Local Specials
(2008-09-23)
Niota-based farmer Jamie Harman pulls double duty on a Saturday afternoon: getting his combine ready for the upcoming harvest, and looking after his two daughters Amanda and McKinzee.
That crop is corn. It can be found in soda pop, which, like many other food products, contains high-fructrose corn syrup. It's a sugary substance derived from run-of-the-mill field corn. But before corn is turned into a soft drink it can travel as far as half-way around the world.
Niota-based farmer Jamie Harman produces corn on 1,600 acres of land alongside his father and brother. He takes almost all of his grain to the closest elevator in nearby Nauvoo. He says they consistently offer a competitve price. That grain elevator will turn around and sell to processing plants and other buyers, some as far away as Japan.
There is a processing plant in nearby Keokuk, but Harman says he will likely continue to haul to Nauvoo. "To go any farther away than that would take more trucking expense, and their (Keokuk's) bid isn't that high to justify that."
Harman says he would take his product to a processing plant if there was one closer to him, but he does not see that happening anytime soon. "I would assume as long as the river is here, there won't be anything real close. I would think that would be in the more central part of the state away from the river and (railroads)."
Harman is not alone in his assessment. Dale Grifiths is president of Colusa Elevator Company. It operates the facility along the Mississippi in Nauvoo, where Harman takes his corn. He says for the most part, travel by water is the most efficient. "It is cheaper right now for me to take corn and put it on a barge for New Orleans than it is to find a railcar to go down to west Texas feed lots."
Grifiths says the U.S. grows more corn than it can use, which is one reason he does a lot of business with Japanese buyers "They have a tremendous demand for corn and they don't have the arable land we do," he says. "If we didn't have an export market, we wouldn't need to have as many acres of corn grown. If we had as many acres of corn without an export market, the price would go down."
Grifiths says there are times when his company might sell to a local processor, but only if the price is right.
Of course, some of that corn does end up in such a place, perhaps at Roquette in Keokuk. Roquette is a multi-national corporation that buys corn and turns it into an array of products, including high fructrose corn syrup. While a Roquette spokeswoman declined to say who her company sells its products to, it's possible some of it goes to soft drink makers such as Pepsi. A Pepsi spokesman also would not say where the company gets its corn syrup from, but again it's possible some of it came from Roquette, perhaps even the Keokuk plant.
Pepsi is made at various independent bottlers across North America and shipped to local distribution centers such as Refreshment Services Pepsi of Macomb. Sales manager Ted Kern says products they sell are made by Wis-Pak in Quincy, and shipped to gas stations, restaurants and grocery stores within a 60-mile radius of Macomb.
So can soft drinks be thought of as a local food product? Reporter Nick Wilkens took a walk around Macomb and asked people such as WIU Professor Jack Bailey. "I suppose in a sense (it could be thought of as local) but I'm not sure how that's allocated nationally. I suppose it would depend on how they buy it and process it, and I'm not sure that would be local," says Bailey.
Others, like Kelly Kempiak and Brittany Dowrick, say they don't think of soft drinks such as Pepsi as a local product because they see Pepsi trucks and think of it as a large multi-national company -- which it is.
It does not end with soft drinks. Corn can be found in other types of sweeteners, plastics and cosmetics. It's also used as an animal feed, which means your steak, pork chop or chicken breast might have also originated in western Illinois. But it just might have gone on a trip before making it to your plate. © Copyright 2009, wium
