India approves another 2.8M tons of rice for ethanol feedstock

In India, the Hindu Business Line newspaper reports the government has approved the use of another 2.8 million metric tons of rice for use as ethanol feedstock on top of the 2.4 million tons approved earlier in the season. The move comes on the back of lower sugarcane production for ethanol while the government is seeking to move beyond the 20% ethanol blending mandate that it set for this year. Although rice was made available for ethanol feedstock previously, producers have only sourced less than a million tons.