By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

KNIGHTSTOWN, Ind. — Just days before he was scheduled to fly to Germany to participate in a bio-energy roundtable, Indiana State Department of Agriculture Director Andy Miller was giving a speech at a gas station.

Much like the roundtable will, his speech focused on biodiesel. Specifically, it is “probably 5-10 years behind the ethanol industry in its development” in the United States.

“Biodiesel is - kind of - in Germany where ethanol is here,” he said.

In the United States, he said Indiana is a leader over other states with soybean biodiesel research and production. In fact, his and other brief speeches at the Knightstown GasAmerica truck stop on May 8 were to mark that station now offering its customers B10 (10 percent biodiesel/90 percent petroleum diesel), and at the same price as regular diesel.

“We want to see the nation’s reliance on overseas’ fuels go away,” said Tom Zornes with Integrity Biofuels of Morristown, Ind., one of GasAmerica’s B100 (pure biodiesel) suppliers.

For about a month, GasAmerica has offered the B10 at one location. The company has, however, offered B2 and E85 (85 percent ethanol/15 percent gasoline) at several other Indiana stations since January 2006.

Locally owned

Integrity buys the soy oil it chemically converts to biodiesel from Bunge Grain, literally just down the street from its plant in Morristown.

Bunge processes Midwestern soybeans to get the oil. Hoosier – and other – drivers burn the biodiesel.

“It’s homegrown energy from Indiana,” state Sen. Beverly Gard (R-Greenfield) summarized.

GasAmerica Services, Inc. is also local, and not affiliated with any petroleum brand. Based in Greenfield, it originated in 1934 as White Flash Petroleum with one station in Shirley, Ind. The location is still there, though the scenery has changed.

Fourth-generation owners include CEO Stephanie White-Longworth and her brother, Keith White, vice president. Their mother, Judy White-Turner, chairs the board and uncle, Danny White, inspects the stations.

GasAmerica has been blending 10 percent ethanol into its gasoline since the 1980s, back when it wasn’t the everyday word it is now.

“The biggest problem we had is at that time, it would eat up a lot of plastic in weed eaters (and similar equipment),” Danny recalled.
In the last 18 months, consumer inquiries to www.gasamerica.com have quadrupled.

“Historically,” Stephanie said of before then, “they bought gas, and that gas is gas; they didn’t realize they had as many options as they have.”

She said the company has received requests from farmers, among other consumers, to sell crop-based fuel.

She added besides supporting local economy, biodiesel is good for the environment.

Awareness

“When Gov. (Mitch) Daniels took office, you didn’t hear much about biofuels in Indiana,” Gard told the approximately 30 people gathered on May 8. She added state legislators got involved a couple of years ago, passing tax credits to encourage use of renewable fuels.

Miller said those lawmakers recently passed legislation for further biomass research, including cellulosic ethanol. Statewide corn ethanol production has helped show the rest of the nation it is a viable fuel.

“A pioneering people can always see a horizon that’s not here today,” he added, about early efforts to promote renewable fuels, a job which now belongs to the Indiana Soybean Alliance.

Before the Alliance began as the Soybean Development Council in 1991, Don Meier of Elizabethtown, Ind., – its only charter member still on the Alliance board – was among those lobbying for a soybean checkoff program to fund biodiesel research. Now retired, Meier spent years farming corn and soybeans and belonged to both the Indiana Soybean Growers Assoc. and Corn Growers Association, and said he has also participated in the voluntary corn checkoff since it began a few years ago.

“We spent a lot of money in the early days (trying to develop and promote biodiesel),” he explained. “Sometimes, it seemed we were wasting money.”

That’s been an actual criticism from other Indiana soybean farmers. Miller acknowledged it, but said of the Alliance, “(Indiana has) a position to stay a leader in biodiesel because of your efforts.

“You drive around the state of Indiana – frankly, you drive around any state – and you find places that need ‘new life’ breathed into them,” he said, referring to businesses who have invested $2 billion in biodiesel production in some of those rural areas of late.

The biggest delay has been getting those producers to manufacture the fuel in useful quantities. “I understand, though,” Meier said. “You hated to make very much investment if you didn’t know if the government was going to recognize it as an alternative fuel.”

But the biggest thing to move biodiesel and ethanol forward came from without. “I think 9/11 did a lot more for alternative fuels than all our work,” Meier philosophized, explaining a side effect was to “wake America up” about dependency on foreign oil and losing jobs overseas.

This farm news was published in the May 16, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee.