Monte Shaw, executive director of the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association, effectively argued that “If Iowa enacts laws that make CCS a practical impossibility for its ethanol plants, it will be a massive blow to our farm economy and the entire Iowa economy” in a recent Des Moines Register op-ed.

Shaw noted that he came of “age during the farm crisis of the 1980s,” which was “not a fun time to be a farm kid. The single biggest force making things better for ag over the last 40 years was the explosive growth of the renewable fuels industry during the first decade of this century.”

After a 30-year interval, his family recently started farming their own land again.

Shaw personally understands what carbon capture and sequestration projects mean for Iowa. “Renewable fuels production pulled Iowa out of the farm crisis of the 1980s and the stagnation of the 1990s. I do not want my son, and his generation of farm kids, to come of age during an Iowa farm crisis of the 2020s. Not only would it be a bad time to be a farm kid, but this time it would be self-inflicted. Iowa Renewable Fuels Association members urge all Iowans to pull together and to find a fair and equitable path forward for CCS. The future of Iowa ag depends on it,” he wrote.

Shaw concluded, “Renewable fuels production pulled Iowa out of the farm crisis of the 1980s and the stagnation of the 1990s. I do not want my son, and his generation of farm kids, to come of age during an Iowa farm crisis of the 2020s. Not only would it be a bad time to be a farm kid, but this time it would be self-inflicted. Iowa Renewable Fuels Association members urge all Iowans to pull together and to find a fair and equitable path forward for CCS. The future of Iowa ag depends on it.”

Click here to read Shaw’s entire op-ed.