An op-ed by our friends at the Iowa Renewable Fuels Association (IRFA) earlier this week to the Des Moines Register was both shocking and revealing.

The op-ed was a response to an op-ed the previous week that supported Big Oil's hairbrained proposal to have ethanol exports count towards the RVOs in the RFS.

There’s nothing surprising that a Big Oil supporter would continue to harp on a proposal that has already been shot down by the EPA. Big Oil is nothing if not persistent.

What was shocking was that it came from a farmer and a supposed ethanol industry supporter.

“Mike Helland is a good man, good farmer, and good ethanol supporter. But he was sold a pig in a poke,” wrote Monte Shaw, executive director at the IRFA, in the op-ed.

Is this Big Oil’s new tactic? Using (or duping?) supposed industry supporters and farmers into advocating on their behalf?

It has to be. No farmer or ethanol supporter in their right mind should support the idea of having ethanol exports count towards the RVOs unless they want to see fewer gallons of ethanol blended into our nation’s fuel supply.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Big Oil would eventually get some farmers on their side.

After all, they managed to herd some “environmentalists” and “conservationists” to their cause a while back. No, irony is not a thing Big Oil concerns itself with.

We’re barely a week into 2018 and we’ve got a glimpse of the road ahead for our industry.

Happy New Year!