Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
In a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, Gov. Chet Culver is urging the agency to deny the request of Texas Gov. Rick Perry to waive the U.S. Renewable Fuels Standard, which helps to subsidize ethanol.Culver said waiving the Renewable Fuels Standard would not help reduce corn prices or food prices, which was one of the reasons cited by Perry for making the request, but it would have a very negative effect on the development of advanced biofuels and on future national energy security.
“Critics have been blaming ethanol for the recent rise in food prices, but in fact a complex set of factors have contributed to those increases in the U.S. and around the world,” Culver’s letter said. “The primary factors contributing to rising food prices include: oil hovering around $140 a barrel; increasing global demand for grain and meat in nations like China and India; adverse weather events including consecutive drought years in Australia; a weak U.S. dollar encouraging exports; and agricultural policies around the world that have limited the productivity of farmers from Europe to Asia.”
Perry argued in his request for the waiver earlier this year that since the vast majority of livestock feed products are corn-based, the artificial pressure created by the mandate threatens livestock operations across the country.
“While I have no doubt this mandate was a well-intentioned effort to move our country toward energy independence, it is doing more harm than good and must be modified before our livestock industry suffers permanent damage,” Perry said in a statement to the EPA. “Granting this waiver will provide much needed relief to families, while enabling Texas to continue feeding and fueling the nation.”
Culver noted that a recent study from Texas A&M University concluded that the underlying force driving changes in the agricultural industry, along with the economy as a whole, is overall higher energy costs, evidenced by $100-per-barrel oil.
“The fact is that ethanol is helping to reduce gasoline prices at the pump,” he said. “A recent report from Iowa State University’s Center for Agriculture and Rural Development estimates that the growth in ethanol production and use has caused gasoline prices to be 29 to 40 cents per gallon lower than they might otherwise have been.”
The push to relax the federal renewable fuels standard has also garnered a strong reaction from Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who said last week that he would “absolutely not” support it.
A decision on Perry’s request is expected by the EPA later this summer.
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