Some New England residents are turning to soybeans for heat. It is called bio-heat, and growers say it has become a solid market.
“It’s caught on well, very, very popular. People love it, and there’s a whole industry developed around it now, about what modifications and so forth are done to the heating plants of furnaces, if you will, the boilers, and so it’s pretty neat, and it’s become a nice demand center for our soybean oil. It burns cleaner. It has fewer carbon deposits. It has a lot easier maintenance. It has natural lubricity, which of course, when we took sulfur out of our petroleum-based products, we lost a lot of lubricity, so there’s a lot of built-in advantages and that’s what they like about it,” said Andy Bensend, District One Director, Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board.
Bensend says it has been a gradual process. First, homeowners turned to fuels like bio-diesel over traditional heating oil, and from there, bio-heat took off.
RFD-TV Markets Expert Tony St. James breaks down the state of agribusiness and harvest progress across the U.S. for the week of Monday, September 15, 2025.
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Year-round sales of E-15 are another major topic on Capitol Hill, which, according to Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE), is one issue up for debate this session with significant bipartisan support.
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American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland joins us to share his reaction to September’s WASDE and discuss the trade uncertainty between China and his industry.
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Bottom line: Despite all the efforts advocates make, workers are still making less money.
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