Corn Links: Corn farmers keep fighting to preserve the RFS
Minnesota corn farmers are getting support from throughout the state and in Washington D.C. as they work to convince the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to ditch it’s damaging proposal to slash the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) and reduce the amount of ethanol blended in gasoline.
Below are a selection of stories about the fight to preserve the RFS that have appeared in Minnesota media outlets. You have until Jan. 28 to submit your own comments to EPA about its misguided RFS proposal. Click here to make your voice heard.
Franken said he continues to hear ethanol opponents say the infrastructure isn’t there for ethanol. “The infrastructure isn’t there for ethanol because the gas station franchise owners get punished for putting in blender pumps. So this is, as far as I’m concerned, a conflict of interest,” Franken told the crowd.
Franken said on Saturday that McCarthy agrees that biofuels produce fewer greenhouse gases than fuels from petroleum. “What was weird about the meeting with Gina McCarthy — she acknowledged all of our points. You kind of wonder where this decision is being made,” Franken said.
“They need to hear from all of you guys. They need to hear these are real jobs, and that this standard is wrong for America. It’s wrong for our state. And mostly, it’s wrong for our energy future,” Klobuchar said.
“She never made one argument that it is about environmental issues,’’ said Klobuchar of a meeting she arranged with the EPA director.
“Southern Minnesota survived one of the worst recessions in our nation’s history because of a strong agriculture sector and ethanol was a part of that,” Walz said to a group of 25 farmers and renewable fuels supporters. “Now you’re going to demonize one of the things that pulled us through all of that? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Frederickson visited five biofuel plants last week and is scheduled to tour 12 more. If the Environmental Protection Agency makes the proposed reductions in the RFS, it is estimated to cost the state more than 1,500 jobs and $610 million in lost economic activity, Frederickson said.
When the ethanol industry started it had four main goals, Frederickson said. “It was about cleaner air, it was about creating jobs, it was about reducing our reliance on foreign oil and it was about adding value to our crops,” he said. It has done all those things, he added.
“It’s wrong-headed, wrongly-directed, and that’s the message we have to send,” Frederickson said. “And that outrage ought to be expressed in letters.”
“The response has been outstanding. People are saying, ‘don’t mess with the RFS,’” said MCGA President Ryan Buck, who farms in Goodhue, Minn. “It’s not just coming from corn farmers, either. Many non-farmers recognize how damaging this proposal is. People see this misguided proposal for what it is: an attempt by the oil industry to re-establish its monopoly on transportation fuels and increase profits on the backs of corn farmers and the rural economy.”
