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There’s a war brewing in the Corn Belt between two unlikely entities: the EPA and the agriculture industry. On one side of the equation, as the Associated Press (AP) reported today, is the Environmental Protection Agency, which is proposing that the amount of renewable fuels produced be reduced, and on the other side is big corn, which relies on ethanol sales to sustain its growth. Ethanol, which comes primarily from distilled corn, is mixed into gasoline and makes up 10 percent of each gallon of gasoline, and up to 15 percent in 16 states (as of 2014).
The problem is that supply can’t keep up with demand, and environmentalists, who once championed adding ethanol to your gas tank, are crying foul when they realized the damage the ethanol industry was doing to the environment. All this stems from an announcement last month when the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said that roughly 4 billion gallons of renewable fuels won’t be used this year, and almost 5 billion gallons won’t be used next year, contrary to what was stipulated by Congress in 2007. Now the EPA is holding hearings before any final determinations are made in November, and everyone has a stalk in this field of green schemes.