North Central US | Just saying - 3/28/2026 07:34
I would like to hear the original posters opinion.
Just since you asked:
Any product you have to mandate is a poor product.
Outside of the corn belt any ethanol blend is priced the same or very close to "normal" e10. There is one station that offers e30 and it is the same price as e85, 3 cents less than e10. It does not make financial sense to run it.
I do not care for ethanol due to the inherent properties of it, how it likes to clean, how it does not store as well, how it affects seals and rubber.
The new Cenex here removed their new blender pumps and switched the tanks from the various ethanol blends to regular unleaded gas, e10, and Diesel, as they stated they did not sell enough of the special ethanol blends to make it make sense, especially when they sell enough e10, regular no ethanol, and diesel to need two trucks a day filling their tanks.
If it were up to me, I would stop the sales of ethanol and force it to be reformulated to remove the negatives of the product. I fail to believe that there is not a way to process or treat ethanol so it does not clean like it currently does, so it does not eat rubber and seals, so it has a long life like the premium no ethanol gasoline, a way to process it and make it a true drop in replacement with the exact same properties, aside from the energy loss, as normal gasoline. Once that is done, market the crap out of it as a totally new fuel as there is no saving ethanol's name anymore, its reputation is set. Do not market it as a farmer supporting thing, do not market it as a clean air thing. The general public sees ethanol as a farmer bailout and those who care about clean air have bought an EV. It is what should have been done from the very beginning.
In my opinion chasing e15, e20, e25, e30, and so on and so forth is like chasing the rainbow. 20 years ago it may have been something but today it is a fools errand. Anything that causes corn prices to rise will cause corn acres to rise, corn acres rising will push the price back down again and the conversation will go back to mandating another 5% ethanol.
20 years ago corn was a garden crop only here. Today it is an increasingly viable and profitable crop, replacing wheat and barley in ND. Genetics are improving extremely fast. I never thought I would see a viable corn crop here. This year it will be 1/4 our acres, and if it goes well, possibly half or more next year. It has exceeded all my expectations, made great silage, and any mention of combining it has made great interest from the cow only neighbors, since cake is going up in price again.
From a price standpoint the only thing that will raise corn prices and keep them up is cow numbers rising, as it will take land out of production for pasture, turn corn acres into silage acres, take a portion of the same farm's grain crop and keep it off the market, but every purely grain farmer has some list of excuses of why they can't do that.
With the advancement in oil extraction technology, fracking, and the discovery of more than enough oil to last us centuries, while our total fuel usage had actually plateau-ed according to government graphs, ethanol's original role has disappeared.
The corn and ethanol lobbies have completely failed in their job.
We use a lot of gasoline on our place, thousands of gallons, and it is about equal anymore, the modern go to town vehicles use e10, everything else uses the Cenex 91 no ethanol. The 91 lasts years without treatment compare to less than a year for e10. Mileage and dollar per mile wise normally with prices it is within a few cents of 91's favor.
The people here blame it on the oil companies for the e10 being of poor quality and all I can say is what can you expect when you mandate the use and nothing more? What are you doing about it? Nothing. That's what.
Ethanol had its chance. It failed because it was not ready, not what was advertised, and those who run it are 30 years behind the times. |
E15
