Originally Posted By: rocky mtn bill
BrentD, If I were an Iowa farmer, I'd be embarrassed to be the recipient of the ethanol subsidy. Republicans are supposedly opposed to government boondogles, but this one is blatant and pointless.


Bill, there is no "ethanol subsidy". And back when there was one, it didn't go to the farmers. It went to the ethanol plants. What remains in place now is the Renewable Fuels Mandate, which requires that so many gallons of "blended fuels" be produced per year.

We tend to forget that when the whole ethanol thing kicked off, we were producing far less oil in this country than we have since the Bakken was opened up. And oil prices were a whole lot higher. The idea was to increase domestically produced fuel so we wouldn't be a captive to the foreign countries from which we were buying much of our oil. And ethanol is a fuel that we can produce in this country should the need ever arise. I agree that there's far less need for it now. And in fact, the Renewable Fuels Mandate cap is being reduced as a result of the fact that oil prices are lower and we are now capable of producing more.

It's quite possible to look at everything connected to agriculture--from the Renewable Fuels Mandate to crop subsidies to the Conservation Reserve Program--as a "boondoggle". But for better or worse, the government has been tampering with agriculture--in order to give Americans a reliable supply of relatively cheap food--since at least the Depression years. The problem is figuring out how to disentangle all the boondoggling while still providing that reliable supply of cheap food--but not putting a lot of farmers out of business. It's all really complicated.