Mississippi Farmers Dealing with Increased Crop Production

Mississippi Farmers Dealing with Increased Crop Production

As a result of high gas prices and the need for alternative fuels many Mississippi farmers found themselves trying to get ahead of the alternative fuel market with an increase in corn production to produce ethanol, at the present that doesn't seem to be the best idea. Due to the increase in corn production figures from the previous year have tripled while the adoption of ethnanol as a fuel source has not yet caught on as it was anticipated. This has left many Mississippi farmers with an excess corn crop that many are finding difficult to; store, move, and sell, and this is not isolated to the State of Mississippi as stated in this article from the Mississippi Paper the Clarion-Ledger:

Farmers and grain elevators have been struggling to keep up with an unusually high crop production this harvest season, facing increased trucking traffic and long waits to store corn and soybeans.

The large acreage has had the Mississippi Department of Transportation worried about the potential for strain on state highways and bridges as a huge volume of grain moves through the region's marketing system.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has predicted the country will produce its largest corn crop ever. The state's corn acreage almost tripled to 980,000 acres from 2006 to 2007.

From what the article states the moving and storing of such an excess of crops causes damage to highway infrastructure and also stagnates the production of alternative crops that could have been cultivated instead.