Corn feed, food, fuel outlook bright

BLOOMINGTON, Ill. — U.S. corn exports continued at record pace through the end of 2025, while the future global demand potential for ethanol remains bright.

Collin Watters, IL Corn director of exports and logistics, and Mark Wilson, west-central Illinois farmer near Toulon and U.S. Grains and BioProducts Council chairman, gave their outlooks on trade, transportation and global grain markets at the recent Farm Assets Conference.

When asked what the best option was for future corn demand outside the United States, Wilson said “ethanol,” with out hesitation.

He recalled his recent conversation with Doug Bergen, POET vice president of corporate affairs.

“He’s more excited now that he’s ever been with the potential for ethanol,” Wilson said at the University of Illinois Extension-hosted conference.

Much of the excitement centers around other countries adopting ethanol policies of 10% or 15% mixes in their fuel.

“India is going to 20% ethanol in their fuels. The big one, nobody’s talking about, which could be huge, is maritime fuels. Maris, which is the No. 2 shipping company in the world, uses 6 billion gallons of fuel a year. They’re doing a test right now with an engine that will do half methanol, half ethanol,” Wilson said.

“There’s a lot of talk that they want to get out of this bunker crude, which is dirty, black, smokey fuel. That could be a huge market, because that’s No. 2.”

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration data, fuel ethanol exports to India reached 3.539 million barrels between January and September of 2025, averaging nearly 400,000 barrels monthly.

“If India adopts ethanol for cooking fuel, that’s another area. Right now they’re using dung cakes, sticks and coal to cook with in a lot of the villages. We’ve done studies on it, and if 1% of the people in India adopt clean-burning ethanol cook stoves, that’s 40 million gallons of ethanol right there. If we can get 10%, that’s 400 million gallons,” Wilson said.

Japan is also a large a growing market for ethanol demand.

“They’re going to E10 with their gasoline, and when they get to E10, which they say will be by 2030, that’s a 1 billion gallon market. Right now we’re shipping 100 million gallons over there. That’s a potential billion gallon market. And they will probably source 85% of that ethanol from the U.S., because they don’t want to put all their eggs in one basket,” Wilson said.

“Japan also has a goal of 10% sustainable aviation fuel by 2030, and I think everybody knows they’re not going to be able to make that. That’s just too big of a jump, but they are on a path to get that done and to work through that.

“Japan is pushing hard on this, and they’re pushing that they think that alcohol-to-jet fuel is the way to go. They are seriously looking at building plants. Carbon sequestration is huge with them, because they’re all about carbon and getting that score as low as possible. And if they can get the carbon sequestration that makes our ethanol way better to get into that fuel.”

Export Records

In the December domestic supply and demand report, the U.S. Department of Agriculture increased corn exports to a record 3.2 billion bushels, a 125 million bushel increase over the previous month and 342 million above the 2024-2025 estimate.

“We’re at record levels on corn exports. We’re already above last year’s. Mexico’s just been huge. They’re just continuing to increase their production, and that’s going up every year,” Wilson said.

“I know there’s talk about, whether they hate Trump, love Trump, doesn’t matter, there’s 35 countries that we have agreements, frameworks, executive orders, whatever, done with, and in the past, when we did trade agreements, it took two to seven years to get a trade agreement. These have been done in two to five months.

“The only problem is these are executive orders, and anybody can come in as president and change them, Trump himself can change them, but right now we’re seeing a lot of excitement out there. This is more excitement than we’ve had in decades to trade, to getting out there and making deals, making things happen, and we’re seeing that.”

Aviation Fuel

The 106-billion-gallon global and 21-billion-gallon domestic commercial jet fuel market is projected to grow to over 230 billion gallons by 2050.

Cost-competitive, environmentally sustainable aviation fuels are recognized as a critical part of decoupling carbon growth from market growth, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

As an alternative to petroleum jet fuel, SAF can be produced from agricultural and waste feedstocks and blended with petroleum jet fuel.

Watters believes using ethanol in a mix for jet fuel is five to 10 years down the road.

“The technology exists. It’s not just a theoretical thing, but it hasn’t been really commercialized yet,” he said.

“I believe a plant in Georgia has restarted, but that’s more or less a demonstration facility, and I think their max is like 10 million gallons or something like that.

“Most of the SAF that’s available in the market today is derived from oils — so, whether it’s beef tallow or used cooking oil, soybean oil, palm oil, whatever. I suspect that will increase a little bit, that there’s a limit. We do have a limit on how much vegetable oil is available in the world right now.

“That’s why there’s a lot of interest in ethanol to jet fuel. I’m optimistic, but I think that’s probably a five- to 10-year timeline, and that’s maybe a little bit optimistic about it I suppose. I think it’ll come, but I don’t think it’s going to be the panacea that I think some people have maybe made it out to be.”

“I think the price of it is the big thing. It’s about three times the cost of regular air fuel by the time they go through everything. I think that is a hindering point. Without some type of support by governance or something to get that through, it’s going to be a little harder.”

SAF Criteria

“Carbon intensity” is a key part of the SAF picture.

“For it to be considered sustainable aviation fuel right now, at least under the international kind of guidelines, is it has to meet at least a 50% reduction in carbon intensity,” Watters said.

“That’s something that’s really, really important, kind of this foundational issue, is that in order for ethanol-to-jet to become a reality, the process breaking the molecule, rebuilding and all of that adds carbon intensity. So, you’re beginning ethanol feed stock has to be at a low enough carbon intensity that it can be manipulated and built into SAF to reach that 50% target at least.

“So, as farmers, we’re going to be talking about carbon intensity more and more and more. This is going to become a part of the vocabulary. I don’t know how this is all going to play out, if there will be some kind of incentives for practice changes or anything else.

“I can foresee a future where commodities are potentially marketed with certifications of what your carbon intensity is. This is going to be getting more and more complicated, I think, as time goes on.”