The president recently signed the JOBS Tax Bill, which is great news for ethanol and biodiesel supporters.

The bill includes the Volumetric Ethanol Excise Tax Credit (VEETC), which extends the current blenders tax credit until 2010 and restructures those tax incentives to eliminate the impact on the Highway Trust Fund.

The bill also allows small ethanol producing cooperatives to make use of the existing tax credit for plants that produce less than 30 million gallons a year.

On the biodiesel front, the bill includes a federal biodiesel tax incentive. The biodiesel tax incentive, which is structured as a federal excise tax credit, amounts to a penny per percentage point of biodiesel blended with petroleum diesel.

Based on USDA baseline estimates for future soybean production, over a five-year time period the biodiesel tax provisions could add almost $1 billion directly to the bottom line of U.S. farm income.

The biodiesel tax incentive could increase the market price per bushel by 17¢ for soybean farmers due to increased demand for soybean oil.