From the Argus Leader this week:
Ethanol is booming, but its trajectory now depends more on Washington than on the Midwestern farmers and businesses who make the corn-based fuel. Congress is making its third attempt to pass a national energy policy, and ethanol proponents say including a "renewable fuels standard" could ensure the industry's future by more than doubling consumption by 2012.
That debate has an audience in South Dakota - the fifth-largest producer in the country - where a majority of corn growers are involved in ethanol cooperatives. Economists say the plants increase corn prices by 10 to 20 cents a bushel, while making fuel is an example of what backers call "value-added agriculture."
Virtually every Midwestern politician favors ethanol, but newly elected Sen. John Thune of South Dakota is trying to make it his signature issue. He won office in November partly on the claim that he could win passage of the new standard. ...Last week, [Thune] pointed out that his RFS bill - at 6 million gallons - passed a committee headed by Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, no friend of ethanol because of the his state's stake in petroleum.
"We figured out what the traffic would bear and pushed that as hard as we could, and I think getting him to agree to that was a significant concession," Thune said.
The Argus report is a bit weak on the sad history of the last ethanol bill. See "The Ethanol Moment" for more. I talked to a big ethanol investor this weekend and he was giddy about the the Thune bill moving to the Senate floor. He said the bill was the only "legislative vehicle" for the ethanol bill in the Senate and that any other bills are window-dressing or posturing. He didn't know the timeline of a vote, but let's watch for that.
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