May is National Ethanol Month! South Dakota corn growers were instrumental in ethanol's beginnings

May is Renewable Fuels Month, and it is the perfect time to reflect on the journey of the ethanol industry and its roots in farming communities.

Todd Brown, Chairman of Dakota Ethanol, recently shared a story with Ag News Wire about how South Dakota’s corn growers were instrumental in the creation of the state’s first large-scale ethanol plant in 1999.

“The ethanol industry was just becoming new. There were a few private plants, but when I look back, the South Dakota corn growers were so all in and so dedicated, and when you think about it, we were going to be the first plant and we were going to be a 40 million gallon brewing plant and so it was going to take $15-20 million worth of equity. That hadn’t been done. It definitely hadn’t been done in South Dakota, and so the South Dakota corn growers were very instrumental and they did a lot of things that really tipped the scale,” he explained.

Today, Dakota ethanol produces 100 million gallons of eco-friendly ethanol annually, sourced from 33 million bushels of locally grown corn.

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