EPA Pressured To Drop Ethanol Mandate Due To Drought Time

[SpiderGearsMan]

With record drought destroying crops across the country, corn prices are skyrocketing, and that is causing a world-wide ripple effect, including on the cost of the corn-derived gasoline additive ethanol.

Corn prices are up 60 percent this summer, Christopher Hurt, a Purdue University economic professor, estimates. And now Democratic governors from Maryland, Delaware, North Carolina and Arkansas have joined ranchers, poultry farmers and the United Nations director-general for food and agriculture in asking the Environmental Protection Agency to waive the federal requirement that gasoline contain 10 percent ethanol.

"It's universally acknowledged that ethanol is raising the price of food," Kenneth Green of the American Enterprise Institute said. "It's not lowering the price of gas. In fact, it may be raising the price of gas, and it's having a devastating environmental effect in terms of coastal pollution."

Green says coastal "dead zones" may be increasing because of the run-off from fertilizer-intensive corn crops. But the human economic costs are potentially more severe.

The Department of Agriculture estimates that food inflation will hit 3 percent to 3.5 percent this year, then 3 percent to 4 percent next year. The U.S. is the world's largest food exporter. For the poorest countries dependent on U.S. exports of corn, the impact may cost lives.

(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...

[Bamfster]

They just keep trying to justify the price gouging don't they?

[oletrux4evr]

More 'unintended consequences'.......heck, out here in Kansas we saw this happen immediately. Way before this year's drought. More government meddling in the marketplace. Don't think it's gouging....it's supply and demand. Farmers are baling the ditches and highway right of ways to make up feed shortages.

[Thumpin455]

Brazil raises or lowers the % when the sugar crop is going to be low, so the price of sugar can stay low and stable. It would make sense to have an adjustable % in our gas when there is a bad year for corn. Even those of us who like ethanol have been saying that, but the people who want high corn prices are fighting against doing that, for obvious reasons.

Part of it is the RFA wanting to keep ethanol an additive, because that is where the volume is right now, and last year when the VEETC was going away they blended almost 2 billion gallons more than they needed to and ran the prices up artificially to get the free government money before it ended. You cant blame ethanol completely for that, because the blenders credit that the VEETC was went to the oil companies that were blending it, not the ethanol producers. They were more than happy to supply that much more to keep the corn prices high.

Until there is another major feedstock being used to produce ethanol, other than corn, the % needs to be adjustable to keep corn prices lower than they have been, and for things like the drought. The irrigated corn is doing ok, but most of the corn crop isnt irrigated. The messed up thing is there are so many other things to make fuel from, like kudzu, cattails, and municipal waste, but they wont because everyone has their mind set on corn.

Nothing will happen because too many people want to get their fingers in the cookie jar.

Sure an enjoying this $4.30 gas up here too!

[antmnte]

As we like to say in these parts,What a friggin racket! More Bull Sh&# !!!!

[oldsman496]

The more expensive it gets, the less we use, the less we use, the 'greener' the planet. so the poor suffer... what the hell, they were suffering before right?

soon as i win the lottery, i won't be worrying about this at all.

[SpiderGearsMan]

drop all mandates

[antmnte]

drop all mandates

Yeah,think anyone gettin paid on this deal? You would have to have your head inside your ass to think different.

[SuperBuickGuy]

In the early 80s, alcohol/gas mixes were the latest craze to fix all of our problems..... it died, in about the same amount of time this one will. Honestly, I think thumpn was smart to be brewing his own, because I honestly don't think that mandate will last another 5 years.

[Scott Liggett]

You mean the govt no longer subsidizes the farmers to not grow corn to keep the prices up?