The goal of turning corn ethanol into sustainable aviation fuel is a little closer with the announcement that Gevo has secured a conditional, $1.46 billion loan guarantee from the Department of Energy. It’s the department’s first such commitment for an alcohol-to-jet fuel facility.
Gevo’s Net-Zero 1 project in South Dakota is designed to produce SAF with zero carbon footprint, in part through carbon sequestration. Gevo CEO Patrick Gruber tells Agri-Pulse the fuel coming from the plant will be cost competitive with petroleum jet fuel.
But Gruber says the Summit Carbon Solutions CO2 pipeline, which has faced numerous legal and regulatory challenges, will be crucial to getting the carbon score Gevo needs. “I believe it’s going to get built eventually,” Gruber says of the pipeline. “It’s a matter of time.”
By the way: Gruber says the actual equipment cost for the Gevo project is about $224 million. The bulk of the loan funding will cover labor and installation costs that help the local economy, he says.
SCOTUS keeps power plant rule in place while court case continues
The Supreme Court is leaving an EPA power plant rule in place while states, rural electric cooperatives and leading business groups proceed with their challenge in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“In my view, the applicants have shown a strong likelihood of success on the merits as to at least some of their challenges to [EPA’s] rule,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in a brief order by the court.
“But because the applicants need not start compliance work until June 2025, they are unlikely to suffer irreparable harm before the [D.C. Circuit] Circuit decides the merits. So this court understandably denies the stay applications for now.”
Documents show feds probing child labor allegations at Tyson plant
Recently unsealed court documents show the Labor Department requested a warrant to inspect a Tyson Foods plant in Arkansas after it received a tip suggesting facility may have employed underage workers.
Mauro Pinter, a wage and hour investigator at the Labor Department, requested a warrant in September to inspect the Rogers, Arkansas, facility after a local teacher reported a 14-year-old student planned to work at the plant during the summer.
Pinter and other DOL investigators staked out the plant and described seeing “multiple individuals whose appearance and body language indicated were potentially minor employees below the age of 16,” according to the records.
Tyson’s response: Tyson Foods says in a statement it does “not allow the employment of anyone under the age of 18 in any of our facilities, and we do not facilitate, excuse or in any other way participate in the use of child labor.”
The company says it takes enforcement of labor laws “very seriously, and we have procedures in place to verify the age of all team members, and fully participate with the federal government’s E-Verify and IMAGE programs.” Tyson says the Labor Department has not given it “any information that would suggest that any of our policies or practices were violated.”
Take note: Allegations of child labor in the meatpacking industry surfaced during the House Ag Committee’s farm bill debate in May, and the lawmakers later held a closed-door meeting on the issue.
USDA pressed for poultry grower aid after Iowa plant closure
Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin has asked USDA to provide feed and financial aid to poultry growers in her state who are struggling to feed their birds after the closure of Iowa-based Pure Prairie Poultry.
The now-shuttered plant stopped paying for feed on Sept. 30, leaving producers with few options outside of paying for it themselves. While the state of Iowa was able to take custody of the birds within its borders, Wisconsin and Minnesota agriculture officials were limited in the assistance they could provide.
Baldwin is asking USDA, which previously provided Pure Prairie with $45.6 million in loans and grants, to work with Wisconsin’s agriculture department to locate all producers, provide them with feed and assistance and “provide recommendations for legislative or regulatory solutions to ensure a preventable emergency like this never happens again.”
Take note: USDA spokesperson Allan Rodriguez told Agri-Pulse over the weekend that USDA is working closely with state ag departments to "provide support for growers who relied on this market under state indemnity programs, or through USDA’s statutorily mandated poultry trust established by the Packers and Stockyards Act.”
Affected producers should reach out to their state departments or file a written notice of claim through USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service, he said. "At the same time, the number of producers who relied on this market underscores the need to explore how the facility might continue with a return to profitability, which USDA will continue to assist with in conjunction with the company and its state partners,” he added.
Economists say labor costs largely drove food inflation
Food inflation has been a major issue in the 2024 campaign with former President Donald Trump and his supporters blaming the Biden administration’s policies, and Vice President Kamala Harris suggesting food company price gouging is a culprit.
The real reasons for food price increases lie elsewhere, according to a report from the American Enterprise Institute. The report by Joe Glauber, a former chief economist at USDA, and Vincent Smith, an AEI senior fellow, says the surge in supermarket prices was “largely driven by increases in labor costs.” Energy costs, which spiked in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, also were a significant driver in food inflation.
As for price gouging, the economists say food retailer profit margins spiked in late 2020 but fell back in 2021 and 2022.
Take note: The report notes food price increases hit low-income families the hardest, but says, “For most households, higher food prices seem really to have had little overall effect on their economic well-being when shifts in incomes and other prices are accounted for.”
Even so, the economists note that the price increases shoppers saw in the last half of 2022 were "the highest levels anyone had experienced since the late 1970s."
Hurricane insurance will provide $233M in payments
Producers in six states sustained damage from Hurricane Helene severe enough to qualify for special insurance, USDA announced.
Producers with an endorsement under Hurricane Insurance Protection-Wind Index (HIP-WI) and its Tropical Storm option will receive over $233 in indemnity payments, USDA said. About $207.7 million of that is for producers in Georgia.
Producers don’t need to file a claim to receive an indemnity payment under HIP-WI.
