“We are concerned as farmers about rules and regulations coming out of EPA when it comes to herbicides,” Josh Gackle, president of the American Soybean Association (ASA), said during the general session of the 2024 Commodity Classic conference.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently proposed a herbicide strategy designed to bring the agency’s registrations into compliance with the Endangered Species Act.

Courts have consistently ruled that the EPA is not properly evaluating the impact pesticides have on endangered species, and the proposed strategy is the EPA’s attempt to address those concerns.

Gackle said the ASA has no problem with the EPA meeting its legal obligations, but the policy must be something that could be implemented on farms and that is not the case with the proposed strategy.

For example, the strategy calls for farmers to seek guidance from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 30 days before applying a pesticide in areas where endangered species reside.

“We don’t know three days ahead of time what we need to be spraying in our fields,” Gackle said during an interview.

“Something like that just doesn’t work.”

A survey conducted by the ASA indicates 80 percent of producers would not comply with the EPA’s proposal and would face “moderate to extreme” costs to become compliant.

“The proposal would likely require billions of dollars for farmers across the country to implement and could prevent some farmers from using certain herbicides entirely,” the ASA said in a news release.

That is why soybean growers were relieved when the EPA announced it is extending the deadline to finalize the strategy by three months to Aug. 30, giving the agency more time to consider feedback from farm groups and others.

“They are taking our input, so that’s a hopeful sign,” said Gackle.

He also praised the agency for its quick action in the dicamba case.

Growers were blindsided by a federal district court in Arizona that vacated the 2020 registrations for a variety of dicamba products used on 50 million acres of U.S. corn and soybeans.

The ruling meant growers couldn’t use millions of dollars worth of product for the 2024 growing season and would have seriously jeopardized yields.

However, the EPA stepped in and ruled that growers can use existing stocks of the product that were packaged, labelled and shipped before the Feb. 6 court ruling.

“We feel like we stopped the bleeding there and saved a lot of families a lot of money,” EPA administrator Michael Regan told reporters during the Commodity Classic, a conference that drew a record 11,500 guests.

U.S. agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack praised his colleague.

“Every time I think I’ve got a tough job, I say to myself, ‘thank God I’m not the EPA administrator,’” he said during his speech to the delegates.

Vilsack said Regan has to deal with interest groups, Congress and courts telling him what to do and when to do it.

Regan said there is a 20-year history of courts telling the EPA what to do, and it creates difficult situations such as the dicamba incident.

“No grower wants to wake up in the middle of a growing season to be told one of the tools in the toolbox is now taken away,” he said.

Gackle noted that the dicamba registrations for 2025 and beyond are now under the microscope.

He anticipates product manufacturers will come up with labels that are more restrictive so they don’t face another legal battle.

Gackle expects final cut-off dates for application of the product may be earlier and buffer zones could be increased.

Brent Cheyne, president of the National Wheat Growers Association, said farmers recently had a big win in a legal battle with California over Proposition 65, which would have banned the use of Roundup in the state.

“After six long years of litigation we prevailed,” he said.

“It was a long and arduous battle and there were times I questioned (if) we would win.”

Cheyne said Roundup makes no-till possible, a practice that builds topsoil, reduces air and water pollution and creates better habitat for wildlife.

He said pesticide regulations need to be based on peer-reviewed science from bodies such as the National Academy of Sciences rather than “hocus pocus science.”

“We have to have our crop inputs protected,” he said.

“People need to realize we’re not just out there spraying for something to do. It costs a lot of money to do it.”

—Sean Pratt writes for the Western Producer.

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Glacier FarmMedia — Day one of the 2024 Commodity Classic is in the books and a few interesting themes emerged from the annual gathering of U.S. corn, soybean, wheat and sorghum growers.

U.S. farmers are clearly annoyed about a number of new pesticide regulations.

Growers felt blindsided by a federal district court ruling in Arizona vacating the 2020 registrations for a variety of dicamba products used on 50 million acres of U.S. corn and soybeans.

The ruling meant growers couldn’t use the product for the 2024 growing season.

However, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has since ruled that growers can use existing stocks of the product that were packaged, labeled and shipped prior to the Feb. 6 court ruling.

That is a big relief to the country’s soybean and cotton growers, but they wonder what’s in store for 2025 and beyond.

Farmers are also concerned about the EPA’s response to numerous other court rulings that determined the regulator has continually failed to meet its Endangered Species Act obligations.

Farm groups say the EPA’s proposed Herbicide Strategy, which will bring registrations into compliance with the act, is going to cost them a fortune.

A survey conducted by the American Soybean Association (ASA) indicates 80 percent of producers would not comply with the EPA’s proposal and would face “moderate to extreme” costs to become compliant.

“The proposal would likely require billions of dollars for farmers across the country to implement and could prevent some farmers from using certain herbicides entirely,” the ASA stated in a press release.

A petition it circulated collected 1,500 signatures from growers, applicators and other agricultural stakeholders calling for withdrawal of the proposal.

Soy growers were pleased that the EPA recently announced it has extended the deadline to finalize the strategy by three months to August 30, giving it more time to consider their criticism of the strategy.

Another big topic of conversation at the convention is the 2024 Farm Bill, an omnibus package of legislation that covers everything from school nutrition programs to farm safety nets.

Grower groups are lobbying hard for a bill that “does no harm” to crop insurance programs and sets higher reference prices for crops that will trigger direct payments sooner under today’s falling price environment.

The U.S. Congress is still debating and designing the bill, which was originally supposed to be in place for 2023.

There was plenty of talk about markets at the conference as well.

Al Kluis, with Kluis Commodity Advisors, had good news and bad news for farmers.

The good news is that he thinks corn and soybean futures prices have bottomed out, at least temporarily.

The bad news is that if the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s yield and acreage forecasts for 2024-25 are correct, it doesn’t bode well for prices, especially for corn.

“We could see extremely low prices in the fall,” he said.

The soybean outlook doesn’t look nearly as bad, and he is extremely excited about the long-term future for that crop due to looming demand from the sustainable aviation fuel industry.

PepsiCo and Walmart talked about their US$120 million joint venture to support sustainable agriculture in the U.S. and Canada.

The program aims to accelerate the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices on more than two million acres of farmland in the U.S. and Canada, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by four million tonnes by 2030.

Monitor the pages of The Western Producer and other Glacier FarmMedia publications for full stories on these and other topics from the 2024 Commodity Classic.

––Sean Pratt writes for the Western Producer. 

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The government currently restricts sales of E15 gasoline, or gasoline with 15 per cent ethanol, in summer months due to environmental concerns over smog, though the biofuel industry says those concerns are unfounded.

The corn-based ethanol industry has been fighting for years for year-round sales of E15 but was frustrated by the 2025 start date, one year later than proposed.

In 2022, the governors of Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota, and Wisconsin made the request for year-round E15 sales, saying the move could help lower pump prices by boosting fuel volumes.

Some oil refiners have argued that allowing E15 in select states as opposed to nationwide could prompt localized fuel price spikes and supply issues.

The delay enables President Joe Biden’s administration to put off potential price spikes stemming from the decision until after the 2024 U.S. presidential election in November. Two states the decision affects, Wisconsin and Minnesota, are battleground states in this year’s contest.

Inflation and the economy are key vulnerabilities for Biden’s re-election campaign.

The Environmental Protection Agency had sent a final rule on the proposal to the White House in December with an effective date of April 28, 2024. The new timeline would push the effective date to April 28, 2025.

“By extending the implementation date, this final action reduces the risk of gasoline supply issues this summer and the price impacts that could have come with 2024 implementation,” an EPA official said on Thursday.

The EPA did not comment on whether it would issue a temporary waiver enabling E15 sales this summer.

“We cannot speculate about the 2024 summer driving season. We will continue to monitor the situation, consult closely with the Department of Energy, and be prepared to act should conditions warrant,” the agency said.

After the news, the Renewable Fuels Association, a biofuels trade group, called on the administration to take action to ensure consumers have access to E15 this summer, and said it was disappointed over the new rule’s 2025 start date.

The American Petroleum Institute, an oil industry group, meanwhile, said it supported a legislative solution that would allow year-round sales of E15 nationwide.

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Late last week the Environmental Working Group (EWG) released a study on oats and chlormequat, a plant growth regulator marketed as Manipulator.

Farmers apply chlormequat to oats and cereal crops to decrease the height of plants and reduce the risk of lodging.

The EWG study, published Feb. 15 in the Journal of Exposure Science and Environmental Epidemiology, looked at the presence of chlormequat in urine and foods.

The scientists collected 96 urine samples from 2017-23, and chlormequat was detected in 77 samples, or 80 percent of cases.

The urine came from adults in Florida, South Carolina and Missouri.

The high rate of positive tests should raise “alarm bells,” the EWG said in a news release, because the “chemical is linked to reproductive and developmental problems in animal studies, suggesting the potential for similar harm to humans.”

The EWG also tested oat-based foods purchased in May 2023 and the summer of 2022. Researchers tested 25 samples of food made from conventional oats and detected traces of chlormequat 23 times, or 92 percent of samples.

They also looked at food made from organic oats. In those 17 samples, they detected chlormequat three times.

“These findings and chlormequat toxicity data raise concerns about current exposure levels, and warrant more expansive toxicity testing, food monitoring, and epidemiological studies to assess health effects of chlormequat exposures in humans,” say the authors of the EWG study.

Major media outlets in the United States picked up the EWG news release on the study, including CBS News, Forbes, People magazine and USA Today.

“Chemical That May Cause Infertility Found in Cheerios, Quaker Oats … 80% of Americans tested were found to have been exposed to chlormequat,” said an alarming headline from people.com.
General Mills, the maker of Cheerios, provided a statement to USA Today, saying that all of its products “adhere to regulatory requirements” and that “food safety is always a top priority at General Mills.”

Much of the media coverage didn’t mention the amounts of chlormequat detected in the EWG study and how that compares to the maximum residue level for chlormequat in oats.

In conventional oat-foods purchased in 2022 and 2023:

• The EWG found a median amount of 114 parts per billion in 2023 and 90 p.p.b. in 2022, which means 104 p.p.b. for the 25 samples of oat foods.
• The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has an MRL for chlormequat in oats of 40 parts per million. For oat bran, the MRL is 10 parts per million

When converted to parts per million, 104 parts per billion looks much smaller. It is 0.104 parts per million, which is 384 times less than 40 p.p.m.

The amount of chlormequat in the urine samples was also much lower than the safe level of exposure, as defined by the EPA.

The Environmental Working Group acknowledged that reality in the journal article

“Current chlormequat concentrations in urine from this study … suggest that individual sample donors were exposed to chlormequat at levels several orders of magnitude below the reference dose published by the U.S. EPA (0.05 mg/kg bw (body weight)/day) and the acceptable daily intake value published by the European Food Safety Authority (0.04 mg/kg bw/day).”

The amount of chlormequat found in urine and oat foods may be very low, but public perception is reality when it comes to pesticides.

Headlines from the New York Post, Fox Business News and Newsweek, saying “pesticide found in oats linked to infertility,” is a massive public relations problem for the oat industry.

As well, the Environmental Working Group says Canadian farmers are the cause of chlormequat residues in oats.

In 2018, the EPA established an MRL for chlormequat, which allowed Canadian farmers to use the product. Then, the EPA increased the MRL in 2020 to 40 p.p.m.

That aligns with the Canadian MRL for oats, which is also 40 p.p.m. However, U.S. growers are not permitted to use Manipulator on oats or other food crops. Therefore, the source of the chlormequat in oat foods must be Canadian farms, the Environmental Working Group says.

“Environmental Protection Agency regulations allow the chemical to be used on ornamental plants only – not food crops – grown in the U.S. But its use is permitted on imported oats and other foods sold here. Many oats and oat products consumed in the U.S. come from Canada.”

—Robert Arnason writes for the Western Producer from Manitoba.

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The decision is a win for farmers who planned to use dicamba products sold by Bayer, BASF and Syngenta on genetically modified soybeans and cotton during the summer growing season, and for the agrichemical companies.

Environmental activists have objected to dicamba herbicides because they are known to drift away and damage other crops that are not resistant.

But farm groups had warned the court ruling, if fully enforced by the federal government, could financially hurt growers who will plant their next crops in the spring. The groups had said most growers had already determined which seeds and chemicals they will use and may struggle to shift away from dicamba herbicides or crops that tolerate the chemical.

“We are very appreciative of EPA’s decision to let us get through the 2024 growing season by using any product already in the delivery pipeline,” said Josh Gackle, president of the American Soybean Association and a North Dakota soybean farmer.

U.S. District Court Judge David Bury in Arizona last week vacated the EPA’s registrations of dicamba-based weedkillers from 2020, saying the agency violated procedures mandating public input. The ruling affected Bayer’s XtendiMax, BASF’s Engenia and Sygnenta’s Tavium, commonly used herbicides on U.S. farms.

Bayer soybeans that resist dicamba-based herbicide are the No. 2 most-planted soybeans in the United States, though not all are sprayed with the chemical. Bayer and Syngenta welcomed the EPA’s decision to let farmers use existing supplies. BASF did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The EPA said on Wednesday it authorized the sale and distribution of dicamba products “that were already in the possession of growers or in the channels of trade and outside the control of pesticide companies” before the court ruling on Feb. 6.

The agency “received ample evidence that millions of gallons” of dicamba products meant to be sprayed on crops had already entered trade channels, according to a statement.

The Arizona court decision won’t affect Canadian farmers, Bayer Canada said last week.

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Environmental activists cheered the court for halting use of the dicamba-based herbicides, which are known to drift away and damage crops that cannot tolerate the chemical.

Some farm groups and agribusinesses said the ruling, if enforced by the federal government, risks hurting farmers financially and reducing options for fighting weeds that are increasingly developing resistance to a limited number of herbicides.

U.S. District Court Judge David Bury in Arizona this week vacated the Environmental Protection Agency’s registrations of dicamba-based weedkillers from 2020, saying the agency violated procedures mandating public input. The ruling affects Bayer’s XtendiMax, BASF’s Enginia and Sygnenta’s Tavium, commonly used herbicides on U.S. farms.

Bayer soybeans that resist dicamba-based herbicide are the No. 2-most planted soybeans in the United States.

The companies said they disagreed with the ruling and were waiting for direction from the EPA. The EPA said it was reviewing the decision.

“Most soybean and cotton farmers have made seed and chemistry purchase decisions and, in some cases, are preparing to plant their 2024 crop in the coming weeks,” BASF said. “This order may threaten the livelihoods of soybean and cotton farmers who rely on over-the-top dicamba to control resistant weeds.”

The ruling bars farmers from spraying the dicamba products in the upcoming growing season unless the EPA allows already-shipped batches to be used, said Meredith Stevenson, staff attorney for the Center for Food Safety. The center called the decision “a vital victory for farmers and the environment.”

In June 2020, a U.S. appeals court blocked dicamba-based herbicide sales and ruled the EPA understated risks related to its use.

The EPA, under former President Donald Trump, subsequently said farmers could use their existing supplies before it eventually reauthorized use again with new restrictions in October 2020.

Under President Joe Biden, the agency in December 2021 questioned whether dicamba weedkillers could be sprayed safely on soybeans and cotton without posing “unreasonable risks” to other crops.

The post US court cancels approvals for widely used dicamba weedkillers appeared first on Farmtario.

In many cases weeds are developing resistance against multiple herbicides, scientists said.

Reuters interviewed two dozen farmers, scientists, weed specialists and company executives and reviewed eight academic papers published since 2021 which described how kochia, waterhemp, giant ragweed and other weeds are squeezing out crops in North Dakota, Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota as chemicals lose their effectiveness.

Over the last two decades, chemical companies have reduced the share of revenue devoted to research and development spending and are introducing fewer products, according to AgbioInvestor, a UK-based firm that analyzes the crop protection sector.

Farmers say their losing battle with weeds threatens grain and oilseed harvests at a time when growers are grappling with inflation and extreme weather linked to climate change.

“We’re in for big problems over the next 10 years for sure,” said Ian Heap, director of the International Survey of Herbicide Resistant Weeds, a group of scientists in over 80 countries that maintains a global database. “We are in for a real shake-up.”

The database records reduced effectiveness for glyphosate, one of the most common herbicides, against 361 weed species, including 180 in the U.S., affecting corn, soy, sugar beets and other crops.

Some 21 weed species globally showed resistance to dicamba, the most recent major U.S. chemical, which launched in 2017.

Environmental groups argue that farmers should embrace natural weed-control methods instead of chemicals.

Kochia, which spreads as many as 30,000 seeds per plant, can cut yields by up to 70 per cent if left unchecked, according to Take Action, a farmer resource program of the United Soybean Board.

Other factors, including the development of more robust seeds, have pushed overall global crop yields higher. But scientists expect weed problems to worsen, with some weeds showing resistance to chemicals even on first exposure.

‘Really scary’

In Douglas, North Dakota, farmer Bob Finken sprayed dicamba and glyphosate to kill late-season weeds. Neither product eliminated kochia.

“That was really scary,” said Finken, 64. “Each year seems to get a little worse.”

Finken was forced to clear the weeds with harvesting equipment, which risks clogging expensive machinery.

Other farmers are hiring workers to pull weeds by hand, said Sarah Lovas, an agronomist with GK Technology, a precision agriculture firm.

North Dakota was the largest spring wheat producing state in 2023 and ninth-biggest soybean grower.

Five of North Dakota’s 53 counties have confirmed populations of dicamba-resistant kochia, a year after it was first reported in the state, North Dakota State University weed specialist Joe Ikley said.

“It’s just a matter of time before it hits your farm,” said Monte Peterson, 65, who grows soybeans near Valley City, North Dakota.

Lab scale-back

Chemical producers Bayer, Corteva and FMC FMC.N say longer development and regulatory processes have constrained new products to combat weed resistance. Industry executives say regulators have become more stringent about environmental and health impacts.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said standards for approving new herbicides have not substantially changed since 1996. However, the EPA said recent efforts to assess the impact of new active ingredients on threatened plants and wildlife have delayed some decisions.

The EPA did not estimate the increased processing time. The agency said it expedites reviews of lower-risk products.

Farm chemical companies spent 6.2 per cent of sales revenue on development of new active ingredients in 2020, down from 8.9 per cent in 2000, AgbioInvestor said. Its data showed the introduction of new active ingredients fell by more than half in 2022 from 2000.

Instead, companies have expanded uses of existing products like dicamba, glufosinate and 2,4-D.

FMC plans the 2026 launch of an herbicide to kill grassy weeds in rice crops based on the industry’s first new mode of action, a term for the way a chemical kills a weed, in three decades.

The herbicide was in development for 11 years. FMC hopes it will generate $400 million in sales within a decade, a fraction of the roughly $8 billion global glyphosate market.

“If we don’t keep developing the new products, we are going to run into a wall where growers don’t have the tools to combat the pests,” CEO Mark Douglas said. “And then ultimately you face food security issues.”

The world’s biggest agriculture chemical and seed company, Germany’s Bayer, hopes to produce its first new mode of action herbicide in over 30 years by 2028.

“We’re really desperate for (new modes of action) if we’re going to sustain uses for farmers,” said Bob Reiter, head of research and development for Bayer’s crop science division.

Two decades ago, companies commercialized a product for every 50,000 candidates, but it now takes 100,000 to 150,000 attempts, Reiter said.

U.S.-based Corteva said it has incorporated sustainability criteria, such as reduced groundwater risk, in its research and development, aiming to clear the path with regulators.

It hopes that approach will shorten the regulatory process when it introduces a fungicide with a new mode of action against Asian soybean rust disease in Brazil around 2027, said Ramnath Subramanian, vice-president of crop protection research and development. He did not say how much shorter the process may be.

Bill Freese, scientific director of the Center for Food Safety in Washington, said farmers should shift away from crops genetically engineered to tolerate herbicides, which lead to plants becoming resistant to multiple chemicals through repeated sprayings.

“It’s like this toxic spiral,” Freese said. “There’s no end in sight.”

–Reporting for Reuters by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Tom Polansek in Chicago.

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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has the authority to issue the exemptions, denied 26 petitions from 15 small refineries who applied for waivers for the 2016-2018 and 2021-2023 compliance years, the agency said on Friday. There are still two pending petitions.

The agency also disclosed which oil refiners submitted petitions in July 2022 or later, as well as which oil refiners are participating in an alternative compliance schedule that allows them flexibility in complying with biofuel blending laws.

Under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), oil refiners must blend billions of gallons of biofuels into the nation’s fuel mix, or buy tradable credits from those that do. The EPA can, however, award exemptions to some small refiners if they prove that the obligations cause them undue harm.

Biden has been trying to set the United States on track to reduce carbon emissions in the fight against climate change, with a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050.

The administration has not yet extended a waiver to any refinery, reversing the policy of former President Donald Trump, whose administration granted 34 exemptions to oil refiners for the 2017 compliance year alone.

The EPA consulted with the Department of Energy on Friday’s waiver decisions and found that none of the petitioning small refineries demonstrated they face disproportionate economic hardship caused by their RFS compliance, the agency said.

New transparency

The EPA publicized on Friday the names of refiners that submitted small-refinery exemption petitions from July 2022 or later. The agency added this information to its website to reflect its commitment to transparency around RFS decisions, it said.

Refiners that submitted petitions included Calumet Montana Refining and Ergon Refining. Their petitions were denied.

The agency also publicized the names of refiners that are using an alternative schedule to prove RFS compliance. Among those listed were Sinclair Wyoming Refining Company and Kern Oil and Refining Company.

Data from the EPA showed 17 small refineries have opted into the alternative compliance schedule for the 2020 compliance year, the only compliance year shown in the data. The group had retired 360 million credits to show compliance, and had 510 million credits outstanding, EPA’s website showed.

— Stephanie Kelly is a Reuters correspondent covering the U.S. oil industry from New York City.

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has finalized biofuel blending volumes at 20.94 billion gallons in 2023, 21.54 billion gallons in 2024 and 22.33 billion gallons in 2025. That compares with the initial proposal announced in December of 20.82 billion in 2023, 21.87 billion in 2024, and 22.68 billion in 2025.

But the finalized volumes include just 15 billion gallons of conventional biofuels like corn-based ethanol in all three years, plus a 250 million-gallon supplemental amount for 2023. That represents a decline from the initial proposal, which included 15 billion gallons of conventional biofuels in 2023 and 15.25 billion gallons in both 2024 and 2025.

The plan also has modest increases to biomass-based diesel volumes compared with the proposal, despite a major lobbying push from groups that produce biodiesel, renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel to boost volumes higher.

The announcement drew strong rebukes from ethanol and biodiesel advocates.

“The industry responded to signals from the Biden administration and Congress aiming to rapidly decarbonize U.S. fuel markets, particularly aviation, marine, and heavy-duty transport, and make clean fuels available to more consumers,” said Kurt Kovarik, vice-president of federal affairs with Clean Fuels, a biodiesel group. “The volumes EPA finalized today are not high enough to support those goals.”

Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig said the finalized mandates fail to fully support benefits that biofuels can provide to farmers and consumers.

The Renewable Fuels Association called the reductions in ethanol mandates “inexplicable” and “unwarranted.”

The final rule marks a new phase in the U.S. Renewable Fuel Standard program, which is more than a decade old and frequently pits the powerful oil and biofuel industries against each other. Under the RFS, oil refiners must blend billions of gallons of biofuels into the nation’s fuel mix, or buy tradable credits from those that do.

Ethanol producers and corn farmers like the mandates because they provide a market for their products, while the oil industry finds the requirements too pricey.

While Congress set out specific goals for the program through 2022, the law expands the EPA’s authority for 2023 and beyond to change the way the RFS is administered.

The EPA said the finalized rule would reduce reliance on foreign sources of oil by between 130,000 to 140,000 barrels per day over 2023-2025.

U.S. renewable fuel credit prices dropped eight per cent following the news, trading at $1.34 each from as much as $1.46 each the day prior, traders said (all figures US$). Biomass-based credits dropped to $1.38 each from $1.48 each the previous day.

The futures market fell sharply Wednesday in reaction to the lower-than-expected biofuel mandates, with most Chicago Board of Trade soyoil contracts locked down their daily four cent/lb. trading limit. The soyoil market had rallied to its highest in nearly 3-1/2 months last week.

Other provisions

The EPA also set out a series of regulatory changes in the final rule, in an effort to strengthen the agency’s implementation of the RFS program.

The agency will modify provisions for biogas-derived renewable fuels to ensure that biogas is produced from renewable biomass and used as a transportation fuel, as well as to allow for the use of biogas as a biointermediate.

Absent from the rule, however, was a much-anticipated pathway for electric vehicle manufacturers to generate lucrative credits under the RFS, though it was included in the original proposal in December. Reuters previously reported that the administration was planning to abandon the scheme over worries about lawsuits.

The plan would have given EV automakers, such as Tesla, credits for charging vehicles using power generated from renewable natural gas, or methane collected from sources such as cattle or landfills.

The EPA said on Wednesday it will continue to assess stakeholder comments it received on the EV scheme, and it will work on potential paths forward for it.

The American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers said it was pleased to see the EPA abandon the EV program, saying the RFS is a liquid fuels program that should not include electric vehicles.

— Reporting for Reuters by Stephanie Kelly and Jarrett Renshaw; additional reporting by Mark Weinraub.

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Updated renewable fuel targets released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency failed to live up to expectations, sparking a speculative selloff in soyoil.

While the limit-down move in soyoil futures on Wednesday would normally weigh on canola, the Canadian oilseed lagged soyoil to the upside while it was rising earlier in the month and spreading between the two commodities was seeing speculators selling soyoil and buying back short positions in canola, according to Ken Ball of PI Financial in Winnipeg.

He added that “canola is still looking relatively cheap as an oilseed.”

Declining crop ratings for soybeans in the United States were underpinning the futures there, but Ball said the canola crop was in better shape overall.

“There are still some areas of concern, but canola condition ratings have improved in the past week,” Ball said, noting many dry areas of Alberta and Saskatchewan had received rain.

Statistics Canada releases updated acreage estimates on Wednesday next week (June 28) and Ball expected farmers likely kept with their initial intentions for the most part of seeding about 21.6 million acres of canola.

However, the April report was based off data obtained in late December/early January, rather than closer to spring as typically done in the past, which could lead to larger adjustments than usual.

— Phil Franz-Warkentin is an associate editor/analyst with MarketsFarm in Winnipeg.

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