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Letter: EPA shoud reconsider limiting biofuels’ future
Op-Ed · December 24, 2013


As an Iowa farmer whose ancestors arrived in 1853 from Ohio and before that farmed in Virginia, I am disappointed when my friends say farmers should grow food and not fuel.


That mistaken belief may have been behind the recent decision by the Environmental Protection Agency to limit the future of biofuels. For all of human civilization, the land has provided clothing, fuel, transportation and food. Only in recent time have we been taking petroleum and coal out of the ground to replace our fuel and fiber that was once produced by agriculture. We seem to have no regard to the harm and unsustainability of using hydrocarbon resources to power our future.

My grandfather’s farm provided fuel for the transportation that powered the farm by horses, mules and oxen as well as the wood for heat and cooking and fuel for neighbors in the town.

Farms provided the wool and cotton fiber, leather and fur for clothing before the synthetic products used today. My great grandfather’s farm that my family lives on today devoted at least half of the farm to produce the oats, timothy and hay to feed the livestock used by himself and others to power their daily lives.

As the industrial revolution occurred, many farms distilled their own alcohol from excess grain to burn in stoves, heaters and early internal combustion engines. It was during prohibition that the rural distillery equipment was destroyed in part because the fledgling petroleum industry did not want the competition from farm raised fuel. The model T Ford ran just fine on straight grain alcohol.

To say that farmers should not grow fuel on their land is a mistake. We can do so much more than just grow food. We can do it efficiently, sustainably and responsibly.

We can do it with new technology that is evolving every day. Agriculture’s troubled past in the last hundred years of surplus and handouts is because of those who wanted to limit what the land could produce.

We need to challenge agriculture to do more in the future and biofuels have a place in that future. We need to support our alternative-energy potential. Ethanol and biodiesel have demonstrated the ability of U.S. farmers to grow both food and fuel and do so with an abundance that leads to stable prices.

Ken Fawcett, West Branch