are being hit with huge increases in production costs and relatively stagnant product payments, he said.

Wolff said there is a cruel irony in agriculture booming while also facing some of its toughest challenges in decades.

“With $4-per-bushel prices, crop farmers are jumping on the corn bandwagon,” he said. “But for every action there is a reaction.”

The reaction to the sudden addition of 12 million new acres of nutrient-hungry corn has been to boost prices for fertilizer, feed and soybeans vital products for all dairy and livestock farmers.

In Pennsylvania, corn slated for ethanol production covers only 1.4 million acres of an agricultural landscape dominated by dairy and livestock farming. In Berks County, only 50,000 acres are set aside for grain commodity, but that also is a tiny fraction of an overall farming picture dominated by milk, beef and poultry agriculture.

Statewide, including Berks, 65 percent of farmers’ revenue comes from corn-essential products such as milk, eggs, poultry, beef and pork, which means that what crop farmers are selling at record prices, our farmers are buying, Wolff said.
“Livestock farmers are looking at substantially higher costs,” he said. “But there has been no real upswing in product prices to offset that.”