Committee hears agricultural outlook: concerns about fertilizer imports, aviation fuel market and distillers grains

S&P Global
griculture presenter Nathan Carson gave the committee an agricultural outlook that prompted lawmakers to ask for additional data on fertilizer sources, the potential market for aviation fuel made from domestic crops, and how increased distillers grains could affect livestock feed demand.

Representative Brandenburg said Brazil and other exporters are taking market share for products that could use U.S. feedstocks and urged policy responses. "The real problem in agriculture is Brazil is eating our lunch when it comes to, looking at carbon capture and aviation fuel," Brandenburg said, arguing for restrictions on imports of methanol from Brazil if domestic markets can supply demand.

Nut graf: Committee members pressed S&P Global for breakdowns and asked Legislative Council to collect country-of-origin fertilizer data and analyses linking crop input costs and yields to market movements; staff said requested items could be included in a March forecast update.

Members sought specific data points. Brandenburg asked for a breakdown of fertilizer imports from Russia, Ukraine and other regions; the committee asked Nathan to provide numbers for Legislative Council to circulate. Representative Brandenburg also cited industry figures during questioning, saying, "right now in the US we're producing 15,000,000,000 gallons of ethanol" and that aviation fuel demand could be "between 60 to 75,000,000,000 gallons" (figures cited by the representative during discussion).

Representative Murphy asked about the downstream impact of increasing distillers dried grains (DDGs) as a feed product for cattle or poultry, asking, "what's the downstream impact... when we start looking at cattle?" Carson and committee members acknowledged that feed substitution and input-cost changes could influence crop and livestock markets and noted more analysis was desirable.

Ending: Committee staff said additional requested data will be provided to Legislative Council and that S&P Globalould incorporate answers into the March forecast update; no formal policy action was taken during the meeting.