A few weeks ago, I went to a craft fair in small-town Minnesota with my mother-in-law. At one of the booths, I bumped into someone I knew in my childhood and have been friends on facebook with for the past several years.

She and her husband went to my church when I was in elementary school and their children were several years younger than me. It’s been a long time since I’ve been around them and when I was, I was a child. So this was my first actual conversation with them on an adult level.

It didn’t take long and the husband, a turkey farmer, discovered what it is that I do for a living. Like many livestock producers, he has been hit hard by the higher cost of corn, something he puts at the feet of the ethanol industry. (Although he clarified that he isn’t necessarily against ethanol and is interested to see the second generation industry get off the ground.) Of course, having written about the ethanol industry for nearly four years, I have a much different perspective on things. Our conversation quickly turned into a friendly debate.

This turkey farmer is firmly against anything where the government tells private citizens what they have to do. He mentioned ObamaCare as his prime example. In his mind, the renewable fuel standard (RFS) amounts to the government telling private citizens they must purchase ethanol. On that, I completely and wholeheartedly disagree. Without the RFS, the petroleum industry has what amounts to a monopoly. This is big business giving the consumer one choice and only one choice at the gas pump, fossil fuels. Why should they diversify the liquid fuel supply when they are raking in the profits right and left? Even if it’s good for the U.S., increases our energy security, makes the fuel supply more environmentally friendly and helps lower gas prices at the pump, Big Oil wouldn’t blend ethanol if they weren’t required to do it.

I believe the RFS is about providing consumers choice at the gas pump. There are other things the government could do to forward that. For example, I’m a supporter of the Open Fuel Standard, which would give citizens access to more ethanol and other fuels. Unfortunately, despite the fact that the law has been introduced in some form every year since 2005, it just hasn’t gone anywhere. That needs to change. 

But back to my friend, the turkey farmer. One of the most interesting parts of our conversation was when he told me that livestock producers would be just as hard hurt, or perhaps harder hit, by corn prices going down drastically. He explained that as a turkey farmer, his operation is not nimble enough to react quickly to price change. He has to order how many turkeys he wants from the breeder well in advance. If corn prices go up after he’s made his order he can’t tell the breeder he wants less birds. And if corn prices go down his buyers use that as justification to pay him less for the birds he has for sale. One year he worked hard on raising and selling turkeys, only to break even at the end of the year, with no profit for all his labors.

We talked about many things, including the fact that one third of the corn going into the ethanol industry comes out as distillers grains, a valuable animal feed. We even touched on antibiotics and the future of ethanol production from sugar beets or energy beets.  It was an interesting conversation to say the least. He didn’t agree with everything I said and I didn’t agree with all of his points. However, we kept things civil and respectful, and I think, by the end of it I understood his position a bit better and he understood mine somewhat better too.

What do you do when you encounter people that have different views on the ethanol industry? What are some of the most important points you try to get across?