Every time the USDA issues an important crop report, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange hosts a conference call for reporters with a market commentator. We have been responsible for recording and uploading that call to their server for the past couple of years now. Today the call focused on the April Supply Demand report and the commentator was Mike Krueger from …
The Derry Brownfield Show
I had a very enjoyable lunch today with my good friend Derry Brownfield. I know a lot of you know of Derry. He’s that farm broadcaster who is rude, crude, obnoxious, politically incorrect . . . (self description). I worked with Derry for almost 10 years and we covered a lot of miles together. Derry is still hosting his daily …
Spot Your Career Online
Clint Deitch has kicked off AgCareer Spotter and Cindy spoke to him about it by phone last week. So you can hear all about it in this week’s program. BTW. You can find Clint’s job listings via Twitter. Careerspotter.com, provider of online industry specific career centers, recently launched AgCareerSpotter.com targeting the agribusiness industry. Developed by agriculture human resources recruiters, AgCareerSpotter.com …
Cellulosic Ethanol To Bridge The Gap
Commercializing Gasification/Fermentation Technology was the topic of comments made by Mark Dietzen, INEOS Bio, at the Farm Foundation Transition To A Bio Economy Conference. He says that they have a practical technology that they’re in the process of implementing to be online by 2011 to produce cellulosic ethanol. He thinks that it will help bridge the gap between what’s possible …
Biotech Playing Key Role In Production Of Biofuels
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. Paul says the BP Energy Biosciences Institute was created as a place to apply modern biology to energy problems. He told us that from their …
Wind Farmers
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. Mark says Minwind Energy was formed by a group of local farmers and businessmen in southwest Minnesota. He’d like people to understand that the …
Biodiesel Good Fit For Carbon Reduction
The legislative guru for the National Biodiesel Board is Manning Feraci. He was on the Farm Foundation Transition To A Bio Economy Conference program. He gave us an update on the current state of the biodiesel industry and the need for stable policies coming out of DC. He says that he sees some real opportunities now as some of the …
Carbon Is New Ag Commodity
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. He said that “carbon is the new agricultural commodity” and that “our incentive is to produce less of it and get paid for it.” So, grow a crop, sell it and maybe earn some carbon …
How Biofuels Policies Affect Trade
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. He talked to us about how biofuels policies are affecting commodity prices and trade but he says there are a lot of other factors affecting export volume. For example, he says that even …
Loosening OPEC’s Grip On Price
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. I spoke to David here at the Farm …