Geoff Cooper, president and CEO of the Renewable Fuels Association, says that ethanol is a fundamental piece of the future of the ag industry and the energy industry in the United States. And that is the story he said in a recent RFA podcast that they will be telling the incoming Trump administration.
“Input costs are up, farmland values are down. We’re seeing net farm income is falling, debt is rising. We know that the ag trade deficit is really growing quickly. And those are a lot of the same dynamics that the industry was facing 20 years ago. And it’s one of the reasons that farmers got together and basically started the modern ethanol industry. And ethanol really lifted agriculture out of that situation, out of that malaise. And we think renewable fuels can do that again. So I think part of this is just revisiting the history of where we were and how far we’ve come.”
As Cooper says, ethanol has been a catalyst for bringing wealth to rural communities.
I’m Lori Boyer reporting for AgNet West.