Uprising Against the Ethanol Mandate

[depakid]

At the Reeve plant near Garden City, Kan., grain is made into ethanol, and the byproducts are fed to cattle in the adjacent feedlot.
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The ethanol industry, until recently a golden child that got favorable treatment from Washington, is facing a critical decision on its future.

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas is asking the Environmental Protection Agency to temporarily waive regulations requiring the oil industry to blend ever-increasing amounts of ethanol into gasoline. A decision is expected in the next few weeks.

Mr. Perry says the billions of bushels of corn being used to produce all that mandated ethanol would be better suited as livestock feed than as fuel.

Feed prices have soared in the last two years as fuel has begun competing with food for cropland.

“When you find yourself in a hole, you have to quit digging,” Mr. Perry said in an interview. “And we are in a hole.”

His request for an emergency waiver cutting the ethanol mandate to 4.5 billion gallons, from the 9 billion gallons required this year and the 10.5 billion required in 2009, is backed by a coalition of food, livestock and environmental groups.

Farmers and ethanol and other biofuel producers are lobbying to keep the existing mandates.

“This is a critically important decision that will determine the future of biofuels in this country,” said Brent Erickson, a lobbyist at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, which supports the ethanol mandates. “There will be a dramatic reaction from whoever loses.”

The E.P.A. received 15,000 public comments on the Texas proposal, roughly split between those in favor and those against.

LHT Inc., an infrastructure company, said it never would have spent tens of millions of dollars developing delivery pipes for ethanol without the mandated increases. “How do we get our money back?” an executive asked.

O.K. Industries, a poultry company in Arkansas upset about rising feed costs, said this was the first year since the company was founded during the Great Depression that it could not afford to give its employees a wage increase.

An agency spokesman said the E.P.A. can approve the request, deny it or take a middle path. The deadline is Thursday, but the agency says it needs more time to review public comments and formulate a decision.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/business/23ethanol.html?hp
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Lots of starnge bedfellows on this one....

[Truth4Justice]

1. Using Ethanol in gasoline has a net negative effect overall. It doesnt even reduce pollution.

[RC]

2. What you stated was known going in. But the knoise machine drown that information out.

The bu$h administration started pushing Ethanol. That alone should have made Ethanol program suspect. But free money was to be made because of the subsidies.

[DCKit]

3. And those subsidies will continue - for a while.

Just not at the level they'd hoped for.

This comes down to a simple argument:
Ethanol for gasoline or affordable food? Not a difficult choice.