Domestic Fuel

The pain is still too fresh for Paul Dana’s friends in the ethanol industry to even start talking about it, but the questions are being asked, and the Wichita Business Journal got some answers from Team Ethanol sponsors ICM and EPIC.

“Absolutely we’ll be back,” ICM President and CEO Dave Vander Griend says. “It’s a tragic, tragic loss, a very tough one for me personally. But the best thing we can do for Paul’s legacy is to continue on, and we’ll do that.”
Plans for the ethanol racing team are on hold this week out of respect for Dana’s memory, says Tom Slunecka, EPIC executive director.
But keeping Dana’s drive alive to promote ethanol awareness will take center stage later, he says.
“I think we owe it to him to prove his legacy true,” Slunecka says. “We owe it to him to march on in behalf of him, in behalf of the fervor he had for both ethanol and racing. Ethanol was far more than a sponsor to Paul.”

USDA’s Prospective Plantings report out Friday says that farmers will plant five percent less corn acreage this year and seven percent more soybeans than a year ago – mainly because of higher fuel and fertilizer costs. So, what does that mean for ethanol production? Don Roose, an analyst with U.S. Commodities says “This puts the end users on notice like ethanol plants,” according to this article in AgricultureOnline. The Des Moines Register reports that Al Larson, who manages NEW Cooperative’s seed warehouse in Knierim, is skeptical about the report’s findings. “Our yields here the last three years have been just phenomenal,” he said. “I think it might go the other way. Ethanol demand, I think, is going to drive a lot of it. It’s everywhere you look.”
USDA’s estimate was well below what the trade was expecting – almost two million acres less than the low end estimate – so skepticism may be in order. And, as always, yields will largely depend on the weather, which is not predicable in any year. So, we just have to wait and see what really happens this year.