http://seekingalpha.com/article/170943-a...

And as we said during our last call, we did see overall operating conditions in the quarter improving. Declines in demand for food, feed and fuel seem to be bottoming.

Looking at the Crop, this fall's US soybean harvest is underway, and even though this harvest is late it will improve the globally tight soybean supply that resulted from the smaller soybean harvest in South America. The USDA's October report showed that farmers planted 77.5 million acres of soybeans, up from 75.7 million acres last year.
The USDA is projecting yields of 42.4 bushels an acre, and a 3.25 billion bushel crop which would ease the tight soybean supply situation. South American soybean planting is going well as farmers have had had good planting conditions. The USDA is projecting a 123.6 million metric ton soybean crop for South America, up from the 95.4 million metric tons in '08, '09. Again, this large crop would provide a sufficient supply for all needs.
Looking at the corn crop, the USDA October report showed that farmers had planted 86.4 million acres of corn in 2009, up slightly from the 86 million acres in 2008. And the USDA is projecting a record yield of 164.2 bushels an acre, resulting in a projected 13 billion bushel crop, up from 12.1 billion bushels last year. This would provide an ample supply of corn to meet all needs including the corn needed to meet the higher 2010 RFS requirements.
If we look at current market conditions, ethanol spot prices are currently close to unleaded gasoline levels, and with the $0.45 per gallon tax credit the blender currently has an incentive to buy additional gallons. In the quarter ethanol pricing was such that the blenders had an incentive of range of $0.30 to $0.60 a gallon to blend additional ethanol gallons. So clearly with this attractive ethanol pricing we are seeing some discretionary blending above the levels required by the RFF.
Industry current has positive profit margins in ethanol.