It was standing room only at the Town Hall Meeting featuring U.S. Senator John Thune at the 2009 South Dakota State Fair in Huron, S.D. last week. The senator was welcomed to a standing ovation after he was introduced, and from there, he presented a powerpoint detailing spending and deficit projections. However, it was the question-and-answer segment of the town hall meeting that drew the most interest.
Energy was the major topic of discussion at the forum, with many asking Senator Thune about the Renewable Electricity Standard (RES). Thune said he was open to supporting the RES, but he would not vote in favor of a bill that included either cap-and-trade pollution regulations or a climate-change proposal, as he believes they would raise energy costs for South Dakotans. So, what’s your take on the Renewable Electricity Standard? Has it been discussed at your town hall meetings? What’s your take?
Gen. Wesley Clark, 
and 
This soybean grower from Missouri doesn’t plant corn with the machine he’s standing next too. No way. But he does power it with a biodiesel blend and compete in tractor pulls across the United States. He’s Dennis Shramek and one of the competitors in this weekend’s NTPA Midwest Extreme Truck and Tractor Pull. Thank you to the 
Calling all communications professionals. What is one of the most difficult challenges we face? Developing campaigns that will garnering consumer support and product adoption. An example of just how difficult this can be is the corn-ethanol industry. Consumer support has been dwindling for months and this has in part, been driving by media hostility and biased reporting.
I spoke with Paul Willems, BP Energy Biosciences Institute, one of our speakers at the Farm Foundation Transition To A Bio Economy Conference. I had met him previously at an earlier conference in the series.
Biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel weren’t the only energy alternatives on the program at the Farm Foundation Transition To A Bio Economy Conference. We also had a presentation on wind energy from Mark Willers, Minwind Energy.
The legislative guru for the 
I think Joel Velasco, Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association, had the quote of the day here at the Farm Foundation Transition To A Bio Economy Conference.
Seth Meyer is with the Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute (FAPRI). He’s also a speaker here at the Farm Foundation’s Transition To A Bio Economy Conference.
We know that OPEC has had a monopoly control over the price of oil on the world market and we hope that the increase of more environmentally friendly biofuels will force that to change. However, David Zilberman, University of California, Berkeley, has created a model to measure how much impact we’re having.
Speaking on behalf of the European Commission To The United States here at the Transition To A Bio Economy Conference was Laurent Javaudin. Laurent sent me a message about coming to the conference via 
Mary Thompson, Farm Foundation, took my photo yesterday as I was doing some concluding work for the day here at their Transition To A Bio Economy Conference: Global Trade & Policy Issues.
Biofuels production in Canada will impact meat trading patterns according to research by Al Mussell, George Morris Centre, University of Guelph. He says that the increase in biofuels production will turn the country into an importer of grains instead of an exporter. Al was one of the speakers at the Transition To A Bio Economy Conference.
A very interesting presentation at our Farm Foundation Global Trade and Policy Issues conference had to do with the impact on poverty. Tom Hertel, Purdue University, was our presenter.
Former Texas Congressman Charles Stenholm was the moderator for our second session here at the Farm Foundation Global Trade & Policy Issues conference. I don’t think you’ll find anyone more knowledgeable about the policy side of this discussion.
Providing us with a “Technical Global Biofuels Analysis” here at the Farm Foundation Global Trade & Policy Issues conference was Thomas Alfstad, Brookhaven National Laboratory. 
Michael Schaal is with the Energy Information Administration which is part of the U. S. Dept. of Energy. He spoke early on the program at the Farm Foundation conference about the global outlook for energy. 
Wally Tyner is an energy economist with the Dept. of Agricultural Economics at Purdue University. He’s one of the first speakers on the Farm Foundation, 
We’ve got Ag Day, Earth Day and now Solar Day. I hope we have a sunny one here in mid MO.
From “Darling to Devil” in the blink of an eye – that’s what happened to the biofuels industry in the past year or so – but better communications on the part of the industry could have helped with the damage control and could still help repair some of the damage done. What’s more, the damage done to biofuels could also happen to other alternative energy products like wind, solar, geothermal, and hydrogen unless communicators implement three important lessons learned from the attack on biofuels. They will be presented by experts in the field at the upcoming