12/22/08 Catching Up With Ethanol

Catching Up with Ethanol. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. It's the down time for much of the ag industry. And while gasoline prices have dropped back into a more normal range we are still seeing higher prices at the grocery store and the finger is still being pointed at ethanol. Toni Nuernberg, Executive Director of the Ethanol Promotion and Information Council. NUERNBERG: Most of the summer was spent blaming ethanol for higher food prices and I think we are asking some tough questions back now in that we knew for a fact that ethanol is not the reason you're seeing food prices come up. There are a number of factors most of which was higher fuel prices and now we've seen the price of corn come down significantly, we've sent the price of gasoline dropping significantly but we have not seen food prices dropping to match that same level. According to Nuernberg, they are trying to get to the bottom of the price disparity. NUERNBERG: We're asking those tough questions and you are seeing these big food companies, manufacturers posting record profits and you've got to really ask that question and try to get some answers here. We knew all along it was not fact based and lucky for us consumers I think saw through that and our most recent research shows that 70% of consumers surveyed still very strongly that biofuels are right for our country. EPIC has recently partnered with Growth Energy. NUERNBERG: Growth Energy is a new group that has been formed of ethanol producers and other industry partners that are very interested in seeing the success of ethanol and we just felt that ethanol is at a point where it needs to take the next step and needs some perhaps recharging and some new voices and that's what Growth Energy will be doing. EPIC will continue to work on the publics' education about ethanol. NUERNBERG: That's been EPIC's main focus in our three years is really trying to educate consumers so that they understand what ethanol is, what it does, how it benefits them from both an economic and an environmental standpoint. The performance of ethanol as fuel has been proven. When you've got Indy that runs on ethanol and you've got the Corvette series and the American LeMans running on cellulosic E85 ethanol, the performance in certainly not an issue any more. Now it's building infrastructure and getting beyond the 10% mandate. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.