Partnerships Help Push, Pull and Drive Soy Biodiesel Availability, Use

Soy Checkoff Efforts Target Various Groups of Diesel Users

From powering your tractor to your diesel-powered trucks, soy biodiesel can meet your fuel needs. To prove it to you, the soy checkoff invests in several projects designed to promote biodiesel’s benefits as a high-quality fuel that can be made from U.S. soybean oil. The soy checkoff partners with various organizations to increase biodiesel availability and use among farmers, truckers and consumers, including these five:

1. Clean Cities – This program pushes the use of biodiesel and Bioheat®, a biodiesel-based alternative to traditional home heating oil, in urban and suburban areas. This year, the checkoff will reimburse nine Clean Cities chapters for projects that improve the availability and use of these renewable energy sources. Click here for a full list of participating Clean Cities coalitions.
2. National Tractor Pullers Association (NTPA) – Tractor pulling represents perhaps the best way to show farmers and other diesel users that biodiesel can stand up to the toughest tests. And, again this year, tractors in the Light Pro Stock class will run on biodiesel. Click here to see if the Powered by Biodiesel Light Pro Stock class will hook at a pull near you.
3. National Truck Driving Championships (NTDC) – A new checkoff partnership this year, the NTDC annually draws tens of thousands of trucking industry professionals. This competition will determine the National Grand Champion professional truck driver. And the soy checkoff will be there to show how biodiesel can play a bigger role in the U.S. trucking industry’s future.
4. State, county and regional fairs – The checkoff will reimburse 13 different fairs around the country for using biodiesel and other biobased products. Some of the uses of soy products include biodiesel in vehicles and generators, paint, cleaning products and dust suppressant for gravel roads and lots. For a list of participating fairs, click here.
5. National Farm Machinery Show – The five pulling sessions held every February in conjunction with the largest indoor farm show in the United States attract a total of about 75,000 spectators each year. Included among them are many diesel users. Regular attendees have grown accustomed to receiving soy biodiesel rally towels or earplugs as they enter Freedom Hall in Louisville.

Soy biodiesel is the first and only commercial-scale fuel produced across the United States to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) definition as an Advanced Biofuel. This means that the EPA has determined that it reduces greenhouse gas emissions by more than 50 percent when compared with petroleum diesel.