2019 Spring Farm Outlook

2019 Logan County Farm Outlook Magazine Lincoln Daily News March 21, 2019 Page 13 A ccording to an article published in Bloomberg on March 12, 2019, the U.S. EPA has taken the next step toward making E15 the defacto standard in gasoline additives. The EPA published its proposed rule change to lift the restrictions barring E15 from being sold year round in all U.S. markets. The mandated publication of the rule change is the legal notification prior to making the new rule law, allowing for public comment. Alongside the EPA publication, the Trump administration changed the language of trading restrictions that refiners have to abide by to prove that they provide biofuel products, which improves the position of E15. These two moves are the first steps in fulfilling Trump’s promises to corn farmers last fall to remove restrictions preventing the proliferation of E15 in the U.S. marketplace. Last fall we wrote that the expanded production of ethanol from E10 to E15 would help corn producers. Since that time a tariff war with China has further damaged the corn market and has caused a stockpiling of corn stocks in storage, waiting for better days. With continued research into new hybrids and GMOs, and the expansion of corn production acreage, we have experienced incredible increases in yields, and the result is that we have more corn but not an appetite for greater consumption. The result for producers is non- sustaining lower prices. So the greater challenge is to find new markets or expand existing markets for the consumption of corn. In the 1970s the addition of ethanol to gasoline began because the current stabilizing additive, MTBE, was found to be contaminating groundwater. By 2005 MTBE was banned in 20 states and the norm became the addition of 10% ethanol to gasoline to raise the octane level, and provide the needed oxygenating stabilizer. Corn prices at the time were around $2 a bushel, and with the nationwide adoption of E10 as a standard for automobile gasoline, it is estimated that ethanol production added somewhere between 75 cents to $1 a bushel to the price of corn. The aim in 1970 was to achieve energy self- New developments in the pursuit of E15 By Jim Youngquist Continue 8