Farmer Mark Recker, who grows corn and soybeans in northeast Iowa, has long advocated for year-round sales of E15 gasoline.
The fuel, which is blended with up to 15% corn-based ethanol, currently cannot be sold during the summer in most states without a waiver from the federal government due to emission concerns. But legislation making its way through Congress could soon remove those restrictions.
“This looks like something that could really happen,” said Recker, who has supported E15 for about 20 years. He said most of the farmers he works with share a similar enthusiasm.
“It's been a goal top of mind, and something we work on every day, every month, every year, and hopefully we're to that point where we've reached the pinnacle,” he said.
The U.S. House approved a version of the bill in May. It’s now being debated in the Senate.
Year-round E15 would mean more demand for corn, which could bring more revenue to farms. That’s good news for farmers like Recker, who have been up against low corn prices for about three years.
But caveats included in the bill could hurt the soybean market – and some experts warn that could ultimately shrink any profit gains for farmers.
The cost of year-round E15
Many lawmakers from oil-producing states have pushed back on expanding E15 sales, citing high compliance costs.
Refineries are now especially concerned as the Environmental Protection Agency has set record Renewable Volume Obligations for 2026-2027. These are the amounts of biofuel that refineries are required to blend, or to pay others to blend, through a credit system regulated by the EPA.
To address these concerns, the E15 bill includes an exemption allowing smaller refineries to blend less biofuel than the EPA standards require. Under the current bill, they would only have to produce 25% of what they’d otherwise be required to ensure is made.
A year-round mandate for E15 is likely to mean increased production of ethanol over soybean-based biodiesel at refineries, especially as ethanol is cheaper to produce, said Seth Meyer, the director of the Food and Agriculture Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
That in itself is not a huge concern for soybean farmers, who often also grow corn, Meyer said. But the provision allowing small refineries to produce less biofuel overall could further elbow out biodiesel, he said.
“The bean folks are saying, ‘Wait a minute, corn, you get your E15, but if you are trading off small refinery exemptions, that falls on us,’” Meyer said.
Fewer total biofuels also means less ethanol production, so corn price gains would be smaller. In an economic study Meyer led, his team found that the bill could negatively affect farm income over the next 10 years.
“This piece of legislation itself provides the potential for year-round E15, but just that potential is not sufficient to offset the losses from small refinery exemptions,” Meyer said.
He said it would take strong adoption of E15 and continued supportive EPA actions, such as expanded renewable volume obligations, to offset negative impacts from the small refinery exemptions.
The National Corn Growers Association also acknowledges that soybean prices will take a hit from the passage of year-round E15.
Gretchen Kuck, an economist at the National Corn Growers Association, agrees that corn price gains could be smaller for farmers because of the exemption for smaller refineries. But she said they'd still see some price gains, which she argues could help offset any soybean price losses.
“A farm growing an equal amount of corn and soybeans is still going to have an [average] gain of $5 an acre," Kuck said, adding that it would happen throughout the next decade.
Potential soybean losses could also mean farmers receive a boost in federal agricultural support payments. The Congressional Budget Office released a cost estimate for the bill, which found that it could result in direct spending of $2.3 billion from 2026 to 2036.
Regardless, Kuck said the bill could provide a boost not only to corn growers but also to consumers.
“If I have the opportunity to offer a consumer an average saving of 25 cents at the pump, then that's an additional win,” Kuck said. “That's a pretty big deal, too, for the legislators that are considering this.”
Currently, only eight states can sell E15 year-round, after they petitioned the government for a permanent waiver to sell the fuel in 2022. That includes Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin.
Other states can sell E15 during the summer when the EPA issues a temporary waiver, as Administrator Lee Zeldin did earlier this year in response to high gas prices from the war in Iran.
This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest and Great Plains. It reports on food systems, agriculture and rural issues.
