(Radio Iowa) — The three-TRILLION dollar economic recovery plan introduced in the U.S. House includes two-and-a-quarter billion for the biofuels industry. Iowa Congresswoman Abby Finkenauer, a Democrat from Dubuque, is part of the House Biofuels Caucus that lobbied for the assistance. “This is obviously a meaningful step towards protecting our producers and providing relief to this vital sector of our economy that means so much to our state, to our agricultural community, also to rural Iowa and our cities,” Finkenauer says.

Under the plan, ethanol and biodiesel plants would get payments based on the gallons each produce. “At a rate of 45 cents per gallon for fuel produced between January and May of this year,” Finkenauer says, “and then for plants forced to shut down, the bill provides 22.5 cents per gallon on the amount produced during the same period last year in 2019.” There are eight biofuels plants in Finkenauer’s congressional district which covers the northeast quarter of Iowa. “And I know they are struggling,” Finkenauer says. “Just last month the ADM ethanol production plant in Cedar Rapids shut down, furloughing 90 workers.”

Growth Energy, a trade group for the industry, projects biofuels production has been cut in half due to the pandemic and the Trump Administration waivers for oil refineries, so they don’t have to blend ethanol into gasoline. Iowa Congresswoman Cindy Axne, a Democrat from West Des Moines, is also a member of the House Biofuels Caucus. She says the downturn in the biofuels industry is having a devastating economic impact, leading to rural job losses and falling corn prices.

(Radio Iowa) — More than a dozen U-S senators, including Iowans Chuck Grassley and Joni Ernst, are calling for indemnity support for pork producers who are depopulating their herds due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Jen Sorensen

Jen Sorenson of Ankeny, president-elect of the National Pork Producers Council, says it was a big plus when President Trump declared pork processing plants as critical infrastructure, ordering them to stay open. “But we are still so far behind with plant capacity,” Sorenson says. “U.S. hog farmers need help and relief when it comes to compensation for euthanized animals and also the cost incurred with euthanizing, composting and rendering those animals as well.”

Hog producers in Iowa and elsewhere are asking for financial help in covering their losses.  “A hundred dollars, roughly, for compensation for euthanized animals,” Sorenson says, “and then an additional $50 to cover those rendering, disposal and composting costs, depending on how the producer wishes to walk through that process.” Producers were looking to 2020 as a year of potential profit after a few years of consecutive financial challenges, but then coronavirus arrived.  Sorenson says, “We had two rough years in terms of the trade disruptions in 2018 and 2019 with not having access into Japan, the uncertainty of USMCA, and not having a market into China as well.”

Due to COVID-19 outbreaks that closed some meatpacking plants, processing capacity is down by 20- to 40-percent or more and estimates say the pork industry has lost more than five-billion dollars.