A letter sent Thursday by Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va), Jim Costa ( D-CA), Peter Welch (D-VT) and Steve Womack (R-AR), and signed by 165 of their Republican and Democratic colleagues, asks Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy to decrease the ethanol mandate in next year’s renewable-fuel standard.
“The U.S. corn market has been increasingly volatile since the expansion of the RFS in 2007,” the letter reads. “This reflects the reality that more than 40 percent of the corn crop now goes into ethanol production, a dramatic rise since the first ethanol mandates were put into place in 2005. While well intentioned, the rigid nature of the federal law has not allowed it to change as new realities emerge in the market place. Ethanol now consumes more corn than animal agriculture, a fact directly attributable to the federal mandate. Corn prices are just one example of the economic harm caused by the RFS.”
