The New York Times - 08.10.2019

A16 N THE NEW YORK TIMES NATIONALTUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019

The 45th PresidentThe Agenda

PRIMGHAR, Iowa — In meas-
ured but increasingly impatient
tones, Midwestern farmers and
politicians delivered a message to
President Trump: Fix the policies
hurting corn prices and prompt-
ing ethanol plants to close, or risk
alienating one of the most loyal
parts of your political base.
And last week, after a flurry of
pressure from senators and criti-
cism from agricultural groups, the
Trump administration relented,
saying that it would put forth rules
designed to increase ethanol de-
mand. The decision, which was
cheered in a Corn Belt that has
also been battered this year by
tariffs and floods, underscored the
importance of the rural Midwest
to Mr. Trump’s re-election hopes
and gave a boost to farmers at the
end of a difficult growing season.
“It’s exactly what we wanted,”
said Daryl Haack, a corn and soy-
bean farmer from Primghar, in
northwest Iowa, who supports Mr.
Trump but had previously criti-
cized his approach on ethanol.
The turnabout by the adminis-
tration came amid a backlash at
its decision over the summer to
exempt more oil refineries from a
requirement to include ethanol, a
biofuel often derived from corn, in
their blends. About 40 percent of
the country’s corn crop goes to

ethanol, and a drop in demand for

the product quickly rippled

through the rural economy in

places like Iowa, Michigan, Min-

nesota and Ohio, all politically

mixed states that Mr. Trump

hopes to carry next year.

Since the latest exemptions

were announced in August, Mid-

western Republicans in Congress

pressed the president to reverse

course in a series of closed-door

meetings, and farmers, who

helped Mr. Trump declare victory

in 2016, voiced their anger in un-

usually blunt terms.

Darrel McAlexander, a south-

west Iowa farmer who met Mr.

Trump at an ethanol plant in June,

said in an interview last week that

he felt betrayed by the exemp-

tions that lessened demand for

ethanol. Mr. McAlexander, a regis-

tered Republican, also wrote a

pointed op-ed in The Des Moines

Register.

“The president and his advisers

recognized that they had a politi-

cal problem and quickly sought to

put the genie back in the bottle,”

said Geoff Cooper, president of the

Missouri-based Renewable Fuels

Association, an ethanol trade

group. “To hear that level of frus-

tration and anger and angst from

part of the base that had been sup-

portive of this president really did

get his attention.”

In recent weeks, six ethanol

plants had closed or been idled, at

least temporarily. In Winnebago,

Minn., where production stopped

and all but a few employees of the

Corn Plus ethanol plant were laid

off, that meant the sudden loss of

one of the town’s three largest em-

ployers and an added expense for

nearby farmers who had planned

to sell their harvest there. On

Monday, a representative of the

plant said it was uncertain

whether the new administration

policy, announced on Friday,

would mean production could

start again.

“It’s 30-or-so less people driv-

ing through town every day, 30

less people visiting the gas sta-

tion,” said Jake Skluzacek, the city

administrator in Winnebago, pop-

ulation 1,350, where the soybean

harvest has just started and the

cornstalks are turning from green

to brown.

Even without the disruption to

the ethanol market, farmers have

faced a difficult year. Rain delayed

planting. A trade war with China

has siphoned off profits. And

rivers busted through levees and

swallowed fields this spring, a re-

sult of extreme weather patterns

that scientists have linked to cli-

mate change.

“It’s hard to make a living out

here on the farm,” said Doug Jenk-

ins, who raises hogs and grows

corn and soybeans about a mile

from Winnebago’s shuttered

ethanol plant.

After tending to piglets on a

drizzly recent morning, Mr. Jenk-

ins said he did not expect much

profit from this year’s corn and

soybean crops. Some of the land

he farms, overtaken by the Blue

Earth River, sat empty this sea-

son. He said he expected to have

to pay more to haul the corn he

harvests to a different ethanol

plant. And his investments in the

shuttered Corn Plus facility, once

a source of reliable income, were

now worth much less.

But Mr. Jenkins said he did not

fault the president for his prob-

lems, even before the administra-

tion’s shift. Ethanol waivers for

small oil refineries were granted

by the Environmental Protection

Agency — whose leader is ap-

pointed by the president — but not

Mr. Trump himself, he said.

“The liberals and media want to

blame everything on Trump,” said

Mr. Jenkins, a Republican who

plans to vote for the president

again next year. “My opinion is the

E.P.A. did this and I think it has

very little to do with the presi-

dent.”

Since the start of his term, Mr.

Trump has had to balance the con-

flicting wishes of two supportive

constituencies — workers in the

agriculture and oil industries — in

developing his ethanol policies.

Farmers generally want more

ethanol in the fuel supply, while

those in the oil industry often bris-

tle at higher ethanol mandates.

Earlier this year, Mr. Trump re-

ceived praise from farmers for

taking steps to allow E15, a gaso-

line blend with 15 percent ethanol,

to be used year-round. But his ad-

ministration has also frequently

exempted small refineries from

requirements to blend ethanol

into their fuels.

Under the proposed rules an-

nounced by the administration on

Friday, the E.P.A. will seek to ex-

pand to 15 billion gallons the

amount of ethanol blended into

the fuel supply, starting in 2020.

The announcement also called for

easing the process for selling E

and expanding the export market

for ethanol.

The Trump administration’s

new approach on ethanol followed

weeks of pressure on the adminis-

tration from elected officials in the

Midwest and warnings from some

farmers that their support for Mr.

Trump next year was not assured.

As those negotiations stretched

on, and as more ethanol plants

stopped operations, Representa-

tive Rodney Davis, Republican of

Illinois, introduced a bill targeting

the exemptions. Senator Joni

Ernst, Republican of Iowa, spoke

repeatedly about the issue with

Mr. Trump. And the governors of

Minnesota and South Dakota —

one a Democrat, the other a Re-

publican — sent a joint letter to the

president asking him to reconsid-

er his approach.

Finally, on Thursday evening,

not long after corn farmers and

ethanol industry officials held a

conference call pressing their

case with reporters, the White

House organized a call of its own

to tell agricultural groups and po-

liticians that a deal had been

reached.

The next morning, as news of

the announcement spread, so, too,

did relief among farmers.

“With the state of the farm econ-

omy, any viable market for grain

producers is key,” read a state-

ment issued by Representative

James Comer, Republican of Ken-

tucky.

Daryl Haack, a farmer from Primghar, Iowa, had been a critic of the president’s ethanol policy.

But he said the government’s new approach was welcome news after a hard growing season.

In Winnebago, Minn., the loss of the plant continues to hurt. “It’s 30-or-so less people driving
through town every day, 30 less people visiting the gas station,” said the city administrator.

Corn Plus, an ethanol plant in Winnebago, Minn., closed this year, stung by rules that had ex-

empted refineries from using biofuels. It was one of the small town’s largest employers.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JENN ACKERMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Doug Jenkins, who farms near Winnebago, Minn., said he blamed the E.P.A. for his troubles,

not the president. “The liberals and media want to blame everything on Trump,” he said.

Shift in Ethanol Policy Gives Farmers ‘Exactly’ What They Wanted

By MITCH SMITH

New regulations

designed to increase

the demand for

biofuels.

Three premature babies have

died after being infected by bacte-

ria while in a neonatal intensive

care unit at a hospital in central

Pennsylvania, where five other

babies were also sickened, hospi-

tal officials said on Monday.

Officials with the Geisinger

Medical Center in Danville, Pa.,

said they did not yet know the

source of the infections, which oc-

curred over several months start-

ing in July. The hospital said it was

diverting care of some premature

babies to other local hospitals

while it investigated the infec-

tions.

Dr. Rosemary Leeming, the

chief medical officer at Geisinger,

said at a news conference on Mon-

day that all of the infected babies

were “extremely premature.”

The three babies died in August

and September. All three were

born before 27 weeks of gestation,

hospital officials said.

Four other babies have recov-

ered from their infections, officials

said. Another is still being treated.

The bacterium — Pseudomonas

aeruginosa — is very common,

likes moist environments and

grows in water. Pseudomonas in-

fections have been a particular

problem for neonatal intensive

care units because underdevel-

oped babies have compromised

immune systems.

“It’s often very harmless,” Dr.

Frank A. Maffei, Geisinger’s chief

of pediatrics, said at the news con-

ference. “However, it can cause

diseases, and it can cause dis-

eases in very fragile patients. Cer-

tainly, premature and tiny babies

are among our most fragile and

vulnerable patients we care for

here.”

While individual patients in in-

tensive care units may occasion-

ally be infected by bacteria, a

large number of infections is very

unusual, said Dr. William

Schaffner, an infection control

specialist at Vanderbilt Univer-

sity Medical Center in Nashville.

“We’re familiar with Pseu-

domonas for sure,” he said. “Ev-

ery medical student knows about

Pseudomonas. However, having a

cluster, a grouping of infections in

a neonatal intensive care unit —

that’s not common. The alarm

bells go off.”

Dr. Schaffner said infections

from Staphylococcus bacterium,

commonly known as staph, were

more common than Pseudomonas

in intensive care units.

He said such a cluster of infec-

tions might have been more com-

mon 40 years ago. Now, intensive

care units typically have “very in-

tensive policies and procedures”

for preventing infection, he said,

adding that investigators would

probably be trying to determine if

those procedures were not fol-

lowed or if they needed to be re-

vamped.

The Pennsylvania Department

of Health and the Centers for Dis-

ease Control and Prevention are

also investigating the infections at

Geisinger. Neither immediately

responded to a request for com-

ment on Monday evening.

Dr. Mark Shelly, Geisinger’s di-

rector of infection prevention and

control, said at the news confer-

ence that it could be weeks before

the hospital figured out where the

bacterium came from. But he said

that it most likely did not originate

from inside the intensive care

unit.

He said the hospital had in-

creased the chlorination of its wa-

ter, installed special filters on taps

and increased cleaning of several

parts of the hospital. The bac-

terium was not found on any sur-

faces, Dr. Shelly said.

“Even after having done all this

investigation, we may not figure

out exactly what went wrong,” he

said. “But we are dedicated

throughout the process to find out

exactly what the story was and

why this occurred and how we can

make sure that it doesn’t happen

again.”

3 Babies With Bacterial Infections Die at Pennsylvania Hospital

By MIHIR ZAVERI

Premature infants are

vulnerable to an often

harmless bacterium.