21 May 2008
Conference examines market relationships, infrastructure needs of bioeconomy
A unique mix of industry leaders, senior-level government officials and academics doing cutting-edge research on risk and infrastructure issues of the bioeconomy will be featured at the June 24-25 conference, Transition to a Bioeconomy: Risks, Infrastructure and Industry Evolution.
“The bioeconomy is generating new market relationships and infrastructure needs that have impacts across the global economy,” says Farm Foundation Vice President Steve Halbrook. “This conference is an opportunity to broaden understanding of how those new relationships and needs are developing and how they might influence business strategies and public policy development.”
The June conference is a collaboration of Farm Foundation, USDA’s Office of Energy Policy and New Uses, USDA’s Economic Research Service, and the Energy Biosciences Institute. The Institute is a 10-year research collaboration of the University of California-Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the University of Illinois and BP. The conference will be at the Doubletree Marina Hotel, Berkeley, Calif.
The conference opens with an overview of the evolving industry, including presentations on the new market relationships of ethanol, corn and gasoline, how biofuels are impacting other segments of the market, and the bioeconomy’s impacts at the farm level. Other sessions will address risks of the bioeconomy; legal, transportation and public policy infrastructure issues; and the challenges and opportunities of the next decade in research, education, business and finance. Summary reports from several ongoing research efforts will also be presented.
Conference program details are available at Farm Foundation Web site. The registration fee is $225 if paid by June 9, after which it will be $250. Special conference rates are available at the Doubletree Marina for reservations made by June 3.
This is the second of four conferences in the Transition to a Bioeconomy series. The series is designed to inventory current knowledge of key issues of the bioeconomy, highlight lessons learned, identify future possibilities and determine information and research needs for the future. Scheduled for October 2008, the third conference in the series will address environmental and economic development impacts. The first conference in the series examined the integration of agricultural and energy systems. The last conference in the series, slated for early 2009, will focus on the implications of a global bioeconomy.
Farm Foundation has been a catalyst on bioenergy issues since June 2004, when it led the conference Agriculture as a Consumer and Producer of Energy. For information on this and the other energy conferences Farm Foundation has presented-Biofuels, Food and Feed Tradeoffs, Energy in Agriculture: Managing the Risk, Energy from Agriculture: New Technologies, Innovations and Success Stories-visit the Farm Foundation Web site, www.farmfoundation.org.
Farm Foundation works as a catalyst, bringing stakeholders of all ideologies together to examine economic and public policy issues impacting agriculture, food systems and rural communities. Farm Foundation does not lobby or advocate.
For more information:
Mary Thompson
Director of Communications, mary@farmfoundation.org
