Growth Energy, the nation’s largest ethanol association, launched a new ad campaign featuring a fourth-generation corn and soybean farmer who is asking President Donald Trump to ensure that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers the devastating impact some of the agency’s policies are having on family farms.
The ads spotlight Scott Henry, of Longview Farms in Nevada, Iowa, who urges the president to continue listening to rural America: “President Trump has been our greatest champion for ethanol, for family farms, for rural America. We do not want President Trump to be undermined. These unelected bureaucrats at the EPA are rigging the system for these oil companies on the backs of family farmers. We hope President Trump will continue to listen to us.”
Slated to run during primetime spots on Fox News in Washington, D.C., and in states across the country, the new ads “put a face to the farm crisis across the country and give a voice to those in rural communities who are most impacted by EPA’s failure to follow the law,” said Growth Energy CEO Emily Skor.
“EPA’s recent 2020 RVO proposal failed to account for the 2.6 billion gallons of American biofuel lost due to the indefensibly high number of refinery exemptions granted in recent years. At every opportunity, EPA is taking liberties that stagnate or shrink vital markets for our family farmers at a time when they need demand for grain the most.”
“We’re at a critical junction,” continued Skor, “and the president has an important decision to make: is he going to let EPA continue down this destructive path, or stand up for the hardworking farmers he has vowed to protect?”
The ads comes after EPA recently released the renewable volume obligation numbers for 2020, which sets the biofuel blending targets for forthcoming years. The blending targets fail to account for the billions of gallons lost due to small refinery exemptions and offer no path forward for growth in ethanol demand – stalling innovation in advanced biofuel. EPA also chose to flout the 2017 court ruling requiring the agency to revisit 500 million gallons of biofuel that were inappropriately waived. Additionally, EPA is still sitting on 38 pending applications for refinery exemptions for 2018 and did not account for the granting of any waivers in the 2020 targets, meaning yet again – the numbers fall short of America’s homegrown energy potential.
