2-29 FB Ethanol Wheat

Holy smokes and alert the media. Everybody has been worrying about driving corn prices out of sight because of the use of corn in ethanol.  Beef and dairy producers have been concerned for obvious reasons. Commodities brokers are trading on corn futures, but wait. There is a break in the story.

Ohio grain producers are finding out that at least one ethanol plant in the state is taking wheat. Mike Irvin of Anderson's Ethanol Plant in Greenville, Ohio confirms that: “We are open for wheat during wheat harvest year. The reason is that the starch in the corn kernel, we convert into  sugar and then ferment into ethanol. There is also starch content in wheat, now there’s not as much starch in wheat as there is in a corn kernel, so we know that we will not get quite the yield per bushel that we get out of corn, but our test results show that if we can pay approximately 1 dollar less for wheat then we have to pay for corn, which is the current market difference, then we think we can still come out ahead and we are willing to give it a try and see what we can learn.”