\n
<\/p>\n The historic announcement of Barack Obama\u2019s election as the 44th president of the United States came this morning. Biofuels policy was always a major point of difference between Obama and his republican rival John McCain. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span>POLICY DIFFERENCES<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n <\/strong>McCain supported lowering the US import tariff on ethanol which would potentially have led to an increase in Brazilian ethanol and a subsequent fall in demand for domestically produced corn-based ethanol. Brazilian ethanol is far more efficient, both economically in terms of production costs and environmentally in terms of the energy produced. In contrast Barack Obama has repeatedly emphasised the importance of\u00a0 <\/span>US energy independence as a driver of biofuels production in the US and is therefore likely to support domestically produced biofuels in favour of imports. <\/span><\/p>\n HEAVYWEIGHT INFLUENCES<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Obama has been advised by some heavyweight names from the ethanol and grains industry including Tom Dashle who is on the board of several ethanol producing companies. Mr Dashle\u2019s job description at the Washington-based law firm Alston & Bird includes spending \u201ca substantial amount of time providing strategic and policy advice to clients in renewable energy\u201d. Barack has also repeated made use of corporate jets belonging to ADM, a world-leading agribusiness and biofuels producer.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/p>\n LOOKING TO THE FUTURE<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n So what does this spell for the future of biofuels and agribusiness in general? Certainly in the next two years there will be continued growth in the corn-based ethanol industry. This in turn will continue to pressurise corn supplies and have a knock-on effect on all grains and oilseed demand. Commodity prices may rebound \u2013 although it is unlikely we will reach the heady peaks of June 2008 as commodity speculators, who have been hard hit over the last two months, conclude that \u2018once bitten, twice shy\u2019.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Going forward, feed and meat companies will be forced to consolidate and drive efficiency measures in order to remain economically viable in an environment of high grain costs. Fertilizers, seeds and crop protection will continue to experience increasing demand.<\/span><\/p>\n Although environmentally questionable, Obama\u2019s support for a US-centric biofuels policy and a continued shunning of ethanol imports could drive some growth back into agribusiness <\/span>after two months of plummets and doldrums. Share prices for Monsanto, ADM, Potash Corp and Bunge were all reacting favourably to yesterday\u2019s speculation of Barack\u2019s win.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Obama\u2019s support for US energy independence<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cardy-brown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cardy-brown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cardy-brown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cardy-brown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cardy-brown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=67"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cardy-brown.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/67\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cardy-brown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=67"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cardy-brown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=67"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cardy-brown.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=67"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}