Banner Graphic, Volume 14, Number 62, Greencastle, Putnam County, 16 November 1983 — Page 9

Is it rotting?

21.5 million bushels of stored corn continue to stir a Texas controversy

(c) 1983 Dallas Morning AUSTIN, Texas Everything about PLB Grain Storage Co. is big. It sprawls across 96 acres on the southern edge of Plainview in the Texas Panhandle. The largest of its flat storage buildings is more than three times the length of a football field. The largest of its cylindrical storage tanks holds 28 million pounds of grain. Last week, the firm was holding though grain to provide 20 pounds of corn for every man, woman and child in the United States. PLB Grain Storage Co. also holds the largest federal grainstorage contracts in the United States. This year alone, the company is scheduled to earn $6.4 million by holding 21.5 million bushels of corn in reserve for the U.S. government. The first contract, granted in the Carter administration, gave PLB 8 million bushels of corn for short-term storage. The second, issued during the Reagan administration, granted the firm 13.5 million for long-term storage. But in recent months, as farmers in Texas and other drought-stricken states began to covet the stored grain, PLB Grain Storage and its federal contracts have become the center of a controversy about the quality of the corn in its care. Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower has charged that the 21.5 million bushels of corn stored in the PLB complex is rotting. But Hightower says that, rotten or not, the corn is good enough to feed livestock starving in West Texas. However, federal officials say the PLB corn and 4.79 billion pounds of grain stored elsewhere is still in good enough shape to sell commercially. And PLB officials agree. U.S. Agriculture Secretary John Block and his aides have tried to ignore the controversy for more than a month. But Monday morning, a team of federal experts headed by Texas’ top grain-warehouse regulator began an inspection of PLB grain. U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture John Ford said the inspection was “a fact-finding mission for the secretary (Block). ... We are not down there to announce any (grain) release, I can tell you that.” The U.S. Agriculture Department has received dozens of complaints about the quality of grain stored under two federal programs. But U.S. Agriculture Department official Richard Goldberg said most of the complaints involved small grain elevators in the Midwest. And PLB is anything but small in size and profits, thanks in large part to the federal contracts bestowed on the firm and its owner, P.L. Blake of Greenwood, Miss. “As long as the grain isn’t out of condition, I sure don’t see anything that would keep him (Blake) from making a whole lot of money,” retired grain dealer Harold Igo said. Blake has never revealed a profit statement for PLB, and

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he refused to return phone calls from reporters. As big as PLB’s storage space and federal contracts are, Texas officials question whether the company has complied with the federal law requiring the firm to keep the grain in the same quality or condition in which it was received. “We store grain for the CCC (Commodity Credit Corp.) and we do everything that’s expected of a warehouse working for the CCC,” PLB manager Ed Iskra said. “And we think we do a pretty good job for them.” Hightower raised the cornquality question when the U.S. Agriculture Department refused to let West Texas ranchers whose cattle, sheep and goats were dying or being sold prematurely because of a prolonged drought have the corn for emergency livestock feed. Estimating a drought-related loss of 300,000 or more cattle and up to 800,000 sheep and goats, Hightower began his own inspection of the grain in PLB’s storage buildings. Hightower concluded that about 53 percent of the PLBstored corn was “sample” grade, the lowest rating given. “That corn is going to hell in an elevator when it ought to be going to West Texas ranchers,” he said. And Hightower said Friday that U.S. Agriculture Department inspectors federal officials the same thing as long ago as January 1981. Block, who has relented in his opposition to legislation making the grain available to ranchers, has continued to say that the corn is too valuable to use as emergency livestock feed. Other U.S. Agriculture Department officials said that, though a quality inspection has not been made since March 1982, the corn is not in as poor a condition as Hightower says. The Commodity Credit Corp., the U.S. agency that owns the corn, said Oct. 13 that less than 1 percent of the Texas-stored corn was “sample” grade. Iskra said his employees had found a low percentage of sam-ple-grade corn using Hightower’s methods. The U.S. Agriculture Department estimates that, of 21.5 million bushels of corn at the PLB plant, only 356 bushels are of sample grade. PLB says 2.5 million bushels are sample grade, and Hightower alleges that 11.4 million bushels are of the low-quality grain. That difference in sampling caused U.S. Sen. Lloyd Bentsen to demand a full report from the U.S. Agriculture Department about how corn quality is measured. “That’s a whale of a discrepancy," Bentsen said. State officials and Plainviewarea residents said they would not be surprised if the corn had deteriorated in PLBK‘S CARE. As early as Dec. 1,1980, Darrell Ketchum of the Texas Agriculture Department toid Blake that Texas inspectors had found conditions that might make it “difficult tomaintain the grade of corn in storage.” Blake said he would take appropriate steps to keep the corn from deterioratingmbh.E. Watson, a former PLB superintendent, and Wayne Chiddix, a

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former company foreman, said deterioration had been caused by poor storage practices. “They wouldn’t let us do anything to keep it from getting hot, and they wouldn’t let us turn it (the grain) enough because of the electric bills,” said Chiddix, who was fired a year ago and is now running a grain elevator in the Panhandle town of Etter. Iskra, who fired Chiddix, refused to comment on Chiddix’ charges. Watson, who was fired from PLB two years ago and is now driving heavy machinery, said: “That corn is costing the taxpayers millions of dollars a year to store, and it isn’t fit for human consumption. It’s ruined ... parched... cooked because they (PLB officials) wouldn’t let us cool it proper. Sometimes the temperature in those tanks got up to 120 and 140 degrees. “They have put some (new) bought corn in there to mix in, but it isn’t enough to change it (the grade) overall,” Watson said. “That stuff isn’t fit for hog feed.” Mixing in new corn is an old idea. Elevator operators are obligated to maintain the grade of grain they receive and to add higher-quality grain, if necessary, to maintain the quality or to pay for the deterioration. Iskra refused to say if PLB had taken that expensive step. One Panhandle grain expert, who operates a smaller grainstorage elevator in the Plainview area, said that if Hightower’s PLB sample was correct, PLB would have to spend SIOO million to buy enough high-grade corn to raise the grade of corn in storage. A federally imposed penalty of $1 a bushel would be slightly less expensive, the grain expert said. If Hightower’s sample figures are even close to right, PLB also could lose a lot of money. “If that grain goes out of condition, it would more than eat up what he (Blake) makes in storage payments,” retired grain dealer Igo said. Ketchum refused to speculate on PLB’s possible loss of federal contracts. But he said that if the corn proved to be rotten, enforcement of the contracts “would be strictly based on whether the government wanted to hold them (PLB) liable. It would depend on whether the government wanted to press that claim. ” PLB has reported to the state that it carries more than $l6O million in liability insurance on its storage warehouse.

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Bowling balls keep penned-up porkers happy

DES MOINES, lowa (AP) Where do old bowling balls go when they die? In lowa, the nation’s No. 1 pork-producing state, they frequently wind up in a “hog haven” as toys in a pig playpen. “It gives them something to do,” explained Dallas Bowman, who often puts bowling balls in pens at his hog confinement operation near Adel, in central lowa. “It encourages them to get up and get active, to eat feed and drink water.” Several animals at a time will try to push the balls around with their snouts.

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Dr. Patrick Rohret, a veterinarian in Adel, said putting playthings into pig pens is not so unusual. “I’ve seen sometimes where they’ve got a chain hanging from the ceiling or a tire,” Rohret said recently. “Of course, they don’t swing in it, they just push it around.” The operator of a bowling alley in Greenfield, Phil Anderson, gives all the battle-scarred balls that are retired from service at his place to farmers in the area. “It keeps them from chewing on each other’s ears and tails,” said Anderson of the swine in the hog-feed lots. “Hogs that are out in the open don’t chew on each other. They find other things to do. But they do start chewing on each other in confinement,” he explained.

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LIQUOR SPECIALS

November 16,1983, The Putnam County Banner-Graphic

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Egg prices close to 'B2

The New York wholesale price of Grade A large eggs used as a guide averaged 74 cents a dozen in the third quarter, up from 69.1 cents in the second quarter, the report said. For all of this year, wholesale egg prices may average 70 to 71 cents a dozen, about the same as in 1982. Looking ahead, projections show that egg prices may average 72 to 76 cents in 1984.

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