RFA Thanks President Biden for Urging Resolution to Rail Dispute

The Renewable Fuels Association thanked President Biden for calling on Congress late Monday to pass legislation that would end the ongoing U.S. rail labor dispute. Earlier that day, RFA had joined more than 400 other organizations in a letter to Congress urging swift resolution to the dispute, the latest in a series of actions by the trade association.

“We are pleased to see President Biden calling for a speedy resolution to avert this potential disaster,” said RFA President and CEO Geoff Cooper. “Our country’s ethanol producers rely greatly on the railroads to move their products to market, and if the nation’s trains stop running, the nation’s ethanol biorefineries stop running too. We need a resolution quickly so the 400,000-plus jobs supported by our nation’s ethanol industry, and the rural economy itself, will not suffer the dire consequences of an interruption in rail service.”

The majority of the ethanol produced in the United States—more than 70 percent—is transported via railway across the lower 48 states as well as into Canada and Mexico. In fact, over the last five years, U.S. railroads have transported an average of nearly 395,000 carloads of ethanol per year. In addition, roughly 25 percent of grain comes into ethanol plants by train, and an estimated 30 percent of outbound distillers grains, an important livestock feed produced at biorefineries, departs via rail.