Evolving Ethanol Policy

Until now, the 6-million member American Farm Bureau Federation supported the tax credit as well as blender pumps, which can dispense fuel that is up to 85 percent ethanol. Delegates voted to change policy to emphasize biofuel infrastructure and to discontinue the tax credit.  SEE HERE

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SkunK Rant

Supporting the rural Midwest Economy and agriculture in particular, used to mean support for the ethanol subsidy.  After the feedlots and dairy industry had to compete with the ethanol industry for a fairly priced bushel of corn, they joined forces with the food, oil and extreme environmental industries to oppose the subsidy.  A bad economy and a runaway national deficit has accomplished what those groups failed to do:  Make the ethanol subsidy politically untenable. 

On the other hand, both sides of this discussion knew the subsidy was temporary.  It came about to push forward the production capabilities of the ethanol industry for legitimate national security and environmental reasons.  It has served its purpose well - and the first generation of ethanol plants now blanket the Midwest turning out clean renewable energy.  That industry will serve as a bedrock foundation for the renewable breakthroughs to come.  GreenShift's patented COES technology is one of those significant incremental breakthroughs.

Those of us seasoned enough - remember the 7o's - when corn sat rotting in government silos, without a market and without a purpose.  The government paid farmers not to grow commodities. Pollution fouled our air and water.  Family farms were falling like dominoes. Everyone hoped for a big deal with the Soviets to cut back on the surplus.  (More recently, the national government spent $41.9 billion on corn subsidies from 1995 to 2004 - without developing a new market)   

Does anyone seriously want to go back to those pre-Ethanol days? - so that Kelloggs can  pay 2 cents rather than 2.2 - for the corn in a box of corn flakes.

It now looks like this will be the final year of the subsidy as we know it.  Hope for, (but do not expect) a gradual, planned, weaning process over a multi-year period, where the government moves its support from the subsidy to the investment in infrastructure necessary to move ethanol and dispense it.  Tighter production margins -sure to come without the subsidy- will make the use of corn oil extraction (and other advanced technologies) - essential for those plants who plan to survive.

SkunK