With all the buzz about energy and fuel costs small and limited resource farmers as well as any producers might be interested in USDA’s “Energy In Agriculture, Managing The Risk” conference in Kansas City, MO on June 27-28. You can register online for $90 before June 5. Here’s a draft agenda (pdf file). Some travel scholarships are available if applied for prior to May 30.

Energy-related risk management tools and the role of energy production/use strategies in risk management for production agriculture and the food system will be examined at a June 27-28 conference in Kansas City. The conference is sponsored by USDA’s Risk Management Agency, USDA’s Office of Energy Policy and New Uses and Farm Foundation. Identification of new non-insurance risk management tools related to energy production and use is another goal of the conference. The high cost of oil and natural gas, combined with the growing public and private interest in renewable energy, is raising new risk management issues. Farmers and ranchers, particularly limited resource farmers, have been hard hit by rapidly rising and volatile energy prices. Prices of nitrogen fertilizer and other petroleum and/or natural gas based inputs have risen rapidly. Some farmers are using traditional risk management tools to deal with these new sources of risk.