My Voice: A ‘Swing and a Miss’ from the USDA

by Doug Sombke (Argus Leader/South Dakota Farmers Union) Our esteemed U.S. Department of Agriculture recently released a report of the Inter-Agency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity. While it is hard to get excited over any government report, I had high hopes for this particular effort given the title and the supposed focus.

First of all, by standards of any government report, it is brief – just 44 pages. While that can be a good thing, in this case the brevity underscores a lack of understanding by the USDA and the other participating agencies as to what really constitutes prosperity.

However, one section of the report that focuses on energy seems to conflate all rural areas and fails to recognize the significant and game changing role agriculture has had. Agriculturally derived biofuels, including biodiesel but primarily ethanol, have single-handedly reversed a decades long trend of rising oil imports and a staggering flow of American dollars to foreign countries that support drugs, terrorism and other activities. While we are struggling to see commodity prices above the cost of production, I shudder to think of where we would be without the 15 billion gallon ethanol market.

While this report references renewables, it does so in the most general way imaginable and lumps the need to produce renewables in rural America with coal, natural gas, oil and nuclear power. The word ethanol is not mentioned despite the fact that it is a multi-billion dollar domestic industry and here in South Dakota alone, it contributes nearly $4 billion to the state’s economy according to a 2012 study by South Dakota State University, and that was six years ago. Our neighbors in Nebraska have studied this issue and reached similar conclusions with an estimated $5 billion annually in economic impact, as has Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas and so many others. Across the country, the ethanol industry has raised land values, wages and generated hundreds of millions in tax revenue to the state.

How is it ethanol and biofuels are not singled out in this report for not only the contributions to date, but the untapped potential of the future? Ironically, the report keys on the need for regulatory reform in order to “unleash the potential” of rural America, when there is no industry held back more from expansion than ethanol. President Donald Trump also recently addressed the annual meeting of the Farm Bureau and again railed against regulations that impede prosperity, but with no mention of ethanol.

Remove the vapor pressure restrictions on ethanol blends, update the woefully outdated models on lifecycle analysis and tailpipe emissions, facilitate the certification of higher ethanol blends and do your job with respect to enforcing the law on toxic aromatics and fine particulate emissions.

There are no consumer or taxpayer costs associated with any of these actions .... READ MORE

Excerpt from U.S. Department of Agriculture: The Interagency Task Force on Agriculture and Rural Prosperity identified over 100 actions for the federal government to consider in order to achieve a vision of a better rural America. These actions include legislative, regulatory, and policy changes and were built around these key indicators:

You may click HERE (PDF, 5.4 MB) to read the Rural Prosperity Task Force Report in its entirety on the newly unveiled Rural Prosperity website, which includes a link for farmers, ranchers, foresters, and producers to submit comments and ideas on regulatory reform. READ MORE