Corn Commentary

NCGA Kicks Off Land Use Conference in St. Louis

NCGA Land Use ConferenceThe NCGA Land Use and Carbon Impacts of Corn-Based Ethanol Conference is underway here at the Renaissance hotel by the St. Louis airport. This is our first panel discussion on “Emission Factors and Land Use Change Modeling” which is being moderated by Geoff Cooper, Renewable Fuels Association. We’re talking some very involved talks on things like Lifecycle Greenhouse Gas Analysis, Measuring Indirect Land Use from Biofuels, Analysis of the RFS and more.

A snapshot of presenters at the conference include Steven Del Grosso, Colorado State University; Dr. Bruce McCarl, Texas A&M; Nancy Harris, Winrock International; Keith Kline, Oakridge National Laboratory, Ken Copenhaver, University of Illinois, Chicago; Dr. Bruce Dale, Michigan State University; Dr. Wally Tyner, Purdue University; Dr. Pat Westhoff, Food and Agricultural Policy Research Institute; and Dr. Michael Wang of Argonne National Laboratory, as well as many others.

This conference is dealing with some issues that are vitally important to everyone in agribusiness, not just in corn production and I will be conducting some interviews with our panelists and presenters this afternoon and will be posting them in coming days.

You can see some photos I’m taking with my iPhone here: NCGA Land Use Conference Photo Album