In 2024, year-round E15 was pulled off the table in Congress at the eleventh hour, and early in 2026, it happened again. Jed Bower, president of the National Corn Growers Association, said his organization is extremely disappointed that year-round E15 was pulled at the last minute from the governmen t funding package in the House of Representatives. https://media-cdn.socastsrm.com/wordpress/wp-content/blogs.dir/2626/files/2026/02/e15-bower1.mp3 “We got a call this fall from the White House saying, ‘We know you guys continue to push for E 15. We need you to get together with the oil side and come to an agreement.’ And so, obviously, we’ve sent a team to the White House. Growth (Energy) and the RFA were there, API was there, and brought in a couple of big oil producers with them. We hashed this out, and I can tell you, unfortunately, corn didn’t get everything it wanted, but in an agreement, that’s kind of how it works sometimes. But I can promise all your listeners, oil didn’t get everything they wanted, either.” After all that, it looked like everything was in place for year-round E15 to cross the finish line. https://media-cdn.socastsrm.com/wordpress/wp-content/blogs.dir/2626/files/2026/02/e15-bower2.mp3 “After that, we presented it to all of our true champions on the Hill, saying, ‘Hey, you know, we have this agreement,’ and the champions understood that. I personally went to D.C. and had breakfast with the speaker. The speaker expressed his concern about DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) pulling it out last year, you know, at the last second or last minute, and he was frustrated that DOGE did that, and he truly wanted to get it done this year, according to what I was told by him. And that brings us to where we were here when it got pulled out.” While they are disappointed, Bower said the NCGA is not quitting at all on year-round E15.Corn Growers won’t quit on year-round E15 https://media-cdn.socastsrm.com/wordpress/wp-content/blogs.dir/2626/files/2026/02/e15-bower3.mp3 “Extremely disappointing. Frustrating. You know, we’ve seen this last year in our sector, but we’ve seen Congress act like this now, unfortunately, for not one, not two, but multiple years. And now, here we are, as I mentioned, highly disappointed, but all the growers need to understand that this isn’t over, and we’re not quitting. We are engaged. We are going to continue to push as they build out this committee, coalition team, however they want to word it, when we finally get the last of it. We’re going to have some great biofuel champions on our side there. Obviously, oil is going to have some people there. We are still in communication with the American Petroleum Institute. We are still aligned together on the deal that we made, that was bipartisan, and brought agriculture and oil together.” South Dakota is one of eight states where the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has approved year-round sales of E15. The others are Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio and Wisconsin. ...read more read less