Sept. 23, 2021

This paid piece is sponsored by POET.

Steve Sinning of Lennox comes from a long line of farmers.

His father was a farmer. His grandfather was a farmer. Even his great-grandfather was a farmer.

“I’ve been farming since the mid-’70s,” Sinning said. “But it’s really been all my life. I grew up on a farm — the same farm I’m on today. Dad grew up here too. I’m a fourth-generation farmer, and my son will be the fifth.”

For decades, Sinning’s family has played a vital role in putting food on America’s table. But today, they’re helping meet America’s energy needs too.

“Almost all my corn these days goes to the POET bioprocessing plant,” Sinning said. “We need to do everything we can to save our climate and promote agriculture, and the best way to do that is through bioethanol.”

Bioethanol is a biofuel — a clean-burning, renewable alternative to fossil fuel — and its benefits are tremendous. Sinning said being able to pump more gallons of affordable, higher-octane fuel made from American-grown corn is a benefit that can’t be beat. But what many people don’t realize is that the environmental benefits of biofuels extend far beyond the pump.

“We need to do everything we can to save our climate and promote agriculture, and the best way to do that is through bioethanol,” he said.

That’s the message behind a short documentary-style film produced for POET by BBC StoryWorks, the commercial content division of BBC Global News, and presented by the International Council of Biotechnology Associations as part of its Nature’s Building Blocks series. Sinning is featured in the film, along with Bill Gibbons, the associate dean for research at South Dakota State University’s College of Agriculture, and Jeff Broin, founder and CEO of POET.

The Nature’s Building Blocks series explores the ways in which biotechnology is helping to heal, fuel and feed the world and promotes public understanding of the continued innovation in the human health, agriculture, industrial and environmental sectors while examining the role of biotechnology in solving some of the world’s greatest environmental and health challenges.

“The short, documentary-style commercial films for Nature’s Building Blocks are solutions-focused,” said Gemma Jennings, head of global partnerships for Programme Partnerships BBC StoryWorks. “It starts by contextualizing the problem or need for a solution before exploring how that solution works and who could benefit. Within this storytelling approach, it’s important that the challenges and limitations are presented and the scale of the solution considered. At the center of each film is an interesting human story that would be engaging to audiences and shine a light on new technologies.”

Biofuels, POET’s film explains, are a real catalyst for sustainable agriculture, and the biofuels industry is also an outlet through which agriculture is helping to solve global problems like climate change. Simply put, POET’s philosophy is that everything you can get from a barrel of oil you can get from a bushel of corn — it’s simply a matter of biotechnology and economics.

Bioethanol production is very sustainable. It’s about working in sync with the system, not against it — and the potential is virtually untapped.

“We’re making as much as we can out of what nature provides. Mother Nature has things figured out a lot better than we do,” Gibbons said. “We can go in there and tinker, and we can screw things up. But Mother Nature had it figured out all along. It’s better to work with nature than to force our way of thinking onto nature.”

Looking ahead, there’s no question that society will be able to replace everything it gets from fossil fuels or hydrocarbons with products from the surface of the Earth, Broin said. And bioethanol is the best place to start.

“The great thing about bioethanol is it’s available today, and it’s affordable. It’s certainly a solution for every car that’s on the road,” Broin said. “While others are working on solutions to fight climate change, this is one that we use today that everyone can afford.”

For farmers like Sinning, being a part of that is something to be proud of.

“Ethanol is a renewable energy that’s tied together with agriculture and corn and good for our carbon footprint and good for the climate,” he said. “It’s important for all of us.”

How to watch

POET’s short film in the Nature’s Building Blocks series was launched as part of BIO Digital 2021, the world’s largest gathering of the biotechnology community. All films are available to watch here: naturesbuildingblocksseries.com.