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Illinois ag economist skeptical of biofuels package

An ag economist with the University of Illinois says President Trump’s biofuels package is “much less than meets the eye”.

Scott Irwin tells Brownfield he recognizes that the details of the package need to be released before firm conclusions can be made, but says his preliminary findings show…

“We’re going to be about 5 billion gallon short of full implementation of the standard from 2016 through 2019.”

He says ag leaders are calling the package a major victory, but Irwin calls it a “modest defensive retreat” by the refining side who he says is clearing winning at this point.

Irwin says the decline in corn futures Friday backs up his point.

“If this was such a big win for ag, under any reasonable circumstances corn prices should have gone up at least a little.”

Irwin says it is nice to hear small refinery exemptions should be largely offset in the future, but he does not see the damage from lost gallons ever being made up.