Government turns its back on Kansas corn growers

There was a time in this country when ethanol fuel was considered green energy. Not any more.

The Kansas Corn Growers Association (KCGA) has now joined five other state corn associations and other biofuels groups in a petition challenging the Environmental Protection Agency’s recent greenhouse gas (GHG) tailpipe emissions rule for cars and trucks which seeks solutions solely through electric vehicles. Yes, the EPA is a political mechanism of the ruling administration. The KCGA supports actions to reduce GHG emissions but opposes arbitrary regulatory actions attempting to mandate a single technology to meet those goals.

“EPA’s emissions rule is basically a mandate for electric vehicles. The clean ethanol fuel produced from our crops is already reducing tailpipe emissions as much and more than electric vehicles,” said KCGA President Brent Rogers of Hoxie. “Liquid fuels with ethanol are the affordable greenhouse gas solution for the affordable vehicles that are used by nearly every American driver today.”

This legal challenge by the corn and biofuels groups is the result of an unprecedented move from the anti-agriculture EPA to forever transform the future of the U.S. transportation industry, declaring electric vehicles the clear winner.

Our government also wants to further declare electric vehicles the winners by taking another unprecedented move - building the electric vehicle charging stations all across the country that will be needed. Our government knows that the U.S. private business sector would go broke trying to support this losing electric vehicle industry.

Kansas Corn and the cosigners point out that such a significant policy shift requires an act of Congress with clear intentions to change the future of internal combustion engines, liquid fuels and electric vehicles. This challenge to the EPA’s authority and the reasoning behind it are consistent with past climate control policies.

In the petition, the corn and ethanol groups ask the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to set aside EPA’s final GHG standards for passenger cars and light trucks. This new standard aims to mandate a single technology - electric vehicles - to reduce emissions. In the petition, the corn and biofuel groups state that policies written to exclude any technologies other than electric, stifle the innovation that could create real sustainable change for the future.

It is frustrating that the EPA would ignore biofuels as a climate solution, and instead attempt to mandate the use of electric vehicles that are dependent on the power grid to charge their batteries made with rare earth minerals mined on the other side of the world. It makes more sense that green solutions would come from the green plants we grow on our American family farms. The Kansas Corn Growers Association represents its members in regulatory and legislative issues that impact corn, and promote the use of corn and its products.

On a related note, American oil producers could be net exporters of oil and natural gas again if the Biden administration would ease up on its sanctions of American oil and natural gas exploration and production. Instead, the Biden Administration has been begging Saudi Arabia and Iran to produce more oil and natural gas.

Meanwhile the price of gasoline at the pumps in the U.S. continues to skyrocket out of control, causing U.S. citizens to suffer financially. The Kansas Corn Growers are pointing out, once again, that the Biden Administration’s agenda is not so much progressive as it is just anti-ag and anti-American.