SD Corn

Is it fair to say to that the United States of America is in a slump? By slump, I mean the lack of progress our country has experienced after all of the clean energy debates and legislation in the past year. The EPA has delayed a move to E 15 in non-flex fuel vehicles twice, we have witnessed the worst oil spill ever and our development of futuristic biofuels is not any closer to commercial production.

Monday, the American Coalition for Ethanol, National Corn Growers Association and the Renewable Fuels Association sent a letter urging, Lisa Jackson of the EPA to approve a temporary move to E 12 in non-flex fuel vehicles while they continue to study the effects, or lack of effects E 15 has on vehicles. This makes sense on so many levels as it would benefit the U.S. economy and environment, but I don’t recommend holding one’s breathe.

A move to E 12 would increase domestic ethanol production pushing the industry past the “blend wall” and would stimulate rural economies through job growth and the purchase of additional bushels of corn. The additional production and use of American ethanol moves us closer to a clean-energy economy and further lessens our dependence on foreign oil.

Most importantly, America’s ethanol industry and farmers are more than capable to move our country well past the E 10 wall with bountiful crops due to increasing yields. Farmer’s are continuing to produce more with less providing plenty of corn to meet the demands for food, feed, fiber and fuel.

Negative reports about atrazine, the most common pesticide application in United States, maybe seem redundant, but yet another was released this week. Dr. Tyrone Hayes, who has been discredited by the EPA multiple times, released another report claiming that exposure to the pesticide, atrazine, caused male frogs to transform into females.

 Prior research by Dr. Hayes has come under scientific scrutiny and criticism by directors of the Environmental Protection Agency for lacking basic scientific standards and lack of transparency. Alex Avery, Director of Research and Education at the Hudson Institute’s Center for Global Food Issues, criticized the new research by University of California Berkeley professor.

“Dr. Hayes is an admitted anti-atrazine activist…and has spent more than a decade allied with eco-activists peddling scare stories due to alleged health effects from atrazine,” Avery stated.  ”Aside from his own often-conflicting lab studies, other researchers have not seen the effects Hayes claims to have found. Replication is the gold-standard of science and Hayes’ work has failed this test miserably.”

The most recent study has many shortcomings including its inconsistency with prior findings by the author, including the use of only one dose level and the failure to use a positive control, a basic requirement with this type of study.

The EPA’s independent Scientific Advisory Panel “believed strongly that all of the field studies reviewed had serious flaws that limit their usefulness…” and “these problems render interpretation of results problematic if not impossible.”

Even with Hayes’ report holding no merit, agriculture still seems to take a hit from the mass media with over a thousand blogs, websites and other news outlets reporting on the story.

Atrazine has been used by farmers safely for over 50 years and has had no effect on amphibians, fish, birds or any other form of wildlife. Atrazine allows farmers to use conservation tillage systems preventing soil erosion and saving them around $28/acre on average. During the last 20 years, atrazine has improved corn yields 5-11%.

Over 6,000 studies have been done on the pesticide alone and every time it has come back safe. Most recently, the State of Minnesota conducted a thorough review of atrazine and in January announced, “The review finds that atrazine regulations protect human health and the environment in Minnesota.”

How do you put a real value on something? What kind of effect must something have before it’s truly valued or appreciated?

Distiller grains, the byproduct of corn ethanol is benefitting ethanol plants, ranchers and the United States trade deficit, but still some state and federal governments don’t seem to understand it true value.

When corn arrives to an ethanol plant, 100% of the product is utilized with about 2/3’s being made into ethanol fuel with about 1/3 being made into distiller grains, a high protein, livestock feed source used as a partial replacement for corn. Distiller grain sales help improve ethanol plant margins while ranchers can purchase the byproduct for less than $1/bushel, creating an inexpensive yet healthy ration for their livestock.

As far as trade goes, in 2009 the United States exported 5.64 metric tons of distiller grains worth about $1 billion dollars. The 2009 total was 24% higher than a year ago and five times than five years ago. The amount of product that was exported equaled about 18% of what was produced nationally. The top three destinations of distiller grains in 2009 were Mexico, Canada and China.

With all the monetary value that distiller grains produce, they are not considered part of the equation when figuring ethanol’s environmental value. Government agencies like the EPA and CARB (California Air Resources Board) punish ethanol production by saying that extra crop production is needed in other areas of the world to make up for grain raised for ethanol production. This anti agriculture “idea” is called the international indirect land-use theory. One example most popularly used by the mass media would be the burning of the Brazilian Rain Forest in order to grow crops. This is simply insanity.

The flawed theory needs to realize that a lot of factors come into play when deciding land uses across the globe. More importantly, American farmers are becoming more and more productive each year with record yields, producing more crop on less land making expansion of the biofuels industry possible. It’s also important to realize that distiller grains from ethanol production are feeding a substantial amount of the world’s livestock.

With corn ethanol helping reduce our nation’s dependence on foreign oil, the importance of adding in the feed value of distiller grains to ethanol’s energy equation is extremely important and may someday be the ultimate fate of the industry.