Modern day feather merchants, partly in homage to their global warming crap.
I grew up rural and around farmers and the farm economy all my life, waded deep into Iowa politics, and have a financial/economic background, so I'm not ignorant of innerworkings of agribusiness and added-value ag - or the politics. What the ethanol thing really boils down to is the collective memory of the Rust Belt days and even the Great Depression, as farming is a family as well as business where the average age is well over 50.
To put it simple - the farmers are scared. Scared we'll have another price bust like the 80's. Ironic because what got them in trouble then is getting them in trouble now - speculating on land and creating a price bubble. Add to that a different cost structure than yesteryear and they are very much worried about getting squeezed. In fact it's already happening.
So they stubbornly cling to ethanol and the RFS because it does represent demand, and though ethanol hasn't propped up corn, they're worried if it goes commodity prices will crater. And with yields always trending up due to scientific advancement, it means mass failures and bankruptcies that will ripple way beyond the farmer's bottom line.
Problem is, as innovating as farmers can be, they can be just as stubborn, not wanting to look ahead and change. We need other added value ag ventures and technologies to take up that demand, but most farmers won't budge on them. Part of that is there have been many scams over the years, but the other part is farmers have gotten lazy with commodity farming, and don't want to make the extra effort of finding a niche.
Something's got to give, and I'm afraid it won't fall on the good side. My gut says the RFS isn't going to be around much longer, and woe to the farmers that are hitching their wagons to it and refuse to let go.
