Looking at the economics of distillers grains

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(automatically updated/inserted from The Big Biofuels Blog)


Nice piece in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader looking at the way that sales of distillers grains is helping to support the ethanol industry in the US.

Historically, distillers grain represented 10 percent of an ethanolplant's revenue stream, said Jerry Shurson, an animal science professorat the University of Minnesota. Today, it's closer to 20 percent to 25percent, he said.

Which is nice to have, but if the volume of ethanol keeps on growing then the supply of distillers grains will continue to increase. This might reduce the price of distillers grains, but since it takes about three pounds of corn to produce about one pound of grains (the other two are converted to ethanol and carbon dioxide gas), this may not matter because producing ethanol and distillers grains takes corn out of the market.

Not all of the people in the report are happy about that. Especially those who live a long way from distilleries.


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