Corn growers in Iowa are facing a major setback in the Democratic National Committee vote to drop the state as the first of its presidential primary voting calendar, a shake-up that threatens the federal policy that requires ethanol be mixed into American gasoline.
"I'm not going to sugarcoat it — the [new primary calendar] takes a very powerful tool out of our toolbox to promote renewable fuels policy to one party,” Monte Shaw, the executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuel Association, said in an interview.
The Renewable Fuels Standard has pitted corn growers against the oil industry and against environmental groups, which view the RFS as both economically and environmentally problematic. They argue that ethanol production is resource-intensive and uses land that could instead be used for other types of agriculture or growth.But in Iowa, the nation’s largest producer of ethanol and home to 44 biofuel plants that support roughly 40,000 jobs, corn is king.
Sanders, who had been an outspoken critic of the RFS ethanol mandates, hailed the corn-based fuel during his 2016 presidential bid as an “economic lifeline to rural and farm communities in Iowa and throughout the Midwest.” Iowa no longer being first in the nation in terms of its caucuses would “lessen the opportunities for Democrats to come to Iowa and for the Iowa farmers to make the case” for ethanol, Timothy Hagle, a political science professor at the University of Iowa, said in an interview.
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