At the recent Farm to Fuel Summit in Florida, the state’s chief financial officer told the crowd that biofuels have made it into the mainstream.

CFO Alex Sink related a story of how she had gone into her local Circle K convenience store that morning for coffee and newspapers on the way to the conference and the clerk at the counter noticed her “Farm to Fuel” shirt and asked her what she did. “I said I’m getting ready to go to a conference to talk about ways to grow crops to turn into fuel,” Sink said. “And she said, ‘You mean like ethanol?’ and I said ‘yeah’ and she said ‘that’s good, that’s very good, we need to protect our ozone layer.'”

Sink says she realized at that point, “If the checkout girl at the Circle K in Thonotosassa is getting it, everybody’s getting it.”

Sink noted that one of the turning points in Florida’s history was when citrus first started to be grown in the state. “My bold prediction is that this sea change that we are seeing in addressing opportunities that we have to be involved in biomass is going to change the face of agriculture in Florida potentially as much as citrus did.”

Listen to Sink’s Farm to Fuel address here: [audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/farm-to-fuel-07/f2f-alex-edit.mp3]