05/12/08 Ethanol Support

Ethanol Support. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Political noises are being made towards the ethanol industry and they are not sitting well. Just last week presidential hopeful John McCain and a dozen other politicians suggested that the ethanol industry take a step back as a way to help lower food prices. The president of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council, Toni Nuernberg says that decision would be disastrous. NUERNBERG: We clearly don't agree with that idea. It clearly is an uninformed decision perhaps. There have been a lot of studies done and I know that people keep throwing studies about but there have been several done recently and they are showing without a doubt that across the country we've been including 10% ethanol in gasoline for quite some time and if we were to remove that ethanol from the current gasoline supply or just stop producing it to enhance the fuel supply our price per gallon of gas would go up even higher. Depending on your location that increase could be anywhere from 15 to 45 cents per gallon. NUERNBERG: Not only would it increase the price of fuel for American consumers but it continues our dependency on foreign oil. And I think as a nation we've been committed for some time to find alternative fuels and ethanol is a fuel that's here today, its available today. It isn't the silver bullet but it is certainly part of the overall strategy for reducing that dependence on foreign oil. Most of the supporters of this idea of holding ethanol back were Republicans, though not all but Nuernberg says this is a bad idea regardless. NUERNBERG: Regardless of what side of the aisle you want to support, not moving forward on an initiative as important as renewable fuel is just ridiculous. As I say it is just a really misinformed and poor decision regardless. I think when you take a look at the fact that oil prices topped out at almost $123.00 per barrel and that just continues to increase. And as Nuernberg pointed out, without the offset that ethanol is already providing prices across the board are feeling the impact. NUERNBERG: Unfortunately it's impacting us at the pump; it impacts us at the grocery store. It's impacting us in so many ways and it's unfortunate that the only attention that's being paid right now is to the increased price of food and just trying to look for a quick blame and a quick fix and the quick fix is not ethanol. There is no quick fix. It's our dependency on oil that's driving up these costs. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.