A federal district court judge today ruled that California’s low-carbon fuel standard, known as LCFS, violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, a ruling that appears at least initially to be good news for the nation’s corn ethanol industry and bad news for environmental critics who have argued that corn-based ethanol leads to changes in land use in other countries. Read More...

Leaders of Growth Energy, the ethanol coalition, painted a positive portrait of the industry going into 2012 in a call to reporters today, even though the ethanol tax break and protective tariff will expire on Dec. 31 and there are campaigns to get rid of the renewable fuel standard. Read More...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today that the decision of Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and House Agriculture Committee Chairman Frank Lucas, R-Okla., to exclude construction of blender pumps from USDA renewable fuel activities in the draft of the proposed farm bill means that he has to work harder to convince Congress to allow it. Read More...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack Monday announced $44.6 million in payments to 156 advanced biofuel producers across the country to support the production and expansion of advanced biofuels. Read More...

MIAMI — U.S. commodities appear to be appropriately priced and ethanol is unlikely to suffer if the tax credit expires, but farm prices could depend on what kind of market China turns out to be in the future, the chairman of the Agriculture Department’s World Agricultural Outlook Board said here last week. Read More...

A coalition of nearly 50 trade groups and organizations representing energy, farm, environmental and forest interests today asked leaders of the House and Senate agriculture committees to include an energy title in any new farm bill, including one that might be written by the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, known as the super committee. Read More...

Reps. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., and Jim Costa, D-Calif., have introduced the Renewable Fuel Standard Flexibility Act, which would reduce or eliminate the volumes of renewable fuel use required by the Renewable Fuels Standard (RFS) based upon corn stocks-to-use ratios. Read More...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today he still believes the United States will be able to meet the congressional mandate to produce 16 billion gallons of cellulosic biofuels for the national fuel supply by 2022, even though a major government study released today said the production is unlikely to be met unless innovative technologies are developed or policies change. Read More...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced today in Seattle that USDA has made five major grants totaling $136 million to university researchers to develop aviation biofuels from tall grasses, crop residues and forest resources. Read More...

NASCAR today released a white paper designed to show that E15, a 15 percent ethanol blend, is a high-performance gasoline. At a breakfast sponsored by Growth Energy, the ethanol lobby, NASCAR announced it has accumulated more than a million miles of driving on “Sunoco Green E15.” Read More...

In what may be standard fare as he campaigns for President Barack Obama’s re-election, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today thanked the National Restaurant Association’s board of directors for making more nutritious food appealing, said Obama’s economic plan will help the country “get back to building things,” defended ethanol and, when no one in the audience asked about immigration, raised the issue himself. Read More...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced renewable energy and energy efficiency loans and grants totaling $27 million to more than 500 agricultural producers and rural small businesses in 49 states and Puerto Rico, including one to help with the installation of ethanol and biodiesel flex fuel pumps. Read More...

Livestock, dairy and poultry groups today used a House Agriculture subcommittee hearing on the issue of feed availability to call for a tightening up of the federal renewable fuel standard that controls the amount of ethanol that must be used in the feed supply. Corn growers and pro-ethanol groups, which were not invited to testify, complained that the hearing was an attack on ethanol. Read More...

Senate Agriculture Committee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will tour the NASCAR Sprint Cup Garage in Brooklyn, Mich., Sunday to view engines using ethanol, and will then discuss the benefits of American-grown biofuels with the press, Stabenow's office announced on Thursday. Read More...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s Republican presidential candidacy and President Barack Obama’s comments on ethanol have thrown the corn-based ethanol industry into turmoil as it struggles to convince Congress to provide assistance to build blender pumps. Read More...

President Barack Obama announced today in Peosta, Iowa, that the government will invest $510 million over the next three years in partnership with the private sector to produce advanced drop-in aviation and marine biofuels to power military and commercial transportation. He then took part in a rural economic development forum. Read More...

STOWE, Vt. — The bill to raise the debt ceiling and reduce the deficit on which Congress is expected to vote on today does not provide for any cuts in mandatory farm spending in the short run or end ethanol tax breaks, but it is still possible that appropriators could reduce mandatory farm programs and the special nutrition program for women, infants and children known as WIC when they make the cuts. Read More...

One day after the Environmental Protection Agency announced it would lower the goal for cellulosic ethanol use in the nation’s energy supply because there is not enough available, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack declared his faith in cellulosic energy, and announced $45 million in federal contracts for four additional Biomass Crop Assistance Program (BCAP) project areas in six states to expand the availability of non-food crops to be used in the manufacturing of liquid biofuels. Read More...

A bipartisan Senate agreement to end the ethanol tax break and the protective tariff but extend the tax credit for cellulosic biofuels production and infrastructure development won praise from producer groups today, but the agreement’s path to becoming law is unclear. Read More...

ROME — José Graziano da Silva, the director general-elect of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, said today that he believes in genetic modification in agriculture but is opposed to individual companies being granted monopolies on genetically modified seeds. Read More...

PARIS — Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said here Wednesday that a meeting with fuel and airline company executives at the Paris Air Show has reassured him that the United States is taking the right in path in developing biofuels, particularly for airline use. Read More...

PARIS — In an attempt to reduce global food price volatility, the agriculture ministers from the G20 countries, including the United States, agreed today to launch a new wheat research initiative, convinced China and India to participate in a new food market supply and demand system, and released a proposal for a pilot project on humanitarian food reserves. But the group did not take a position opposing biofuels subsidies. Read More...

House Agriculture Committee ranking member Collin Peterson, D-Minn., and Rep. Aaron Schock, R-Ill., have introduced a bill to extend the $1 per gallon biodiesel tax credit to 2014 and to change the tax incentive to a production excise tax credit. Read More...

In what appears to be the worst day for traditional American agricultural interests in decades, the Senate voted to end ethanol tax breaks immediately while the House of Representatives voted to end payments to settle the Brazil cotton case as well as to cut a wide range of other programs including nutrition. Read More...

The Senate Tuesday rejected a bill sponsored by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., to immediately repeal the ethanol tax break formally known as the Volumetric Ethanol Tax Credit. Read More...

In a signal of increasing trouble for the ethanol industry’s tax breaks, the Renewable Fuels Association, Growth Energy and the National Corn Growers Association all issued news releases Monday opposing the amendment by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and endorsing the bill introduced by Sens. John Thune, R-S.D., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., to make the ethanol tax credit dependent on the price of oil beginning July 1. Read More...

The World Trade Organization needs a stricter system of monitoring members’ levels of farm subsidies and should consider more restrictions on conservation payments, biofuels programs and other farm policies that are not now considered trade distorting, the editors of a new book published by the International Food Policy Research Institute said today at a seminar in Washington.
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Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will raise the issue of science-based rules that could allow countries to adopt biotechnology and promote biofuels at the Paris Air Show when he travels to Paris this month, he told The Hagstrom Report today. Read More...

Oxfam, the international charity that played a big role in convincing the World Trade Organization to take up the issues of West African cotton growers in the Doha round, today launched a new global campaign to achieve "food justice in a resource-constrained world." Read More...

American farmers and ranchers need a disaster program as well as crop insurance, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today at the Senate Agriculture Committee’s first hearing on the 2012 farm bill. Read More...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told a gathering of international agricultural development activists Tuesday that U.S. biofuels should not blamed for most of the increases in food prices in recent years. Read More...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today asked the world to join the United States in addressing rising food prices and long-term agricultural development in the Third World, but Oxfam, the international charity, said the Obama administration has not lived up to commitments it has made for global food security. Read More...

The $4.9 billion direct payments program to farmers should be eliminated, with all but $650 million per year going to deficit reduction, a key Washington liberal think tank says in a report to be released today. Read More...

Reacting to concerns about grain supplies and to further cuts in farm programs in the continuing resolution to fund the government through September 30, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said today that the nation needs to talk about whether American agriculture needs to be restructured to increase production and what will happen to the roles the government has been playing as budgets are cut. Read More...

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today announced a program to provide funding for installation of blender pumps at gas stations around the country, winning praise from ethanol pumps. Read More...

If 200,000 blender pumps were constructed at gasoline stations around the country in five years, ethanol could compete “head on” with petroleum, the head of the world’s largest producer of renewable fuel told the Senate Agriculture Committee today. Read More...

Senate Agriculture Commitee Chairman Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., says the Senate will proceed on its own schedule on the farm bill and should finish the bill as quickly as possible, but she will not promise to finish the bill in 2012. Read More...

Agreements between the United States and Brazil involving renewable energy that were announced during President Obama’s visit to South America have won praise from the Brazilian sugarcane industry association UNICA, and a more measured comment from the Renewable Fuels Association. Read More...

The Agriculture Department's monthly corn supply and demand reports are distorting perceptions of how much corn is being used for ethanol and should be changed, a 33-member coalition of governors told Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack in a letter sent Tuesday. Read More...

SAN ANTONIO ­— Within a month, the Agriculture Department will announce a funding program to build ethanol pumps at gas stations around the country, Agriculture Undersecretary for Rural Development Dallas Tonsager said here today at the National Farmers Union convention. Read More...

TAMPA, Fla. — In breaks with past policy, the National Corn Growers Association has passed resolutions urging reform of ethanol and an “investigation” of changes to the direct payments program. Read More...

TAMPA , Fla. — American agriculture faces more systemic risk than at any time since the 1970s, according to Carl Zulauf, an Ohio State University agriculture professor. Read More...

TAMPA, Fla. — Agriculture Secretary Vilsack vigorously defended the biofuels industry today, saying it is not responsible for rising food costs and still needs subsidies to become a mature industry. Read More...

TAMPA, Fla. — Delegates to the National Corn Growers Association’s Corn Congress struggled today to come up with a policy on the ethanol tax credit and protective tariff or an alternative while a key American Soybean Association official said that group would seek an extension of the biodiesel tax credit. Read More...

Agriculture Undersecretary for Rural Development Dallas Tonsager runs what former President Clinton last week called “an underappreciated division of USDA that will become more important in the years ahead.” Many economists and develop experts would agree. Read More...

Seven farm and ethanol groups have sent a letter to all senators urging them to defeat “any efforts that would damage the American ethanol industry’s growth,” Growth Energy, an ethanol lobbying group announced today. Read More...

CRYSTAL CITY, Va. — Former President Bill Clinton seemed to join the food-versus-fuel debate today, saying that a balance should be struck in the use of corn for food and ethanol to avoid food riots, a statement that won quick retorts from the Renewable Fuels Association and the National Corn Growers Association. Read More...

PHOENIX — The ethanol industry needs to quickly get behind a reform program to take to Congress and has key meetings planned in Washington later this week, industry leaders said here at the National Ethanol Conference Monday and Tuesday. Read More...

The White House Office of Management and Budget threatened today that President Obama would veto a spending bill similar to the continuing resolution that the House of Representatives is considering, while two key renewable fuels groups came down hard on anti-ethanol amendments offered to that bill. Read More...

The Agriculture Department’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) announced today its decision to deregulate corn genetically engineered to produce a common enzyme called alpha-amylase that breaks down starch into sugar. It is used in ethanol production. Read More...

Fuel that contains up to 15 percent ethanol is safe for cars and light trucks made since 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency declared this morning. Read More...

ATLANTA — Delegates to the American Farm Bureau Federation convention voted here Tuesday to endorse continuation of most of the 2008 farm bill programs in the 2012 bill and support changes to the ethanol program, while breaking with their usual ideology to consider supporting a supply management program in dairy. The 370 delegates from all 50 states voted for a resolution “to extend the concepts of the 2008 farm bill” and programs including crop insurance, direct payments, countercyclical payments, marketing loans and the average crop revenue election program known as ACRE. Read More...