By Sherrod Brown

U.S. Senate

I’m always looking for ways to grow new markets for Ohio farmers, and one industry where we see tremendous potential in Ohio is in biofuels – things like ethanol and sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel.

It’s why two years ago, we passed a tax credit to boost U.S. production of renewable fuels, such as sustainable aviation fuel and renewable diesel, made from feedstocks like corn, soy, and other agricultural commodities. The goal was to make America more energy independent and spur the production of biofuels made with American feedstocks.

But right now, we’re seeing a surge in imports of Chinese used cooking oil that is being used to produce biofuels, displacing the use of domestic feedstocks. Brazilian ethanol and tallow has also become a problem.

These foreign feedstocks are crowding American farmers out of the biofuels market.

That’s why I teamed up with Senator Roger Marshall, a Republican from Kansas, along with Representative Marcy Kaptur here in Ohio, to introduce the Farmer First Fuel Incentives Act, to restrict the eligibility of this tax credit to renewable fuels made only from domestically sourced feedstocks.

We pushed the Administration to tighten the eligibility for this credit earlier this summer – and we’ll keep working to get them to do this before they issue a final rule.

American tax dollars shouldn’t be used to subsidize biofuels made with foreign feedstock. We need to make this clear in the law. We need to support our local producers and keep the playing field fair so that Ohio farmers and biofuel producers have long-term opportunities in these markets.

Our bill would also extend the credit for ten years, to provide farmers and fuel producers with the certainty they need to invest for the future.

With the ongoing drought in Ohio, farmers are dealing with a lot of uncertainty that’s beyond anyone’s control. Farmers should not have to deal with the uncertainty of whether their government will send their tax dollars to their competitors.

This is just commonsense: Whether it’s the steel in an infrastructure project or the corn in our ethanol, American tax dollars should support American producers.