Iowa Corn Farmers to Trump: The Government Put Us in 'One Hell of a Bad Situation'

August 28, 2019

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by Tal Axelrod (The Hill) The Iowa Corn Growers Association (ICGA) blasted the Trump administration on Tuesday, saying the government has put it in “one hell of a bad situation.”

The trade association hammered President Trump for approving what it called 31 “unjustified” refinery waivers tied to ethanol, along with his year-plus trade war with China. Those two issues, combined with the effects of climate change, are forcing the value of Iowa corn to drop ahead of harvest season, the group said.

“Agriculture is in one hell of a bad situation right now. The government put us in this situation, and they need to help us get out of it,” Vic Miller, a corn farmer from Fayette County, said in a statement. “It’s time for President Trump to make rural America and the [Renewable Fuel Standard] great again. He made promises to American farmers and now it’s time for him to keep them.”

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The trade war has also exacerbated fears of a potential recession in 2020, which would hurt Trump's reelection prospects. While the president said this month the trade war may cause some “short term” pain, he maintains that farmers will be the “big winners.”

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The National Farmers Union also hit Trump in a statement last week, saying his trade war is “making things worse.” READ MORE

Trade Concerns at Farm Show: Demand for Corn, Soybeans Remains Worrisome as Farmers Tour Machinery (DTN Progressive Farmer)

‘Not Sure That He Fully Understood,’ Governor Says of President’s Policy That Impacted Biofuels (WHO TV)

POET cuts production as ethanol industry reels (LimaOhio.com)

ETHANOL PLANT REPRESENTATIVES ASK TRUMP TO STOP EPA WAIVERS (KRVN)

Trump Scrambles To Win Back Angry Farmers (OilPrice.com)

Trump's EPA needs to support ethanol -- Cal Dalton (Madison.com)

More ethanol plant shutdowns could be in future (WJAG/Brownfield Ag News)

Support rural America: Farmers were grateful to the Trump administration for lifting summer E15 restrictions. E15 is a fuel blend with 15% ethanol, an American-made biofuel produced from corn. Allowing E15 to be sold year-round opened a new market for farmers across the Midwest. (Detroit News)

GUEST COLUMN: Protecting farmers, jobs in rural areas (The Courier)

Support strong renewable fuel standard (Clinton Herald)

'Your EPA went too far': Farmers hit hard by Trump EPA's new ethanol rules are fuming (NBC News)

New ethanol rules are testing farmers' support of President Trump (MSNBC; includes VIDEO)

U.S. Farmers May Be Angrier, But Their Trump Love Is Growing (Bloomberg)

Democrats can get a second look in farm country with clean energy (The Hill/New Energy America)

Our View: Farm economy: Trump actions continue to decimate farm country (Mankato Free Press)

Ethanol Industry Reels as Trade Dispute and Policy Changes Cut Demand: Producers of corn-based fuel additive close plants in Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota (Wall Street Journal)

Grim economics wallop ethanol and corn producers (Minnesota Public Radio)

America’s Farmers Need More Than a Trade Truce: Presidents Hoover and Carter paid the price for agriculture busts. Is Trump next? (Bloomberg)

Letter: Trump should visit Ohio farmers (LimaOhio.com)

Editorial roundup: Government hurting crop prices, income (Albert Lea Tribune)

Trump’s $28 Billion Bet That Rural America Will Stick With Him: Farmers caught in the trade war have become dependent on government payments. (Bloomberg)

Excerpt from Detroit News: More options at the fuel pump means more competition and lower prices. The move showed the president is serious about keeping his promise to the rural community and improving the agricultural economy. There is still work to do. His Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) needs to stop handing out refinery exemptions to large oil companies.

These companies, like Exxon and Chevron, use the refinery exemptions from the EPA to bypass federal biofuel laws and push ethanol blends out of the market. They have already destroyed 2.6 billion gallons of biofuel demand, and dozens of exception requests are already on file at the EPA, one signature away from doing more damage to the rural economy.

As a farmer, I supported President Donald Trump. His action on E15 has the potential to do great things for the agriculture community, along with reducing our dependence on foreign oil and lowering gas prices. But it won’t deliver results if his regulators continue giving special treatment to big oil companies. READ MORE

Excerpt from The Hill/New Energy America: Despite President Trump’s frequent false claims to the contrary, his victory was one of the thinnest in history — famously coming down to only about 77,000 votes in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (out of well over 12 million votes cast in those states). Just as famously, those razor-thin margins were compiled through having a roughly 2-to-1 advantage among rural voters in those states.

While by no means the only factor in the 2020 election, as I’ve mentioned before, there is no realistic path to re-election for Trump if this rural firewall breaks down.

As recent reporting has shown, Trump’s inept policies in farm country are resulting in real pain and farmers are no longer holding their tongues. For me, it’s starting to look more and more like elections in the past where Democrats have made real inroads in rural America.

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Following a Democratic sweep of Congress in 2006 that was keyed by wins in rural America, from the Great Plains to the Midwest farm belt, the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) set about memorializing a big part of the bargain candidates across the country had made with farm country voters.

Led in large part by Democratic senators from rural states like North and South Dakota, Iowa, and Montana, they found a bipartisan consensusfor extending and expanding the recently-passed Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) to more fully displace oil in our economy while adding a greenhouse gas standard that would steer innovation in biofuels toward solving the climate crisis and ensure rural America had a prominent place in the transition to a clean energy economy. It was a hopeful moment in the quest for an enduring consensus approach to solving this global problem while securing new jobs and solid career prospects in farm country through the transition.

Perhaps it was the fear of this new political coalition that set the oil industry off, or maybe it was simple greedy resistance to any potential loss of market share to American farmers, but the industry set about almost immediately to unravel this deal. Now, with climate deniers in Congress and in the White House, the oil industry has the upper hand.

Trump — despite his hollow promises to “take care of our farmers” — is attempting to drive the final nail in the coffin of the RFS and, with it, take away one of the last lifelines rural America has to a return to prosperity. His latest actions to further degrade the RFS through radically exploiting the “small refinery exemption waiver” process speak much louder than his empty words. He has made clear again and again that he has no intention of supporting farmers, particularly when it comes to creating low-carbon biofuels that would compete with his fossil fuel funders.

Beyond kicking farmers when they can least afford it, this latest broadside further undermines the path forward for rural America that we had previously been on while attempting to box us into the fossil fuel dead-end advocated by the oil industry. They would accomplish one of their cherished goals: to remove renewable fuels from our collective toolbox — one of the key resources we have to fight climate change.

It has been heartening to see so many of the Democratic contenders for 2020 recognize the critical role agriculture will play in any serious attempt to reverse our dangerous course toward catastrophic climate change. As long-standing stewards of the land, farmers know how to think about long-term consequences and are our greatest source of innovation when it comes to conserving our precious resources. It is imperative to harness their ingenuity and dedication by creating ways for them to realize value from carbon-efficient farming and from producing clean alternatives to fossil fuels.

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From farm-compatible wind and solar electricity, to carbon-sequestering farming practices, to biofuels that can break the oil-industry’s monopoly control over how we move over land, sea, and air, the practical and political path to a clean energy economy goes through rural America. READ MORE