President Trump has called a meeting with Senators and Cabinet officials for 11 a.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday, May 8, to discuss, yet again, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) Renewable Identification Number (RIN) proposals first floated by Senator Ted Cruz early in 2018. This meeting comes much sooner than most had expected given the president’s comments about a 90-day timeframe for further consideration. IL Corn remains concerned that the Administration, especially through actions taken by EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, is showing favor for the interests of oil refineries over the interests of Midwestern farmers. If you have a Twitter account, please plan on participating in a so-called tweetstorm on this issue from 7-9am central time on May 8, just ahead of the White House meeting. Follow and use the hashtag #rfsworks during that time frame to amplify the message to the Trump administration.

IL Corn agrees with the sentiment stated in a letter to the President, sent by National Corn Growers Association and other commodity groups. In part, the letter said, “In recent weeks, we have become greatly concerned with reports that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has waived up to 1.6 billion gallons of Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) volume requirements for refiners. These exemptions run contrary to your commitment to America’s farmers and remove a significant amount of renewable fuel gallons from RFS volumes. Because of these exemptions, RIN values, a stated concern of refiners, have fallen significantly and remained low. Even though EPA has concluded those values do not cause economic harm to refiners, any concerns have been alleviated through the exemptions granted by EPA. Refiners have benefitted greatly from these exemptions, but farmers have been negatively impacted by EPA’s decisions. In addition to asking EPA to reassign these exempted gallons, we also ask that EPA commit to the statutory level for advanced biofuels for 2019 and provide significant growth for biomass-based diesel in 2020 to address lost gallons of advanced biofuels.”