Just before Thanksgiving, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) surprised everyone in the agriculture industry when it released its final rules for biofuel mandates for 2017. The biggest shock was the increase in the biomass-based fuel volume requirements, but the ethanol number had its positives as well.

The "nested" volume for all renewable fuels was set at 19.28 billion gallons, significantly higher than the EPA’s May proposal of 18.8...