Outside markets have recently had a major impact corn prices. Currencies, energy prices, and Argentine policy changes have been in the spotlight over the past few months.
The USDA has released a list of its 2015 top achievements. The list includes several achievements that have benefited the biofuel and bioenergy sectors, including funding for ethanol fuel pumps and progress with the BioPreferred Program.
The USDA's National Agricultural Statistics Service has published a notice announcing its intention to request a revision and extension of a currently approved information collection for a residue and biomass field survey.
The Donald Danforth Plant Science Center announced that it will be part of a major collaborative research project to improve sorghum's productivity under resource-limited conditions. The research is funded by the the U.S. Department of Energy.
On Dec. 18, President Obama signed a $1.1 trillion spending bill and accompanying legislative package of tax extenders into law. The legislation includes two-year extensions of several tax credits that benefit the bioenergy sector.
Joule and HeidelbergCement have announced a partnership to explore application of Joule's technology to mitigate carbon emissions in cement manufacturing. The partnership could result colocation of Joule's technology at HeidelbergCement sites.
Chempolis Ltd. has entered into partnership with Avantha Group's research wing Avantha Centre for Industrial Research & Development to offer technology to India to extract ethanol from various agricultural residues.
Federal lawmakers have released the text of a $1.1 trillion spending bill that will fund the U.S. government through October 2016. An accompanying legislative package of tax extenders aims to extend certain bioenergy tax incentives for two years.
The University of Illinois has been awarded a 3-year, $5 million grant from the DOE Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy as part of its OPEN 2015 funding initiative. The research team intends to increase the water use efficiency of sorghum.
UNICA, Brazil's sugarcane industry association, has announced rains slowed the pace of the sugarcane crush during the second half of November. The association also reported reduced demand for hydrous ethanol.
DuPont and The Dow Chemical Co. have announced plans to combine in an all-stock merger of equals into DowDuPont. The parties intend to subsequently pursue a separation of DowDuPont into three independent, publicly traded companies.
Russ Jessup, an AgriLife Research perennial grass breeder in College Station, said he is introducing a new biofuel-biomass feedstock that is a hybrid "similar to seedless watermelons, seedless grapes and other sterile triploid crops."
The USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has announced a genetically engineered corn developed by Monsanto for increased ear biomass is no longer considered a regulated article under certain APHIS regulations.
USDA made small changes to its corn supply and demand projections in its last monthly World Agriculture Supply and Demand Estimates report for the calendar year, mostly due to ethanol.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently published a patent application (U.S. 2015/0329449) from the Iowa Corn Promotion Board for a production method using corn in the industrial manufacturing of a raw material called monoethylene glycol (MEG).
The final rulemaking for the 2016 renewable fuel standard (RFS) won't result in much more demand for corn, according to Darrell Good's weekly outlook, "Ethanol Production and Corn Consumption Prospects for 2016," in the FarmDocDaily.
USDA's National Agriculture Statistics Service recently released its December Grain Crushings and Coproducts Production report, noting total corn consumed for alcohol and other uses was 495.8 million bushels in October.
UNICA, the Brazilian sugarcane industry association, has announced mills in the south-central region of the country processed 25.61 million tons of sugarcane during the first half of November, up 10.71 percent from the same period of last year.
Syngenta recently announced that it has signed an agreement with Midwest Renewable Energy LLC to begin using Enogen corn enzyme technology at its Sutherland, Nebraska, ethanol production facility beginning with the 2016 planting season.
Argonne National Laboratory recently released a new version of the Greenhouse gases, Regulated Emissions, and Energy use in Transportation (GREET) model, funded in part by the U.S. Department of Energy's Bioenergy Technologies Office.
When corn prices increase farmers reap higher yields by making changes. According to a recent study, about one-third of the yield increase derives from more intensive management practices and two-thirds from cropping additional acreage.
With 96 percent of this year's U.S. corn crop harvested as of Nov. 15 according to the USDA's weekly Crop Progress report, U.S. farmers are now turning toward the market, looking for pockets of demand to sell their bountiful crop.
On Nov. 24, the Renewable Fuels Association hosted a press call featuring several experts in the field of biofuel life cycle greenhouse gas analysis and agricultural land use. The speakers addressed the flawed arguments made by ethanol opponents.
Harvest has wrapped up and yield reports have been better than expected. In the USDA's October supply and demand report, the government increased yields to 168 bushels per acre, up from the first new crop yield report in May.
Developers of a proposed barley-to-ethanol plant for Great Falls, Montana, received notice from the U.S. EPA that its pathway has been approved both as a renewable fuel and as a advanced biofuel, as long as it meets specified energy and yield levels.
The real cash cost of producing a bushel of corn and other crops is lower now than during the late 1970s, according to analysis by Ohio State University economist Carl Zulauf in a recent FarmDoc Daily post.
Pacific Ag recently completed its largest harvest of wheat straw on record. Working closely with more than 200 growers across seven states, the company harvested more than 100,000 acres of wheat straw for use in end-markets.
Researchers at the University of New Haven and Yale University have discovered a high-quality catalytic process for converting biomass model compounds, which can be used to convert biomass into value-added chemicals, such as biofuels.
The corn crush for fuel ethanol, at 427.5 million bushels in September was down 4 percent from August and 5 percent from July, according to a Nov. 2 report. Corn consumed for dry mill fuel production was 89.8 percent and wet mill, 10.2 percent.
Genera Energy and PrecisionHawkhave partnered to develop new analysis algorithms. They will be specific to improving the efficiency and quality of sustainable biomass crop production and distribution.
Advertisement
@ Copyright 2025 - BBI International - All rights reserved.