But then he flip-flopped in order to obtain electoral support from the Corn Belt.
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Flooding in the U.S. corn belt, the world's largest corn-producing region, has contributed to the week's price run-up.
For current commercial processes, the highest concentration of biomass is in the Corn Belt states of Iowa, Nebraska and Minnesota.
There are an estimated five million flex-fuel vehicles but only about 500 E85 fuel stations and most of those in the corn belt.
Increasing feed costs, in combination with withering grasslands in the Great Plains and Corn Belt regions, are prompting ranchers to downsize beef and dairy herds.
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Many Corn Belt regions where distillers are sited, particularly in the Midwest and the Great Plains, have already begun to experience significant water supply problems.
The eastern part of the Corn Belt is especially hard-hit.
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The Cornell team said the risks to monarchs could be heightened because the butterflies migrate northward through the U.S. Corn Belt from their winter homes in Mexico during the spring months, when corn pollen is thickest.
More than half of all U.S. counties have been designated disaster zones, the Department of Agriculture reported, blaming excessive heat and a devastating drought that's spread across the Corn Belt and contributed to rising food prices.
Demand for corn is such that more land is also being ploughed up in drier regions of the Great Plains states to the west of the corn belt, where irrigation in required, increasing water demand further.
Every year at the end of July several thousand people descend on Iowa to ride their bikes across this corn-belt state.
But this year the primary corn (maize) and soyabean agricultural belt has been hard hit by the drought of the past three months: crops, pastures and rangeland have deteriorated at a rate rarely seen in the past 20 years.
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