Tom Vilsack acolytes Tim Gannon and Robert Bonnie recently posted an essay on the online ag news outlet Agri-Pulse titled The Treasury Department must seize the chance to open new markets for America’s farmers. Gannon ran for Iowa Secretary of Agriculture in 2018 against Mike Naig. Bonnie is a Harvard and Duke University-trained policy wonk with multiple tenures at USDA (Obama and Biden) after having worked at the Ag-friendly NGO Environmental Defense Fund for 14 years. He’s now a distinguished fellow with the University of California-Berkeley’s Stone Center for Environmental Stewardship.
I’ll let you read it for yourself, but the bulk of the piece is the authors lamenting the fate of the 45Z tax credit created by Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. Biden’s Treasury Department, probably wisely, refused to adopt the rule in its tax guidance without an opportunity for public comment on the portion of the rule that measured the Carbon Intensity (CI) of biofuel production (ethanol and soy biodiesel). Ethanol producers could get up to $1 per gallon tax credit if they used crops produced with a reduced CI score that would result from things like cover crops and no-till farming. Presumably some of that $1 would trickle down to farmers through premium commodity prices paid for crops produced in such a manner, although Gannon and Bonnie provide no evidence this would’ve happened or that it would’ve covered farmers’ costs. Whether it is true or not, that’s a long and winding road to inspire farmer conservation adoption.
In language typical of those spinning in and out of the government agency-NGO revolving door that is now characteristic of the liberal intellectual elite, they suggest this is a missed opportunity to improve soil and water through the mysterious alchemy of market based voodoo. Tweak a knob in federal tax policy and voila, you’re no longer drinking poisonous water in Iowa.
Supposed liberals who came of age in the Bill Clinton presidency and Tom Vilsack governorship are fond of such machinations because they crave a ‘CAPITALISM’ merit badge, preferably pinned to their puffed out chest by any Republican and/or the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber of Commerce. Once you get that, you can work up to the ‘NO REGULATION’ merit badge.
To paraphrase Tom Arnold, Neoliberals, can’t live with ‘em, can’t kill ‘em.
Interestingly, the 45‘Q’ tax credit is about the only thing bearing the Vilsack-Biden label that wasn’t shitcanned by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA). The 45Q tax credit is for carbon capture, including ethanol plant CO2 piped from Iowa to North Dakota bedrock, where it can be entombed or used to scour recalcitrant crude oil from declining oil wells. Bruce Rastetter along with his Summit Carbon Solutions is leading that effort here in Iowa. Why did L’Orange save 45Q and not 45Z? Probably because billionaire North Dakota oilman and Rastetter partner Harold Hamm is funding Trump’s new ballroom. Like my dad used to say, “I shit you not.” The 45Q credit was increased from $50 to $85 per ton by Vilsack and remains at that value.
Please return to reading after you clean up your vomit.
Almost lost in these discussions is whether or not producing ethanol from corn benefits American society at all. Gannon and Bonnie (remember—these are Democrats) link to a ‘peer reviewed’, 5-year-old paper showing blending ethanol into gasoline reduces greenhouse gas emissions 46%, versus unblended gasoline. If you want to take time to go to the linked paper, click the little button labeled “funding”. If you don’t want to take the time, here is what you will find:
If you don’t know, POET is a Sioux Falls-based corn ethanol company that operates a dozen or so processing plants around Iowa. Their vision includes “us(ing) the resources given to us in ways we believe God intended.” God made them do it!! (My very first Substack entry was God Made Them Do It. It’s a good one if you haven’t read it.) My oh my how I love it when one of my titles makes good.
I guess God also wants his children to drink poisonous water.
And I just have to say that’s some pretty sloppy scholarship for an elite Harvard/Duke grad. Pretty, pretty sloppy. Hanging your hat on industry-funded research? COME ON, Robert. At least make it hard for me.
Gannon and Bonnie conveniently avoid a paper since published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at the University of Wisconsin and elsewhere showing a 24% increase in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from ethanol blending. This study was funded by National Wildlife Federation, the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, US Department of Energy, and the National Science Foundation.
Similar but unrelated, the scientific journal that published a seminal and impactful paper 25 years ago showing glyphosate (Roundup) to be safe has retracted the paper. The journal (Regulatory Toxicology and Pharmacology) uncovered Monsanto emails suggesting their employees helped ghostwrite the paper. (Just a reminder that our current Iowa Secretary of Agriculture, Mike Naig (R), came to Iowa government from a stint as a lobbyist for Monsanto. In case you forgot.)
The question for Iowa now is not “Is ethanol worth it?” It clearly isn’t. It’s easy to get drawn into a pissing match on whether or not it produces greenhouse gas benefits. Even the best case scenarios on that (GHG benefit) still demonstrate that the water pollution, soil erosion, habitat destruction, consolidation in agriculture, decline and decay of rural Iowa (and other states), and wild speculation in farmland prices are hardly worth the trouble of ethanol. And you should know by now that the availability of corn ethanol certainly isn’t going to prevent Daddy Trump from stripping Venezuela (and Mexico and Greenland and insert country here) of oil resources.
Rather, the question now has become this: “Has ethanol become too big to fail?” I VOTE NO ON THAT. No one, including me, thinks going cold turkey on ethanol is a good thing for Iowa or the U.S. But keeping this zombie on publicly-funded life support so people like Harold Hamm and Bruce Rastetter can use it to rob the U.S. Treasury while stripping Iowa of its natural wealth is insane and perverse.
Corporate colonialism now seems to be a Trump vehicle to enrich himself and his cronies. We’re used to that here in Iowa. Corporations public and private have stripped the wealth from Iowa and continue to do so, and they leave us with pollution and cancer. Iowa’s political leaders have helped them do it. So have the liberal elite.
The moment is NOW for the Democratic Party to lead a measured and reasoned retreat from corn-based ethanol. Corporations are polluting YOUR water to make your gas WORSE and to make billionaires EVEN MORE WEALTHY. At the same time, new technology and alternatives (i.e. solar) exist and are economically competitive when the status quo (i.e. ethanol) isn’t subsidized. On an acre-to-acre basis, solar produces AT LEAST 50 times the energy of produced by corn grown for ethanol. Utility scale solar also coexists nicely with agriculture in various settings. I will bang this drum until my arm falls off.
Regardless of whether or not you lean left or right politically, a huge grassroots opportunity exists right now largely because the Democratic Party refuses to take to the playing field on this and other environmental issues related to agriculture. As I see it, on this field lies a rare and tangible possibility that grass roots imperatives could wrest control of biofuel policy from Democratic elites and Republican billionaires.
Let’s do it.
By the way, I’m trying Tik Tok. It’s love a boomer week on the app so take the opportunity to follow me. Just kidding on the boomer week thing.
@swinerepublic
