Soil & Mulch Producer News - May/June 2010

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Vol. IV No. 3

May  / June 2010

NEWS Photo courtesy of Mulch Mfg., www.mulchmfg.com.

Serving Soil, Mulch, Compost, & Biofuel Professionals

Attention Readers !

Are you looking for Products, Equipment or Services for your business? If so, please check out these leading companies advertised in this issue: Bagging Systems Hamer LLC - pg 16 Premier Tech Chronos - pg 4 Rethceif Packaging - pg 6 Businesses For Sale Coldwell Banker Commercial - pg 13 Colorants For Mulch Colorbiotics - pg 15 Florida Coastal Colors - pg 12 Compost & Wood Waste For Sale Litco International - pg 16 The Pallet Shop - pg 13 Compost Mixers & Spreaders Roto-Mix LLC - pg 14 Compost Turners Turn and Screen - pg 11 Shredders, Grinders, Chippers & Screening Systems Allu Group Inc - pg 18 Duratech - pg 5 Earth Saver Equipment - pg 11 Hogzilla - pg 11 Komptech - pg 4 Morbark Inc. - pg 2 Peterson - pg 19 REMU - pg 20 (back cover) Screen USA - pg 14 Universal Equip. Mfg. - pg 13 Vermeer/Wildcat - pg 17 West Salem Machinery - pg 12 Transport Trailers Trinity Trailer Mfg - pg 5

Irate Mulch Industry Awaits New Rules on Biomass Subsidy Program

M

By P.J. Heller

ulch producers — angered over a federal government program that has already seriously impacted their industry — are anxiously awaiting new guidelines due out later this year for the Farm Service Agency’s Biomass Crop Assistance Program. While the program’s goal of providing financial subsidies to encourage cultivation of new biomass crops has generally been endorsed by mulch producers, the actual result of BCAP has been to create a crisis in the mulch industry and chaos in the marketplace, according to mulch company officials. “The intentions were right but it’s gotten dangerously out of hand,” says Steve Liffers, president of Coastal Supply in Dagsboro, Delaware. “They (government officials) have put this industry in jeopardy. Their attitude is if they wipe out this industry, it’s for the greater good.” “We’ve been put at a real competitive disadvantage,” adds John Leber, general manager of Swanson Bark & Wood Products in Longview, Wash. “Basically, they’re throwing an awful lot of us under the bus.” The mulch industry, however, doesn’t plan to go down without a fight. “We’re doing everything we know how to do,” says John Spencer, chief executive officer of Mulch Manufacturing in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. That includes meetings between mulch company representatives and government and

elected officials. The Mulch and Soil Council encouraged its members to wage an aggressive letter writing campaign during a governmentimposed comment period that ended in early April. A suggested industry letter contends the government subsidy program has not only created shortages of raw materials, but has prompted excessive price increases for those materials. Such an impact, the letter warns, “will force industry-wide closures.” “Using $2 billion in taxpayer money to redistribute raw materials in existing markets which eliminates environmentally beneficial companies supporting rural development and employment worth hundreds of thousands of jobs with no gain in new biomass resources is a consequence that we believe was not intended by Congress,” the letter states. The ire of the mulch industry — not to mention composite wood manufacturers and paper, pulp and packaging companies among others — is aimed directly at the Biomass Crop Assistance Program, or BCAP, which was part of the 2008 farm bill. The BCAP provision was designed to provide a subsidy to forest and agriculture land owners for eligible biomass material delivered to a qualified biomass conversion facility. As of April 16, more than $185 million in subsidies had been doled out, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Continued on page 3


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Soil & Mulch Producer News - May/June 2010 by Downing and Associates - Issuu