This week, the National Corn Growers Association challenged the American Meat Institute on tactics it is using and the groups with which it is associating in its opposition to higher ethanol blends and H.R. 4940, The Renewable Fuels Reinvestment Act. While NCGA respects the AMI's right to hold differing opinions on the ethanol tax credit extension legislation, we question why AMI would choose to ally itself with extreme environmental organizations groups that oppose modern production agriculture.

Many of the groups with which AMI has chosen to collaborate with have long employed negative tactics and propagated misinformation about all aspects of the agricultural industry, including animal agriculture. By joining with these groups, the American Meat Institute stands alongside those who promote policies and propaganda detrimental to one of their core bases ... America's farmers and ranchers.

In a special breaking news interview, Off the Cob spoke with NCGA CEO Rick Tolman about how the situation came about, why NCGA is challenging AMI on this issues and what it means to farmers.

An old saying states that you can tell the measure of someone by the company they keep. In that regard, the American Meat Institute is keeping some rather curious company these days as it wages war on an imagined enemy, the corn ethanol industry. AMI recently signed onto political letters and advertisements with environmental extremists like Friends of the Earth, the Natural Resources Defense Council and the Environmental Working Group that they should avoid at all costs. These three organizations have all attacked animal agriculture with the same level of rhetoric as PETA or the Humane Society.

As the self-proclaimed representative of the "companies that process 95 percent of red meat and 70 percent of turkey in the U.S. and their suppliers throughout America," AMI really should avoid such curious connections.

I recently asked someone very familiar with the membership of AMI - companies like Tyson's, Smithfield and Hormel - to help me understand the logic that would persuade AMI to take these actions. He laughed and said, "You have to realize, these are companies whose business is 'blood on the floor,' and all that they can see is short-term."

Fortunately, most of the rest of agriculture is trying to take a long-term view and has realized that it is high time to put petty differences aside and agree to disagree on certain issues - like ethanol policy, with the realization that we all have much greater battles to fight with those outside of agriculture who are threatening to undermine the very fabric and structure that has made us the most successful and productive sector in the U.S. economy.