At the ASTA CSS 2015 and Seed Expo last week, AgResource Company president Dan Basse presented his economic outlook for agriculture during the opening general session for the fifth year in a row, and once more biofuels figured into the picture.

Basse talked about a “world awash in grain” with record global wheat and soybean crops and second largest corn crop, and a mature U.S. ethanol industry. “They (biofuels) are not going away, they’re not getting any bigger, but we are mature and still utilizing somewhere around 5 to 5.1 billion bushels of corn in this country for biofuels,” he said.

Basse says that the new standards from EPA under the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) will drive some growth but not much. “It will have a little impact,” he said. “We think it adds maybe 170 million bushels of corn demand in 2016 … it’s a help, we’ll take anything we can get, however it doesn’t change the fabric of the agricultural markets. We still have too much supply both domestically and internationally.”

He does see some increase in ethanol exports. “But today we’re only shipping out about six and a half percent of our ethanol that we produce in this country for export,” he said. “It may grow slowly but it’s not a game changer.”

Listen to my interview with Basse here: Interview with Dan Basse, AgResource Company