Chuck and Andra Benson hold, from left, jars of canola seeds, meal that is left over from the press and is fed to animals and canola oil from the traveling press operated by the Organic Valley cooperative. The Benson family operates Bensvue Farm in the Town of Lansing. (SIMON WHEELER / Staff Photo)
LANSING -- The 800 gallons of biodiesel Chuck and Andra Benson pressed from their canola seeds this week won't last long on their dairy farm, which consumes about 10,000 gallons of fuel a year.
But the Bensons believe that's a small price to pay for the degree of self-sufficiency that processing their own fuel provides.
The Bensons' Bensvue Farm is part of the Organic Valley Cooperative, which owns a traveling oil press and biodiesel processor that make rounds throughout the country in a trailer driven by Jake Wedeberg, a sustainability coordinator for the co-op. Wedeberg visits farms to press oil from seeds and then process the oil into biodiesel.
Chuck Benson said it now takes only about 16 of their 1,000 acres to grow the fuel that powers all of the machinery on the 600-cow farm.
This is the best idea ever, farmers should grow their own biodiesel for their own farming, and with this portable system, they don’t have to invest in a the biodiesel production gear.
National Biodiesel Board writes letter to Congress asking for tax credit on biodiesel
It won’t be long before Senators and Representatives go back home to do what they seem to do best, or at least, the most: work on getting re-elected. But before they head out of D.C. for the break (right now, scheduled for October 8) before the November elections, the National Biodiesel Board (NBB) and the Advanced Biofuels Association (AFBA) are asking them to do some real work and extend the biodiesel, renewable diesel and alternative fuels tax credits, according to this article in Biodiesel Magazine:
In a letter addressed to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., Senate Committee on Finance Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and ranking member of the Committee on Finance Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the two advanced biofuel groups noted the “urgent” and “noncontroversial” need to reinstate the incentives. The letter states, “We respectively ask that you expeditiously act to retroactively extend the biodiesel, renewable diesel and alternate fuel tax incentive through 2011 prior to adjourning for November elections.”
“Before the Senate goes home to campaign,” Manning Feraci, vice president of federal affairs for the NBB said, “it should do the right thing and seamlessly reinstate the biodiesel tax incentive.” The joint-effort between the NBB and the ABFA is relatively new, but Feraci noted that both “share the opinion that Congress should pass an extension of these biofuel incentives before they adjourn for the year.” Passing a retroactive tax incentive would not only restore several jobs lost from the expiration of the tax incentive, but also allow entrepreneurs and producers the ability to access capital needed to produce advanced biofuels, the letter also stated.
ABFA officials urged Congress to act soon and not put the country’s energy and economic security on hold.
The politics of biodiesel don’t look promising at this stage of the game, but I will continue to report of the many advancements of the industry made in spite of this tax setback.
MANITOWOC — Dan and Tracy Kaderabek have seen sales of their biodiesel plummet, leading to the layoff of a half-dozen employees.
"The government is broken … all they do is argue amongst each other," Dan Kaderabek said Wednesday in the offices of Bio-Blend Fuels, 2817 Basswood Drive. "Indecision is destroying the industry."
Congress allowed to expire at the end of 2009 a $1 per-gallon production credit for "green" entrepreneurs like the Kaderabeks who are creating an alternative fuel source to traditional, petroleum-based "dino(saur) fuel."
The credit spurred sales of the Kaderabeks' different blends of fuel for diesel auto and truck engines with varying ratios of petroleum and fuel made from animal fats, vegetable oils and greases.
The Kaderabeks passed on a portion of the credit in the form of reduced price at the pump for biodiesel.
Compared with less than a year ago, only about 10 of 175 biodiesel plants are still in operation after the expiration of the production credit, Dan Kaderabek said.
There are very real and very negative consequences of the government’s failure to renew the biodiesel tax credit, and this is just one of many companies which had to lay off workers.
Photo from: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/feb/11/biofuels.energy
Indonesia, a burgeoning exporter of biodiesel in Southeast Asia, will impose a 2% export tax on biodiesel for the first time in October, trade sources said this week. Indonesia uses the average crude palm oil, or CPO spot prices in Rotterdam to set its export tax on CPO and its derivatives every month. It will raise its export tax on CPO to 7.5% in October from the current 6%, which sources said was due to rising global palm oil prices. The export tax is aimed at restricting the flow of CPO exports so that cooking oil supply in the country would be guaranteed, mitigating fears of a shortfall in this staple commodity.
It would really be a tragedy if people in Indonesia went without cooking oil because it might be worth more as biodiesel, but we in the US have all the food and cooking oil we need. Don’t we?