Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
The idea that biofuels are causing food shortages is a “phony issue,” according to Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa.Worldwide food prices have been skyrocketing recently, due largely to growing demand for high-quality foods in the developing world. But a wave of criticism against the use of corn to make ethanol has reached a fever pitch in recent weeks.
“Now we hear a lot of talk, I think it’s misguided, about some of the food going for ethanol that’s causing a lot of problems,” said Harkin. “That’s not it at all. That’s not it at all.” He was on the Senate floor Thursday talking about the new farm bill, stressing the importance of some of the energy provisions included in the bill. The Bush administration has called for putting off further negotiations on the farm bill for one year or more, seeking a one-year extension of the current farm program. Harkin said it would be a mistake to wait a full year or more to enact some of the new energy incentives.
“A lot of people have this mistaken idea that the corn that’s being made into ethanol is the corn that people eat,” said Harkin. “That’s not so. People don’t eat that, it’s not the kind of corn you buy and you eat on your plate at night. This is the corn that’s fed to chickens and hogs and cattle. And most of the hungry people in the world today, they aren’t hungry because they aren’t getting meat. They’re hungry because of subsistence diets. So the ethanol thing is just a kind of a bugaboo. That’s just a phony issue out there.”
Harkin highlighted the fact that current energy policies will put the focus on the next generation of biofuels, actually limiting the use of corn for ethanol. “We recognize the limits (of corn ethanol). And we’ve recognized that in the energy bill we passed,” he said. In the renewable fuels standard that was passed into law last year by Congress, no more than 15 billion gallons of ethanol can be made from present sources like corn.
He said that passing the new farm bill will be critical in spurring these new technologies. “We want to move aggressively into cellulose ethanol — using wood products and waste products and things like that for making ethanol. And this (new farm bill) pushes us in that direction. Moves us aggressively in that direction. Well, if we have a one-year extension, we’ll lose yet another year or two on that.”
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