Embattled Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt is reportedly visiting South Dakota today. The press reports different possible destinations: maybe he’s going to an ethanol plant, maybe a farm out by Reliance. Michelle Rook reports Pruitt is visiting a Reliance cattle operation to talk with sorghum producers and that our corn lobby is cranky:
South Dakota Corn Growers Association Executive Director Lisa Richardson said President Donald Trump promised to provide the pathway for year-round sales of E15 and Pruitt is not welcome in the state unless he is delivering on that promise.
“Our largest market far and away in South Dakota is ethanol. So, for him to come into our backyard and not keep the president’s word on E15, we’re just curious as to why he’s here? Unless, he’s here to announce E15, he is not welcome,” she said [Michelle Rook, “SD Corn Growers Plan to Give Pruitt the Cold Shoulder During Visit,” WDAY, 2018.06.12].
The Corn Growers are protesting Pruitt’s visit with a tractor rally three hours away, at the Farmers Market in Sioux Falls this morning at 10:30:
Attend a tractor rally on Wednesday, June 13, at 10:30 a.m. at Falls Park Farmer’s Market (309 E Falls Park Dr. / Sioux Falls). Don’t worry—you don’t need to bring your prize tractor. Just bring your voice!
The rally will feature speakers from the South Dakota Corn Growers Association (SDCGA), Growth Energy and POET, as well as other special guests.
Local media will also be on hand to help South Dakota farmers share our message of the importance of making E15 available year-round [SD Corn Growers, “Help South Dakota Corn Growers Get the Attention of the EPA,” SDCorn.org, retrieved 2018.06.13].
Pruitt visited the East Kansas Agri Energy LLC Ethanol plant in Garnett, Kansas, yesterday Kansas Corn Growers went there and gave Pruitt heck in person:
Growers told Administrator Pruitt they were “mad as hell” about EPA efforts they believe undermine the RFS law. The EPA administrator told the standing-room-only crowd that as regulators, EPA is not supposed to pick winners and losers.
Kansas Corn Growers Association President Ken McCauley said farm and ethanol groups at the meeting wanted to set the tone and help Administrator Pruitt understand the frustration being felt in rural America.
“When you look at what EPA is doing, they are most definitely picking winners and losers and right now, ethanol is the loser,” McCauley said. “Our concern was that Administrator Pruitt thought he could come to Kansas, take a few photos with smiling farmers and tell the President that corn farmers are okay with his actions. That would be a gross misinterpretation of what happened here today. I told him that EPA’s attacks on ethanol don’t just hurt plants like EKAE, they hurt farmers, rural communities and American consumers who benefit from ethanol with lower prices and cleaner air.”
In a meeting that was serious and at times, tense, corn growers and ethanol supporters explained the problems EPA has caused by destroying demand for ethanol. Pruitt said he had to grant the small refinery exemptions because of a recent court ruling that allows refiners to only show financial hardship. However, he did not articulate how financial hardship was defined.
“We asked him what constituted financial hardship and I can’t say we got an answer” McCauley said. “He told us the standards had changed and that RINs were more volatile. But there is no transparency in these decisions” [Kansas Corn Growers, press release, 2018.06.12]
Pruitt promised to seek a waiver to allow year-round E15 sales.
Update 08:27 CDT: A Facebook acquaintance spotted two of these banners protesting Pruitt’s Big-Oiliness at the Sioux Falls Airport yesterday:
Friends report seeing a similar billboard in Sioux Falls yesterday.
Hey, we don’t care that this guy has been an ethical mess and a walking talking conflict of interest since he became big cheese in the EPA. We don’t care that he has been dismantling things that protect our air and water. WHAT ABOUT OUR ETHANOL!!!???!!!
It is about time farmers and all ag people start to show alarm at the underhanded, crooked dealings of this EPA. Remember farmers, Mike Rounds is in bed with Pruitt so you do have a local yokel you can toss toilet paper at and watch it stick on on slick oil the boy uses. Rural areas have gotten beaten up and ignored for far too long. Rural areas showed they were tired of being pushed around by past administrations and thought they could see some help with this one, turns out they have been wrong. Rural areas are still fly over places that secure the three votes that are then ignored in Washington. That needs to change. Start with Tim Bjorkman at the federal level and then Billie Sutton on the state level, two changes you can believe in.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/07/us/politics/epa-toxic-chemicals.html
This should scare the hell out of everyone. Pruitt and crew change the ways to test for toxicity of chemicals.
Reminder: among the things the ethanol industry is mad about is the hardship waiver Pruitt gave to billionaire Carl Icahn so he wouldn’t have to spend tens of millions of dollars adding ethanol to oil at his refinery.
Read Mike Rounds glowing support of this EPA farmers and ranchers, you can find it in you weekly readers. Rounds is not your friend, that goes for you too veterans. NOem has never been either, so don’t think that by putting her in the governor’s chair that she will suddenly change those spots. Remember, she is all about she and her hubby’s insurance racket.
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/392076-pruitt-met-with-resistance-from-ethanol-groups-during-midwest-trips
Kansas Corn Growers Association President Ken McCauley said farmers at the meeting worked to clearly voice to Pruitt their frustration with any Trump administration proposal that would lower the RFS and allow oil and gas companies to sell fuel with a lower percentage of ethanol.
“When you look at what EPA is doing, they are most definitely picking winners and losers and right now, ethanol is the loser,” McCauley said in a statement Wednesday.
I think he’s going to get a look at the Gilt Edge Superfund Corruption Site.
I hope he visits the graveyard there in Galena, near Gilt Edge, to see Aunt Sally’s grave stones and maybe eat some South Dakota cooking at the Cousins Pizza and Burger Shack.
Americans should be protesting being forced to buy gasoline that is more expensive, less efficient and produces more pollution due to this ethanol being forced on us.
Look in the fields. The fields are filled with corn. What happened to wheat, millet, sunflower and oats? They have fallen in value because the government is funding each bushel of corn almost 25%!
There is a reason farmers once had more diverse crops. If a blight hits one grain you still have others available but today we are endangering all Americans by, once again, the government controlling a market doing something they know nothing about but they do know who lines their pockets. . .
Hemp provisions surviving in the farm bill
JD just waiting for it to pass they already have header manufactures
Who needs corn ? Lol
When ethanol was starting out It was championed almost exclusively by Democrats, and resisted by Republicans and the oil and gas lobby. Tom Daschle was a leader for ethanol in Congress. Midwest Republicans started supporting it, and then it became a bipartisan issue. Environmental groups were split, but Midwest environmental groups thought ethanol was a way to save farmers and farm communities under pressure from the ag depression of the 1980s, and provide a means to lessen air pollution. As a result, national organizations with grassroots support in the Midwest, such as the Sierra Club, didn’t outright oppose ethanol development, though they recognized the downside. I think everyone in the environmental community is more skeptical about ethanol today, and Old Sarge points out one reason when he talks about the fields.
maybe zinke could convince brainiac Pruitt that science is important, not political. clowns in SD.
A group of 80 Antarctic experts said that in the two decades prior to 2012, the continent lost about 76 billion tons of ice annually, which caused about 0.2 millimeters of sea-level rise a year.
But between 2012 and 2017, the annual ice loss rate tripled to about 219 billion tons, or 0.6 millimeters of sea-level rise. http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/392120-antarctic-ice-melting-faster
It’s true about the fields, as OS says. Was it in the 90s when corn prices spiked and suddenly every inch of every field was planted in corn and halfway into the ditches? Right of ways were plowed up and planted, marginal lands tilled, etc. Thus far this year all I’ve seen in fields in southeast Minnesota is soy beans and corn and a 30 acre fruit berry field. That’s all.
My car has a flex fuel engine and today i filled up with E85. It was only 6c cheaper than regular. It used to be a lot cheaper. A Lot.
Oldsarg
There is NO direct subsidy for corn
Your way off on the 25%
Per bushel.
Here’s a bit of a funny coming out of Pruitt’s Sioux Falls visit today. Whether it was intentional or not, Pruitt stopped in Josiah’s Coffee Shop owned by 2008 Obama Iowa campaign staffer Steve Hildebrand.
Steve may have forgotten to hang up his “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to Anyone”.
there Is no demand for miller and wheat
Can always sell corn and soybeans raised for China
Sunflowers occasional but when u have to haul into fargo
Or enderland ND not worth the freight
Conola is a good commodity but that as well hailed uo ND
You get a commodity for corn wheat and soybeans together if u farm all however it isn’t for just corn
T, those are feed crops. Millet for fowl, oats for livestock, black sunflowers for oil or confectioners for people to spit. There are markets for these crops. Minnesota is the nation’s leading turkey producer and those farms buy a lot of millet and seem to always be on the search for more. There are MN farms that grow sunflowers and there are oil presses in this state. SD needs to invest in oil presses and the detritus from that can be fed to livestock.
There are options, but they’re not being pursued. If the SDGOP really cared about farmers they’d develop financial assistance for those things.
(Okay, sorry. That last sentence was just silly of me. Of course they don’t care.)
In a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation, Pruitt promised to eliminate the use of co-benefits in the economic analyses accompanying new regulations. And he already took this approach in proposing to repeal the Clean Power Plan, which seeks to limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants. https://slate.com/technology/2018/06/scott-pruitt-is-trying-to-undermine-environmental-regulation-in-a-creative-way.html
ignore co-benefits over time it would have grave effects on public health and welfare. This change would make it appear that regulations deliver fewer benefits relative to their costs than they in fact would. This would then make it easier for Pruitt to justify repealing rules, further tilting the scales toward the powerful polluters that he insistently favors—while severely disadvantaging the families and communities that bear the heavy burden of pollution.
Debbo
There isn’t a crop we haven’t considered from chick peas to conolla
Boils down to profit per acre to make all the payments type of thing and in SD that’s corn and soybeans it seems
The SDGOP Of course doesn’t care because “dern it, a farmer grows corn” type of attitude is carved into anyone born into agriculture. Like anything else yesterday’s mentality is dated for various reasons. I don’t even want the financial assistance, we don’t need it, just give a fair price for other commodities and local outlets to sell,
Take the assistance out of farming and let’s see what the markets are …,,
But that willl never happen because, the very same reason the republicans hate the single mothers dependency on government assistance, is the very same dependency they have gotten use to for their own survival.
So we are back where we started ..,,
Corn and soybeans .,,,
MN has great agriculture and futuristic ideas in implementations.., your ahead of us
I’m with T and I really don’t think many of you have a clue as to how markets work. Take a look at how many acres are planted to corn and just do a little bit of figuring on what you would replace them with. As T mentioned there is no 25% subsidy on corn. In fact farmers are receiving nearly nothing from the government in subsidy. However, big insurance is getting your tax dollar to insure farmers against loss and guarantee farmers a tiny income if the prices are too low. They are guaranteed a profit by the government to do this. If it was profitable for them to do it without a government guarantee they would have been offering said insurance decades ago.
As to the profitability of growing corn take a look at how many farmers there are out in the field compared to a few decades ago. Nearly none. The ones that are still in business are big and barely profitable. The buildings that used to raise farm family’s are falling down or are bull dozed into a hole. The small towns that used to support those family’s have nothing but boarded up store fronts and white haired residents.
35% of the corn crop goes toward making ethanol but only 17% is actually consumed. The byproducts are used for high protein feed. The alcohol that is produced from corn is traded on the board of trade and is usually much cheaper than gasoline but somehow when the gasoline blenders get through with it it isn’t all that cheap.
As to how environmentally friendly it is I would have to agree that it accomplishes little. Its my understanding that you do get a small gain in renewable energy over just consuming fossil fuel and you may help the issue of global warming slightly.
T and Clyde. I grew up on a farm in Hand County and lived in SD about 50 of my 65 years. The light years difference in government attitude between MN and SD is just jaw-dropping. But that’s not my point.
I do know about how markets, foreign relations, global weather and other factors affect every SDakotan, especially farmers.
One of my earliest memories is watching the nightly news with my family to see what was happening between the US and the USSR because they were such a big wheat market– if Khrushchev would allow imports or JFK or LBJ weren’t sanctioning them for something. Asian weather and governments mattered. So did South America, especially Argentinian cattle.
Yeah, it all works together, but government can do a great deal to help farmers not only diversify, but find markets for their products or get loans for land, equipment, livestock, seed.
Farmers have often been their own enemies due to their unwillingness to work together too. Some are determined to be INDEPENDENT till they lose their farm. And they do.
Government cannot solve at issues, but they can help, and they sure as hell don’t need to hinder!
Debbo, I agree that farmers often are their own worst enemy’s!!
I also agree that government could do a lot. But the fact is that they WON”T! The last government that we had that was friendly towards the family farm was more than 40 years ago. All we have heard now for decades is that we have to work for that great and glorious “FREE” market!
The fact is that the “FREE” market doesn’t exist, never has existed, and never will! The farmers that are left out here are working their fingers to the bone so that a few big multinationals can make a pile and, as you mention, they will put the blame for their lot in the wrong place and refuse to work together.
Think of all the economic development Pruitt is bringing to SD just by coming here. He’ll bring his security entourage and his 25 staff members and all 75 of them are going to have to eat caviar, rent luxury cars and the most expensive hotel rooms they can find. Mostly he’s here to see Mt. Rushmore though, so don’t expect a lot of work out of Pruitt.
I suspect one sees more corn in the fields as corn usually brings the highest cash return per acre than soybeans. In the near term, with farmers leaving crop residue and using no till planting methods, this will probably remain so depending on market prices.
Debbo
Yes forgot to type what you are saying; totally agree; give us the assistance of knowledge and education but keep the subsidies for farming or not farming. CRP payments; wild life easements, waterfowl easements Pay farmers $600 plus if you happen can get all 3; per acre and people gobble this up and put their name on waiting lists. Stupidity because you just tied up that family land and devalued it because of the easements. Grow corn don’t grow corn etc.
There is no education on bio char unless you research it yourself. The state is burning off the Cotten tails, endangering wildlife and polluting the air and we could be mulching it into our crops as it’s proven to be a very good nutrient. Yet talk any of this to constituents and you get in returned phone calls because the word “environment” is involved. We continue to rape the tops soils generation to generation.
You can also mulch chop finely a lot of trees to put back into the grounds. Bio char would create jobs, build manufacturing and assist agriculture for diverse crops. So yes, markets and continued education are so desperately needed to be viable
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2016/02/10/466010209/the-shocking-truth-about-americas-ethanol-law-it-doesnt-matter-for-now
If ethanol law was relaxed, oil companies would keep using it because it is a cheap way to raise octane to government standards. Other additives cost more or pollute more.
Mike from iowa, thank you!
Something I’ve been arguing for decades. Ethanol is traded on the Chicago board of trade and is usually much cheaper than gasoline so that even if you discount the blenders need for an octane booster it is usually a bargain for the oil industry. Lots of fools like to make an issue of it but it is here to stay.
Some claim that prohibition was not just to stop the human consumption of alcohol but to get rid of it as a competing motor fuel to gasoline. In the early days of auto travel it was that.
Ethanol was first mandated there was a 46 cpg subsidy. I remember unleaded gas at the pump being $.30 per gallon higher than ethanol blend. In recent years the gap closed and now it has reopened to around $.30 per gallon.