Top 3 Takeaways – Bloomberg Farm, Food and Fuels Summit 2026, Kansas City
Number 3) Confounding Complexity
This conference, as the name implies, takes on the complexities of the farm, food, and fuels industries by covering the crude oil, corn oil, and chicken feed businesses, all at one event.
Participants can choose among parallel breakout sessions and quickly learn about each industry, with its own deep knowledge base contaning hundreds of tables, charts and acronyms. Bloomberg provides access to top experts and decision makers covering a wide menu of well-chosen topics in each industry.
Participants quickly appreciate that, when you throw in politics and legalisms like SRE’s (that stands for Sustainable Revenue for Expensive lawyers, OOPS! I mean Small Refiner Exemptions), this integrated industry, when seen it all its glory, is hopelessly complex.
Number 2) Ethanol Emergence
In recent years, ethanol has been overshadowed by other bio feedstocks, especially soybean oil and used cooking oil, in intense competition for industry attention. At This year’s Bloomberg conference, I saw renewed focus on ethanol, especially a resurgent optimism about ethanol’s growing use in the U.S. gasoline pool.
But despite the optimism, no one (to my knowledge and recollection) uttered the word octane. This is a blind spot that deserves more attention as probably the single most critical factor in the fuel ethanol equation.
Number 1) Eco-diesel Exuberance
The bio-based diesel industry has been in a somber mood since 2024 but is now beaming with bullishness, given the increased bio-based diesel mandate levels announced on Friday March 27, 2026, which greatly increase demand for eco-friendly diesel fuels.
This optimism is reflected in current renewable diesel margins and company stock prices.
Is the exuberance rational? I see a blind spot there as well, which is, the current combination of high industry margins with simultaneously high D4 Renewable Identification Number (RIN) prices is not sustainable.
Each industry’s experts focus on their field of knowledge and how it links into the complex biofuels machine. With all its interconnected parts, there is no way for any one expert to reliably forecast how the interlinked prices, production rates, parameters, and politics settle out in coming years.
But some critical trends are foreseeable based purely on fundamental economic theory. Two of those, I believe, are these:
Ethanol’s high octane value, in the octane-constrained U.S., will power its increased use in gasoline
The current combination of soaring industry gross margins and soaring D4 Renewable Identification Number prices is not sustainable
On April 20, 2026, Hoekstra Trading will release the 2nd quarterly issue of the “Hoekstra RIN Price Outlook”. Why not have a look under the hood?
