A biodiesel boom (and conundrum)

Short Wave

NPR

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🗓️ 20 October 2021

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

There's a biodiesel boom happening! It's fueled by incentives and policies intended to cut greenhouse emissions, and is motivating some oil companies like World Energy in Paramount, California to convert their refineries to process soybean oil instead of crude. NPR's food and agriculture correspondent Dan Charles explains why farmers are happy, bakers are frustrated and people who want to preserve the world's natural forests are worried. Email the show at shortwave@npr.org.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:04.4	Hey shortwave listeners, I'm Maria Gidoya, your host today, and I am here with correspondent
0:11.2	Dan Charles who covers a little bit of food and a little bit of climate change.
0:15.9	Hi Maria, I have got a story today about food and climate change.
0:20.1	I expect nothing less from you, land on me.
0:22.5	Okay, the story starts with a guy whose job is buying ingredients for bread and buns.
0:29.4	My name is Ed Sinko, I'm the director of purchasing a Swabble's Baking Company in
0:33.0	Youngstown, Ohio.
0:34.5	And Ed has a problem, he cannot get enough cooking oil.
0:39.0	They use soybean oil mostly, but Ed says soybean oil suppliers won't even talk to him these
0:44.3	days.
0:45.3	The only quotes I can get for 2022 are from the person who I currently buy from, so basically
0:51.1	I am at their mercy.
0:52.6	A year ago he was paying 35 cents a pound for soybean oil, today it's almost a dollar,
0:58.6	and he says other food companies are in the same spot.
1:01.2	We have had a lot of different conference calls with companies way larger than ours that
1:06.2	are having the same problem.
1:07.6	I'm confused, what's going on?
1:08.9	Are we running out of soybeans?
1:10.4	Are farmers just not growing enough?
1:12.4	No, American farmers are actually growing more soybeans than ever.
1:16.0	This is where it gets really interesting, and it has a theory.
	...

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