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A new bill proposal is in the Iowa legislature and aimed at helping Iowa biochemicals.

The Renewable Biochemical Tax Credit is geared to incentivize building new production facilities that use co-products from renewable fuel production, which would extract chemicals like glycerin from plants and turn them into a variety of products like cleaning detergent.

It is not aimed at food or fuel production but credits five cents per pound of renewable chemicals produced in a given year, giving a total of a million dollars a year for companies less than five years old, half a million for those older. A business can only use this five times and the proposal lasts 10 years.

It's placed under the Iowa Economic Development Authority's business tax credit cap and proponents say it's not an increase to current business tax credits.

Iowa's Cultivation Corridor and the Iowa Biotechnology Association partnered late last year to develop a white paper from Iowa State University researchers, which found Iowa could be the best positioned to get to the next frontier of bioprocessing.

The Iowa Biotechnology Association says the tax credit would add more value to agriculture.

Executive Director Joe Hrdlicka says, "It capitalizes on two great resources that we already have in Iowa. The abundant supply of corn affects the feedstocks that are eligible for the tax credit, that make up the materials involved in the tax credit and then we have a great network of bioprocessing facilities throughout the state because of our leadership position in biofuels production."

The Iowa Biotechnology Association tried to get this tax credit last year, it passed the House but got caught up in different budget priorities. This year they've made adjustments to some of the budget concerns.