Biofuels a Growing Part of Ohio Agriculture

by Patrick Cooley (The Columbus Dispatch) Paul Herringshaw watched the price of corn improve dramatically when the POET Bioprocessing facility opened in 2008 in Fostoria, a short drive from his Wood County farm.

The ethanol plant, one of three in Ohio operated by the South Dakota firm called POET, buys corn from local farmers to convert into biofuel, giving Herringshaw and other farmers in the region a price boost and a guaranteed market for their corn.

“The price of corn at one time was a dollar over the Chicago Board of Trade,” Herringshaw said. “Traditionally we’ve been under them.”

Since the late 2000s, the money he’s made selling corn to POET let him invest in his 2,300-acre farm near Bowling Green and convinced his son, who worked a corporate job for John Deere, to consider coming home to take over the farm when Herringshaw retires.

The ethanol plant “made it profitable enough that made my son wanted to look at coming back,” he said.

Ohio farmers such as Herringshaw are more reliant than ever on biofuels for income to help offset the spiking cost of everything from fertilizer to farmland.

A growing share of the state’s soybeans and corn is turned into biodiesel or ethanol, boosting the prices of those commodities and helping keep farmers solvent through the inflation surge of the past 20 months, say experts.

Roughly 30% of the nation's soybean oil is turned into biodiesel, about double the amount from a decade ago, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Agriculture officials expect more soybeans will be used for biodiesel in the coming years as trucking companies and airlines look to decarbonize.

Soybeans, likewise, are processed into oil and meal, Layman said. “Meal is primarily used for livestock feed, whether it be hogs cattle, chickens, or chickens.”

Ohio has seven ethanol plants (in Leipsic, Marion, Fostoria, Greenville, Bloomingburg, Coshocton, and Lima) which largely use corn from Ohio growers, said Nicholson.

The corn is crushed into a fine powder and converted into several commodities there, including fuel.

The era of the electric car is still decades away, but a renewable energy and health care bill that passed Congress in the summer created incentives for electric vehicle manufacturers and dedicated money to charging infrastructure, raising concerns among agriculture experts about the future of ethanol.

“I don't think anybody in the corn belt should be buying land right now” despite rising property values, said Kevin Egan, a professor of environmental and natural resource economics at the University of Toledo. “There is a huge disruption coming in the next 10 years.”

Biodiesel is somewhat different. The sheer size of electric batteries capable of powering large vehicles makes electric trucks and planes impractical, meaning the trucking and airline industries need to find other ways to reduce their considerable carbon emissions.

Diesel made from soybeans is one alternative. But unlike corn/ethanol plants, Ohio has no facilities to convert soybeans into fuel. READ MORE