# The Ethanol Kingpin of Iowa

An episode of [Drilled](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1439735906), 19 May 2026, 32 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/SxlTEPDY7xDg35RXkASs/pdrl.fm/3e5572/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/9a7ab5ee-ce11-48ff-a544-b3ec00ea9b1e/f6595d7b-479d-4a08-aff1-b43a00f4512a/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=7f82f371-6316-4ea6-a108-b3ec00ea9b2d

Bruce's venture in Brazil isn't the first time he tried to go global. What an earlier attempt tells us about him, his business, and what's ahead for both Iowa and "the Brazilian Midwest." This season is a collaboration with the Intercept Brasil. You can get the show in Portuguese on their feed as well, and companion stories at: https://www.intercept.com.br/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:17] Speaker 1: Pushkin cast your minds back to the fall of twenty eleven.
[0:29] Speaker 1: If you were on a college campus anywhere in the country,
[0:32] Speaker 1: you were probably hearing something like this.
[0:36] Speaker 2: It's not.
[0:57] Speaker 3: Everyone there.
[1:02] Speaker 1: Occupy Wall Street protests weren't just happening on Wall Street
[1:05] Speaker 1: or in New York. They exploded everywhere. People were taking
[1:09] Speaker 1: to the streets to protest economic inequality. At Iowa State University,
[1:14] Speaker 1: student protesters began to focus on one particular example of
[1:18] Speaker 1: corporate greed by one of the university's board members.
[1:22] Speaker 4: Bruce Rastatter is not a stranger in Iowa. That's a
[1:26] Speaker 4: name that people who are involved in ag and food
[1:29] Speaker 4: systems are very familiar with already, and we were quite
[1:34] Speaker 4: concerned about the involvement of our institution in what seemed
[1:40] Speaker 4: like a very colonial agricultural development project, and immediately started
[1:48] Speaker 4: asking some questions.
[1:50] Speaker 1: This is Angie Carter. She was a student organizer with
[1:53] Speaker 1: Occupy at Iowa State University at the time, where Bruce
[1:57] Speaker 1: Rastetter was on the board of regents. The Oakland Institute,
[2:02] Speaker 1: a nonprofit policy think tank, had just released a report
[2:06] Speaker 1: about how Rastetter had wrote Iowa State into a land
[2:09] Speaker 1: deal in Tanzania. He'd initially pitched it as a sustainable
[2:14] Speaker 1: development project. Two companies related to Bruce's Summit Agricultural Group,
[2:20] Speaker 1: partnered with Iowa State University and wanted to buy some
[2:23] Speaker 1: land in Tanzania and use it to help bring modern
[2:28] Speaker 1: agricultural practices to the country. They would grow corn and
[2:32] Speaker 1: soybeans there and also teach the locals how to produce
[2:36] Speaker 1: added value products. Sound familiar.
[2:39] Speaker 3: Cycle one is deforestation in cattle. Cycle two is so
[2:46] Speaker 3: Cycle two point five is soy corn. Basically, you know,
[2:50] Speaker 3: the combination Cycle three now gets be what we would
[2:55] Speaker 3: say industrial, more added value, more different than ile.
[3:01] Speaker 1: That's Corey Melbe, the agricultural consultant we heard from in
[3:04] Speaker 1: Brazil last time. Anyhow, Bruce and his partners were hoping
[3:09] Speaker 1: Oakland Institute would sign on and lend their stamp of
[3:12] Speaker 1: approval to the project. Instead, the nonprofit brought global attention
[3:17] Speaker 1: to the fact that one guy sat at the center
[3:19] Speaker 1: of all of it. It seemed to be the only
[3:22] Speaker 1: one who would actually benefit, Bruce Restetter. Iowa State University's
[3:27] Speaker 1: involvement had also been brokeered by Bruce. He insisted that
[3:32] Speaker 1: while he wanted the project to be financially successful, he
[3:35] Speaker 1: saw it as largely a philanthropic one, and they.
[3:39] Speaker 4: Sent some initial researchers from Iowa stayed over, you know,
[3:42] Speaker 4: to do soil sampling and things. And he was proposing
[3:45] Speaker 4: that there would be opportunities to do development projects. And
[3:50] Speaker 4: it just seemed to us that this was all in
[3:52] Speaker 4: his interest right, that he was using the public university
[3:55] Speaker 4: to further his private interests. The Oakland Institute was also asking,
[4:00] Speaker 4: you know, if this is a true development project, you know, like,
[4:04] Speaker 4: where's the input of the folks on the ground, What
[4:07] Speaker 4: do they know about this?
[4:08] Speaker 5: When did they know about this?
[4:10] Speaker 4: How have they been in.
[4:12] Speaker 1: That was an important question because Bruce's company and the
[4:15] Speaker 1: Tanzanian government had been describing this land as empty and uninhabited,
[4:21] Speaker 1: but there were one hundred and sixty thousand Burundi refugees
[4:25] Speaker 1: living and farming on it. They'd been there for forty years.
[4:29] Speaker 1: Many members of the community had been born there, they'd
[4:32] Speaker 1: been born in Tanzania, but only the year prior, in
[4:35] Speaker 1: twenty ten, had been afforded citizenship rights. Sort of. Now,
[4:41] Speaker 1: the deal was agree to be evicted and we'll give
[4:44] Speaker 1: you the final papers.
[4:46] Speaker 4: We were in the sustainable agriculture program, and I think
[4:49] Speaker 4: just the social justice implications both on the Iowa side
[4:53] Speaker 4: of abusing this public resource and of course on the
[4:57] Speaker 4: Tanzanian side, thinking about the human rights of the Burundi refugees.
[5:01] Speaker 1: Who were to be displaced.
[5:02] Speaker 4: We were really concerned.
[5:04] Speaker 1: The Tanzanian government's plan was to scatter these people throughout
[5:08] Speaker 1: the country, giving them no choice about where they were
[5:11] Speaker 1: located and only two hundred dollars to start over. Rastatter
[5:17] Speaker 1: and other executives involved with the project said the refugees
[5:20] Speaker 1: weren't their responsibility and they couldn't do anything about the
[5:23] Speaker 1: government's plan. But the students, local organizers and the Oakland
[5:28] Speaker 1: Institute thought that answer wasn't good enough. They campaigned against
[5:33] Speaker 1: the project and went to the media. They even got
[5:36] Speaker 1: Dan rather to cover it.
[5:38] Speaker 2: When we spoke to Agrosoft's business partners in Tanzania, they said,
[5:42] Speaker 2: what happens to the refugees should not be their concern.
[5:47] Speaker 5: What's your response to that?
[5:49] Speaker 1: You know they cannot get away.
[5:50] Speaker 2: In fact, that's actually one of the things I was
[5:52] Speaker 2: also told by mister Rastutter as well as by university.
[5:56] Speaker 2: Now you're hoping to make a lot of money by
[5:59] Speaker 2: moving into an area where somebody already lives. To put
[6:02] Speaker 2: on the entire responsibility and the blame onto the government
[6:08] Speaker 2: is extremely irresponsible, especially when the people who were involved
[6:12] Speaker 2: in it talk about it being a socially responsible investment.
[6:16] Speaker 1: That was Anorata Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute,
[6:20] Speaker 1: talking to Rather in twenty eleven. Had the Tanzania deal
[6:25] Speaker 1: been the only bad press Bruce Rastetter ever got in
[6:28] Speaker 1: his home state, it might have just blown over. But
[6:32] Speaker 1: Iowans were understanding it through the lens of past stories.
[6:36] Speaker 1: Here's former Iowa State student Angie Carter. Again.
[6:39] Speaker 4: A lot of farmers dislike him because he's described as
[6:44] Speaker 4: the person who consolidated the pork industry and then sold
[6:48] Speaker 4: all that to consolidate the ethanol.
[6:50] Speaker 1: Industry and has just been.
[6:52] Speaker 4: Really fueling the agricultural consolidation at the state level, which
[6:57] Speaker 4: has put a lot of farmers out of business.
[7:00] Speaker 1: By roping the state's public university into his business, Bruce
[7:04] Speaker 1: had really become a villain for some Iowans. I'm in
[7:10] Speaker 1: u Western and this is carbon Cowboys, the story of
[7:13] Speaker 1: how the ethanol kingpin of Iowa became the king of
[7:16] Speaker 1: corn in Brazil and what it tells us about the
[7:19] Speaker 1: limits of technology and markets to solve the climate crisis.
[7:24] Speaker 1: This season is a collaboration between Drilled and The Intercept Brazil.
[7:28] Speaker 1: You can get the Portuguese version hosted by Philippe Sabrina
[7:31] Speaker 1: over on the Intercept Brazil's feed. Bruce Rastetter and his
[7:36] Speaker 1: companies and their various pr people have declined our various
[7:40] Speaker 1: interview requests, though they did get on a background called
[7:43] Speaker 1: the Checks and Facts. So we had to talk to
[7:45] Speaker 1: other Iowans after the break a visit with Bruce's neighbors.
[8:00] Speaker 1: When most people think of Iowa, they think of people
[8:03] Speaker 1: like Kathy Carter.
[8:05] Speaker 6: Oh, excuse me, I just had a swallow pop here, And.
[8:08] Speaker 1: For a long time Kathy felt like she was living
[8:10] Speaker 1: the essentil Iowa country life.
[8:13] Speaker 6: I'm a farmer's daughter and a farm girl. My husband's
[8:16] Speaker 6: ideal situation is to be at the end of a
[8:20] Speaker 6: very long lane, surrounded by a bunch of trees with
[8:23] Speaker 6: a hungry bear tight at the end of the driveway,
[8:25] Speaker 6: is what he says. That's how isolated he wants to be.
[8:28] Speaker 6: So this acreach, he planted a bunch of trees around it,
[8:32] Speaker 6: and you know, windbreak and other trees, and this was
[8:36] Speaker 6: his little Paradise.
[8:37] Speaker 1: About twenty years ago, things started to change.
[8:44] Speaker 6: Well, my husband was on an acreage in Hamilton County,
[8:48] Speaker 6: and Hamilton County borders Harden County. O Harden County is
[8:53] Speaker 6: Bruce rested Or's home territory. That's where he was born
[8:57] Speaker 6: and raised and where he has his big estate and
[8:59] Speaker 6: where he has his Summit Egg headquarters. And from our
[9:04] Speaker 6: living room window we could see the Summit Egg Headquarters
[9:07] Speaker 6: east of us, just a mile down the road.
[9:10] Speaker 1: Suddenly there were factory farms in every direction around Kathy
[9:14] Speaker 1: and her husband's home, with thousands of animals confined in
[9:17] Speaker 1: small pens.
[9:19] Speaker 6: Once in a while, in a nice quiet evening, we
[9:22] Speaker 6: could try and open a window and get a little
[9:23] Speaker 6: fresh air. We'd be sitting there watching TV and my
[9:26] Speaker 6: husband would sniff and he'd say, you better go close
[9:31] Speaker 6: the windows because the wind had shifted one tiny little
[9:34] Speaker 6: bit and the odor came in. We didn't dare go
[9:36] Speaker 6: to bed with the windows open because during the night,
[9:38] Speaker 6: you know, we'd get the smell, and once it's in,
[9:41] Speaker 6: it's really hard to get it out. It's just trapped.
[9:44] Speaker 6: I love to hang laundry outside. Well, I'd go out
[9:47] Speaker 6: and I'd stick my wet finger in the wind. You
[9:49] Speaker 6: know the old tricks, See, which was the way the
[9:51] Speaker 6: wind's coming. Yeah, Well, I'd go out and check the wind,
[9:54] Speaker 6: and oh, I can go hang out close today, and
[9:57] Speaker 6: I'd get a load of laundry done, and I'd walk
[9:59] Speaker 6: outside with my basketful of wet clothes and the wind
[10:03] Speaker 6: had shifted. We used to have a motorcycle, and it
[10:08] Speaker 6: got to the point where every direction is no matter
[10:10] Speaker 6: where we went, had to drive down the road through
[10:13] Speaker 6: a cloud of something, and so Way finally sold the
[10:16] Speaker 6: motorcycle because we just never used it. We never went
[10:18] Speaker 6: anywhere with it anymore.
[10:20] Speaker 1: Eventually, Kathy inherited a small plot of land about an
[10:23] Speaker 1: hour north where she'd grown up.
[10:25] Speaker 6: Dad and Mom had sold off the crop ground but
[10:28] Speaker 6: retained what used to be cattle pasture, and there's a
[10:31] Speaker 6: lot of woods at one end, and there's a creek
[10:33] Speaker 6: running through it.
[10:34] Speaker 1: There was no house or any buildings at all on
[10:36] Speaker 1: the property, but Kathy's husband Lou liked to drive up
[10:39] Speaker 1: there and go deer hunting, and after a few years
[10:42] Speaker 1: of driving back and forth, they found a house nearby
[10:45] Speaker 1: and moved there permanently.
[10:47] Speaker 6: And in August of twenty twenty one, I got this
[10:50] Speaker 6: letter from Summit Carbon Solutions saying that they were going
[10:54] Speaker 6: to do this CO two pipeline and it was going
[10:57] Speaker 6: to go across my property west of town, that old
[11:01] Speaker 6: pasture area where Lugo's hunting. That ground. It's not a
[11:04] Speaker 6: big piece of ground, but it's my ground and they're
[11:07] Speaker 6: going to put a CO two line across it.
[11:10] Speaker 1: What Cathy said, she felt like she'd left one part
[11:15] Speaker 1: of the state to escape Bruce's hog farms, only to
[11:19] Speaker 1: have him try to take her land for his carbon
[11:21] Speaker 1: pipeline in another part of the state. For its part,
[11:24] Speaker 1: Summit says its preference is to work out voluntary easements
[11:28] Speaker 1: with landowners, but it's also trying to build over one
[11:31] Speaker 1: thousand miles of pipeline, and it argues that giving too
[11:34] Speaker 1: much power to holdouts would make it impossible for any
[11:38] Speaker 1: big infrastructure project to be built. In July twenty twenty five,
[11:44] Speaker 1: Summit Carbon Solutions brought in a new CEO, Joe Griffin.
[11:49] Speaker 1: Griffin previously ran a natural gas company that was backed
[11:52] Speaker 1: by one of Summit's primary investors, Harold Ham. His first
[11:57] Speaker 1: order of business was repairing the company's relationships with landowners,
[12:02] Speaker 1: especially after both South Dakota and Iowa passed statewide bands
[12:06] Speaker 1: on eminent domain. South Dakota's band was signed by the
[12:10] Speaker 1: governor and is in place. Iowa was was ultimately vetoed
[12:14] Speaker 1: by Governor Kim Reynolds. Pipeline opponents point to her long
[12:19] Speaker 1: standing relationship with Rastetter, the top individual donor to her campaigns,
[12:25] Speaker 1: as a driver of that veto, but Reynolds insisted that
[12:28] Speaker 1: it was poorly written legislation that targeted just one type
[12:32] Speaker 1: of project, carbon capture pipelines. Opponents of some its Midwest
[12:37] Speaker 1: Carbon Express proposed two other versions of the bill in
[12:41] Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. Some at Carbon Solutions points to various
[12:45] Speaker 1: reasons that they got off on the wrong foot with
[12:47] Speaker 1: community members, from the fact that they had to submit
[12:50] Speaker 1: a proposed route as part of the permitting process before
[12:53] Speaker 1: they were even allowed to reach out to landowners, to
[12:56] Speaker 1: the fact that they were a new company just getting
[12:59] Speaker 1: their feet under them. Under Griffin's leadership, they've had at
[13:03] Speaker 1: least a dozen public meetings to try to repair relationships,
[13:06] Speaker 1: and even drafted a community and land ownership partnership program
[13:11] Speaker 1: and a series of commitments. They might have had an
[13:14] Speaker 1: easier time had they not been named Summit and had
[13:18] Speaker 1: rested or not been doing business a particular way in
[13:21] Speaker 1: Iowa for decades. Thanks to his early involvement in confined
[13:26] Speaker 1: hog farms and industrial scale corn and ethanol, rast Utter
[13:30] Speaker 1: is connected with the state's shift from family farming to
[13:33] Speaker 1: industrial agriculture for a lot of Iowans. One neighbor of Bruces,
[13:40] Speaker 1: who asked to remain anonymous and have his voice disguised
[13:43] Speaker 1: for fear of retaliation, described Bruce as more of a
[13:46] Speaker 1: businessman than a farmer.
[13:49] Speaker 7: He has a hunting preserve behind his house. He'll put
[13:52] Speaker 7: up a food plot and then go back and shoot
[13:54] Speaker 7: his record deer. That's really not hunting. If you ask
[13:57] Speaker 7: me his fish feeder, you know on his deck, Well
[14:01] Speaker 7: you go fishing and pull out some really nice pass. Well,
[14:04] Speaker 7: is it fishing if you feed him all the time.
[14:07] Speaker 7: He has a horse stable has these big, black, beauty,
[14:11] Speaker 7: full perk dron horses and he has a semi Summit
[14:14] Speaker 7: farms on it and the picture of a horse and
[14:16] Speaker 7: they go down the state fair. Bruce don't know how
[14:19] Speaker 7: to handle those horses. He has an amish guy to it.
[14:25] Speaker 1: Rest Atter hosts legendary parties in the large barn on
[14:28] Speaker 1: his property, often related to fundraising or campaigning for conservative politicians.
[14:34] Speaker 8: It's a big compound with a big party barn and
[14:37] Speaker 8: a huge house.
[14:39] Speaker 1: That's Jess Missouri again, the Sierra Club organizer you heard
[14:42] Speaker 1: from last episode.
[14:44] Speaker 8: He hosts an annual summer party. And this party is
[14:47] Speaker 8: like a political party, and people like Chris Christy and
[14:50] Speaker 8: Head Cruz, you name it, like all of the political
[14:53] Speaker 8: big wigs from across the country come to his summer party.
[14:56] Speaker 8: And that's where he winds and dines. And we've protested
[14:59] Speaker 8: a few times at his summer parties. But he's been
[15:02] Speaker 8: named in the news here in Iowa. Was the Iowa
[15:05] Speaker 8: political kingmaker. At our Iowa State Fair, one of the
[15:09] Speaker 8: buildings is called Rastetter Hall.
[15:11] Speaker 1: So Bruce was already disliked for his smelly hog farms
[15:15] Speaker 1: and for being the sort of farmer whose jeans are
[15:18] Speaker 1: just a little too clean, and then came the bad
[15:21] Speaker 1: breast for the Tanzania land deal.
[15:23] Speaker 8: So since twenty twelve, since that big land grab attempt
[15:27] Speaker 8: in Africa, he has become a dirty word in Iowa.
[15:30] Speaker 8: I think anyone who remotely followed politics or agriculture, you
[15:35] Speaker 8: say rast Set or you're going to get a response.
[15:39] Speaker 1: After the Tanzania story made global headlines, Bruce laid low
[15:42] Speaker 1: for a bit. But while the Tanzania project had imploded,
[15:51] Speaker 1: Bruce's interest in expanding his ZAG business beyond the US
[15:55] Speaker 1: had been peaked. He wasn't going to just let it
[15:58] Speaker 1: go so easily. Plus he had to have learned a
[16:01] Speaker 1: few key lessons. Make sure you get in business with
[16:04] Speaker 1: people who know the local land setup. Get to know
[16:07] Speaker 1: the people and the place a bit before you commit,
[16:10] Speaker 1: and find local bag partners and managers, not just local spokespeople.
[16:15] Speaker 1: Maybe don't be a pioneer. Go where others have gone before.
[16:23] Speaker 9: You know, eight Am, Cargo, Bungie, all the US companies
[16:25] Speaker 9: have done businesses you know, in Brazil for a long time.
[16:28] Speaker 1: But the idea of going into a foreign market and
[16:31] Speaker 1: modernizing it, that was still very much part of Bruce's
[16:34] Speaker 1: game plan for Brazil. This is Bruce on the Land
[16:37] Speaker 1: Ledger podcast in twenty twenty four.
[16:40] Speaker 9: We believe Brazil was going to raise a significant amount
[16:43] Speaker 9: of second crop corn. At the time, it was smaller
[16:46] Speaker 9: corn crop and twenty eleven and second crop hadn't caught on.
[16:50] Speaker 9: It was sunflowers and cotton this term.
[16:54] Speaker 1: He uses second crop corn. It's how people in the
[16:57] Speaker 1: corn ethanol business talk about sustainability in Brazil. If you
[17:02] Speaker 1: plant corn as the second crop after soybeans, for example,
[17:06] Speaker 1: then on paper, at least it's responsible for fewer environmental impact.
[17:12] Speaker 1: It's something corn ethanol guys need to do to qualify
[17:16] Speaker 1: for the lucrative sustainable aviation fuel market.
[17:20] Speaker 9: But it was clear to me that Mana Grosso would
[17:22] Speaker 9: outpace the US in not only soybean production like they have,
[17:27] Speaker 9: but they will produce more second crop corn in the
[17:30] Speaker 9: future than Minnesota and and soon to be than Iowa.
[17:34] Speaker 9: So we believed it was a good spot to build
[17:36] Speaker 9: a corn ethanol plant. So we built Brazil's first modern
[17:40] Speaker 9: corn ethanol plant.
[17:42] Speaker 1: This time there were no student protests or bad press
[17:45] Speaker 1: to stop them. Meanwhile, back in Iowa, with a steady
[17:49] Speaker 1: supply of cheap Brazilian corn and ethanol, Rastutter said about
[17:53] Speaker 1: expanding his business once again into a new added value product, carbon,
[17:59] Speaker 1: you can.
[18:00] Speaker 3: Almost say carbon questration.
[18:01] Speaker 1: It will be single or Corey was cutting out there
[18:05] Speaker 1: a little bit, but he said you could almost say
[18:08] Speaker 1: carbon sequestration would be cycle. For now, carbon sequestration is
[18:13] Speaker 1: checking a lot of boxes for corn ethanol. Guys, corn
[18:18] Speaker 1: ethanol has too high a carbon footprint to qualify as
[18:21] Speaker 1: sustainable aviation fuel. But if you attach a carbon capture
[18:25] Speaker 1: and storage project to an ethanol refinery, you can remove
[18:29] Speaker 1: that problem and create not just sustainable jet fuel, but
[18:32] Speaker 1: also a whole new revenue stream. That captured carbon can
[18:37] Speaker 1: be sold either as a carbon credit to a company
[18:40] Speaker 1: looking to offset its emissions or to an oil company
[18:44] Speaker 1: looking to inject it underground to help extract more oil.
[18:48] Speaker 1: It's a process called enhanced oil recovery. That's even before
[18:52] Speaker 1: you cash in on the tax brakes for both carbon
[18:55] Speaker 1: capture and sustainable aviation fuel. I was main competitor for
[19:00] Speaker 1: that market is Brazil, but now some it could play
[19:03] Speaker 1: both sides, cutting its costs for ethanol by producing more
[19:07] Speaker 1: of it in Brazil, refining it into sustainable aviation fuel
[19:11] Speaker 1: in the US, and capturing and selling carbon in both countries.
[19:15] Speaker 1: It was a win win. And how could anyone argue
[19:18] Speaker 1: against all that green entrepreneurship.
[19:21] Speaker 3: You got to give Bruce the guy's credit. They there
[19:25] Speaker 3: were all kids. They don't give a shit about any
[19:28] Speaker 3: of this now, But you know, I've got probably here
[19:33] Speaker 3: the three hunters and the liberals created this shit.
[19:39] Speaker 1: Then Bruce's carbon dreams began to turn into a nightmare
[19:44] Speaker 1: back home in Iowa in twenty twenty one, ten years
[19:51] Speaker 1: after he made front page news for a suspicious, supposedly
[19:55] Speaker 1: sustainable development in Tanzania. Maybe rast Utter thought organizers had
[20:00] Speaker 1: forgotten about him in Iowa, or maybe he thought environmentalists
[20:04] Speaker 1: would be thrilled about a big carbon capture project and
[20:07] Speaker 1: no one else would fight him on it. Whatever the case,
[20:10] Speaker 1: rast Utters company seemed wholly unprepared for the backlash against
[20:14] Speaker 1: their carbon pipeline project In the past few years. Even
[20:18] Speaker 1: Rastutter's conservative political allies have been turning on him over it.
[20:26] Speaker 10: Hi, everybody, welcome, Welcome, So I'd like to want you,
[20:31] Speaker 10: and we're going to just get started real quick with
[20:34] Speaker 10: our with our prayer, our father and haven.
[20:37] Speaker 1: In the summer of twenty twenty four, our reporter Molly
[20:40] Speaker 1: Taft took a field trip to Iowa. She went there
[20:42] Speaker 1: to cover what was happening with the Summit pipeline. She'd
[20:46] Speaker 1: head to public meetings, often held at the county fairgrounds,
[20:49] Speaker 1: down at the end of a country road between a
[20:51] Speaker 1: couple of cornfields.
[20:55] Speaker 9: So, yeah, it is packed, I thought the Guthrie County
[21:00] Speaker 9: Fairground event.
[21:01] Speaker 10: Sometime.
[21:03] Speaker 1: Those meetings often started with prayers like this one.
[21:07] Speaker 6: Our hearts are heavy with a burden, the threat a
[21:12] Speaker 6: gift st our rights to the property wheel.
[21:15] Speaker 1: She found a broad spectrum of people at these meetings
[21:18] Speaker 1: who really hated the idea of this pipeline. Dodging cows
[21:21] Speaker 1: down country roads. Mollie would head to the meeting location
[21:25] Speaker 1: expecting to find a small community center and a handful
[21:28] Speaker 1: of people, only to arrive and discover that it was packed.
[21:32] Speaker 1: One was even led by ultra conservative former Iowa Congressman
[21:36] Speaker 1: Steve King.
[21:37] Speaker 3: Thank Car, thanks all of.
[21:39] Speaker 7: You for being here.
[21:40] Speaker 11: A lot of you are here because we're the target
[21:42] Speaker 11: of SUN and it was the target of Larry Fink
[21:46] Speaker 11: and Navigators and Bruce rasted Or.
[21:49] Speaker 1: In summit Jess Missouri this year, club organizer gave presentations
[21:53] Speaker 1: at a lot of them too well.
[21:55] Speaker 8: SMIT, Carbon Solutions and the other carbon pipeline companies in
[21:58] Speaker 8: the country are telling us that this is how we're.
[22:01] Speaker 11: Going to solve climate change.
[22:02] Speaker 3: And whether you believe in climate change.
[22:04] Speaker 1: Or not, that is what Sun's going to Summit has
[22:07] Speaker 1: leaned into the idea of the pipeline as a lifeline
[22:10] Speaker 1: to the industry, and Molly talked to some ethanol folks
[22:13] Speaker 1: who agreed.
[22:15] Speaker 12: This opportunity of sustainable aviation fuel.
[22:18] Speaker 7: Is mind boggling.
[22:20] Speaker 1: Kelly Newan Hughes is a farmer in northwest Iowa and
[22:24] Speaker 1: a twenty year veteran of the ethanol industry.
[22:27] Speaker 12: It's a huge opportunity, but we won't qualify unless we
[22:31] Speaker 12: lower our carbon and sans city scores.
[22:33] Speaker 1: The sustainable aviation fuel market is expected to grow from
[22:37] Speaker 1: under three billion dollars in twenty twenty five to more
[22:40] Speaker 1: than three hundred and fifty billion by twenty thirty five,
[22:45] Speaker 1: and all corn ethanol companies need to do to be
[22:48] Speaker 1: part of that is install carbon capture on their facilities.
[22:52] Speaker 1: Kelly said, despite all those packed public meetings and people
[22:55] Speaker 1: opposing the pipeline where he's based, just as many or
[22:59] Speaker 1: more have quietly sold their land to summit for it.
[23:03] Speaker 12: In our area, roughly eighty percent of landowners have signed
[23:07] Speaker 12: ease months. And the situation is we have the loud
[23:11] Speaker 12: minority and the silent majority because people that are supportive
[23:16] Speaker 12: of it from the most part don't want to be
[23:19] Speaker 12: tackled or you know, don't have to want to deal with.
[23:25] Speaker 5: Negative people.
[23:27] Speaker 1: Kelly was opposed though, to the idea of imported Brazilian
[23:30] Speaker 1: ethanol being turned into sustainable aviation fuel in the US.
[23:35] Speaker 1: He views it as a threat to American producers like him.
[23:38] Speaker 12: The sustainable aviation fuel plant that's in Georgia right now,
[23:42] Speaker 12: it's producing sustainable aviation fuel with Brazilian ethanol. They're important
[23:47] Speaker 12: and that shouldn't be happening.
[23:54] Speaker 1: In addition to Brazilian ethanol being cheaper, some of it
[23:57] Speaker 1: has been working to make it lower carbon. I have
[24:00] Speaker 1: a producers can't compete with that. Corey Melby talk to
[24:04] Speaker 1: me about this too.
[24:05] Speaker 3: It's all the same shit, right because of private the
[24:09] Speaker 3: Brazilians you can get at a premium brush just overall
[24:14] Speaker 3: to the stage.
[24:16] Speaker 1: Meanwhile, some Iowans aren't worried about the long term environmental
[24:19] Speaker 1: impact of the pipeline or how it would affect the
[24:22] Speaker 1: ethanol industry. They're worried about its immediate health impacts. If
[24:27] Speaker 1: these pipelines and storage facilities are going to be built
[24:30] Speaker 1: around their homes, what if there's a leak. The example
[24:34] Speaker 1: everyone always points to on this is the town of Starsha, Mississippi,
[24:39] Speaker 1: where a small leek caused what sounded like a zombie apocalypse.
[24:43] Speaker 8: The town of Satarsha was guessed over.
[24:47] Speaker 3: Forty people went to the hospital.
[24:49] Speaker 4: People were passing out, going unconscious, foaming at the mouth,
[24:53] Speaker 4: and to.
[24:53] Speaker 8: This day they still have major.
[24:54] Speaker 1: Health impacts, memory loss, reading issues, and other neurological problems.
[25:00] Speaker 1: But the biggest concern for folks in Iowa the one
[25:03] Speaker 1: we heard about over and over again, it was land.
[25:07] Speaker 8: Summon egg and it's still in like the top ten
[25:10] Speaker 8: landowners of in Iowa.
[25:13] Speaker 12: He's trying to put this carbon pipeline through the state
[25:17] Speaker 12: take in other people's land by force, so basically they.
[25:21] Speaker 3: Own your land. They can do whatever they want with it.
[25:24] Speaker 1: Someone needs a certain amount of land to build the
[25:26] Speaker 1: pipeline along its preferred route, and if it can't buy
[25:29] Speaker 1: that land, it will resort to taking it with eminent domain.
[25:33] Speaker 1: Back at the public meeting in Iowa, our reporter Molly
[25:36] Speaker 1: caught up with Steve Kinkel, a former county supervisor who
[25:40] Speaker 1: unexpectedly found himself in the middle of this controversy.
[25:44] Speaker 11: And I actually brought it up to one of the
[25:47] Speaker 11: i Utility board members was moderating the meeting for summit
[25:51] Speaker 11: and I asked him. I said, so does a county
[25:54] Speaker 11: have any say in this? When are you going to
[25:56] Speaker 11: sit down and talk to us? Do we have a
[25:58] Speaker 11: say where it might go or whatever? And all I
[26:01] Speaker 11: got was a shrug of.
[26:02] Speaker 3: The shoulder, literally.
[26:04] Speaker 11: Literally in the meeting.
[26:06] Speaker 1: At the meeting, when Steve Kinkel and his fellow supervisors
[26:10] Speaker 1: passed an ordinance requiring that the pipeline be set back
[26:13] Speaker 1: from homes and schools in the county, somemit sued them
[26:17] Speaker 1: personally in their roles as supervisors, along with the county.
[26:22] Speaker 11: We revised our existing ordinance, you know, to put in
[26:24] Speaker 11: any other setbacks I talked about. We had three public hearings.
[26:28] Speaker 11: We could have waived two, but we made sure we
[26:30] Speaker 11: had three. Summit was at the meetings.
[26:34] Speaker 1: The ordinance restricted where carbon pipelines could be cited in
[26:37] Speaker 1: the county, but according to Kenkel, SMIT didn't file any
[26:40] Speaker 1: official comments about it, either in writing or at public
[26:43] Speaker 1: meetings held before it passed.
[26:46] Speaker 11: We had one hundred and some people either spoke for
[26:49] Speaker 11: the ordinance or had written comments favor the ordinance. We
[26:54] Speaker 11: had zero people submit anything against ordinance, including Summit, and
[26:58] Speaker 11: they were there, and I felt good after we passed
[27:01] Speaker 11: it because they had no questions, no comments, nothing about
[27:06] Speaker 11: the ordinance. And four days later they sue us and
[27:08] Speaker 11: sue us personally too. You're sued personal besides the county. Yep,
[27:13] Speaker 11: what's three supervisors?
[27:14] Speaker 6: So this is actually another one of my questions, what
[27:16] Speaker 6: on earth are we possibly serving for.
[27:18] Speaker 11: For suing us to stop us from enforcing the ordinances? Yep,
[27:25] Speaker 11: they're not serving us for damages. I didn't yet anyway.
[27:32] Speaker 1: At the same time, Bruce and his partner's carbon pipeline
[27:35] Speaker 1: was falling farther and farther behind schedule in Iowa. They
[27:39] Speaker 1: were selling the Brazilian government and local officials in Mato
[27:42] Speaker 1: Rosso on the many benefits of carbon capture. And it
[27:47] Speaker 1: worked and we've got pleasure.
[27:50] Speaker 8: Daniel Lopez from FS we'll talk to us about his
[27:53] Speaker 8: project is developing in.
[27:55] Speaker 1: In November five, I was at the annual UN Climate Summit,
[27:59] Speaker 1: the COP in Brazil, an event that was positively overflowing
[28:04] Speaker 1: with booths and talks and events about the marvels of
[28:08] Speaker 1: carbon capture. At one of them, Daniel Lopez, executive vice
[28:12] Speaker 1: president of Sustainability and New Business for Summits, Brazilian company
[28:17] Speaker 1: FS Fueling Sustainability presented a plan that sounded a whole
[28:20] Speaker 1: lot like Summits Iowa carbon capture plans, but this time
[28:24] Speaker 1: in Brazil. In fact, Lopez even called Mato Grosso where
[28:27] Speaker 1: the project is being built.
[28:29] Speaker 3: In Brazilian midwest.
[28:31] Speaker 1: That's right, the Brazilian midwest. And this time they'd learned
[28:35] Speaker 1: their lesson FS fueling sustainability would avoid having to take
[28:40] Speaker 1: farmers land for their carbon capture project.
[28:43] Speaker 13: This is a project that will be an ejected carbet
[28:47] Speaker 13: fo one hundred and twenty thousand tons per year, and
[28:50] Speaker 13: it's located inside with our four.
[28:53] Speaker 11: Uncle and all facilities or Brolian for pipelines, no impact
[28:57] Speaker 11: on farmers nearby and everything else.
[29:00] Speaker 1: According to Lopez, it wouldn't just create revenue for corn
[29:03] Speaker 1: ethanol producers, it would change the world.
[29:06] Speaker 12: Which genervating the first carbon negative at them of the world, which.
[29:12] Speaker 3: A protagonist on energy transition.
[29:15] Speaker 1: It helps that the FS carbon capture effort is funded
[29:18] Speaker 1: by the Brazilian government.
[29:19] Speaker 5: Which means we can move ahead and help with the government.
[29:25] Speaker 1: It's a little hard to hear him there, but he
[29:27] Speaker 1: says we can move ahead and help with the regulation
[29:30] Speaker 1: with the Brazilian government. Companies helping with regulation, It's not
[29:35] Speaker 1: historically resulted in great climate solutions. Next time, How Bruce
[29:41] Speaker 1: and the guys managed to take over the Brazilian Midwest
[29:45] Speaker 1: in just a decade. We reached out to Bruce Rastetter,
[29:53] Speaker 1: Harold Ham, the Frowns Brothers, Miguel vas Ribero, and all
[29:57] Speaker 1: Summit companies and Brazilian government agencies mentioned in this season
[30:01] Speaker 1: for comment and have incorporated any responses we received throughout
[30:05] Speaker 1: the season.
[30:11] Speaker 13: Boys Cowboys of the Sejadu is a collaboration between Drild
[30:15] Speaker 13: and The Intercept to Brazil.
[30:16] Speaker 1: The show was reported and written by Philippe Sabrina and
[30:20] Speaker 1: me Amy Westerveld.
[30:22] Speaker 13: Our editors are Audrey Queen in the US and Alisi
[30:25] Speaker 13: DeSouza in Brazil.
[30:27] Speaker 1: Our senior producer and sound designer is Martin saltz Ostwek.
[30:31] Speaker 1: Audio production and sound design in Brazil by Marcia Heberdoza
[30:35] Speaker 1: and Philippie MoOx. Additional reporting by Molly Taft.
[30:41] Speaker 5: Theme song and original music by Eric Terrena.
[30:44] Speaker 1: Additional music by Martin saltz Ostwick. Our engineer is Peter Duff.
[30:49] Speaker 5: Artwork for DRILLD is by Matt Fleming.
[30:51] Speaker 1: US fact checking from Naomi.
[30:53] Speaker 5: Bar Brazil fact checking by Studio Frontea.
[30:57] Speaker 1: Our First Amendment Attorney is James Wheaton with the First
[31:00] Speaker 1: Amendment Project. We are also proud members of Reporter Shield.
[31:04] Speaker 1: Big thanks also to Andrew Fishman, president of The Intercept Brazil.
[31:09] Speaker 5: DRILLD is distributed by Bushkin Industries.
[31:13] Speaker 1: Huge thanks to the team there, including Greta Cohen, Peric Sandler,
[31:17] Speaker 1: Grace Ross, Morgan Ratner, Owen Miller, Kira Posey, Jordan McMillan,
[31:23] Speaker 1: Brian Schreberneck and Jake Flanagan. To hear the Portuguese version
[31:27] Speaker 1: of this series, head over to the Intercept Brazil's site,
[31:31] Speaker 1: or search for The Intercept Brazil's podcast feed wherever you
[31:35] Speaker 1: listen to podcasts.

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