This is the welcoming committee here at the Corn Utilization and Technology Conference. Actually, our keynote speaker at this afternoon’s opening general session, Gale Buchanan, former USDA Chief Scientist and Under Secretary for Research, Education and Economics, just happened to be registering at the same time I was.

Gale is always happy to help anyone so I got a pre-CUTC interview with him. He will be presenting a research paper that he and two colleagues put together for the Council For Agricultural Science and Technology on the subject of agricultural productivity. He points out that productivity is extremely important and that corn is one of the most important crops we have since it can be used for so many things including both food and fuel. He also points out how important corn is for fuel production since energy is just as important to our civilization as food is. He thinks the corn industry should be proud of the work it has done in recent years and says, “It has shown us that we can have energy sourced from corn and still maintain all of the other commitments we have both in food as well as our carryover stocks as well as our export commitments.”

You can listen to my interview with Gale below.