On the subject of locating a biorefinery we had another presentation on the subject here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference. This one was by David Perkis, Purdue University.
He says the purpose of his work is to answer questions that local decision makers have such as, Where to locate plants?, What do we have to prepare for?, What can we do to entice a plant to our area? and Do we have a chance? He says that factors in having an optimal location for an ethanol plant is access to sufficient corn stover and transportation distances.
You can listen to my interview with David here: [audio:http://www.zimmcomm.biz/farm-foundation/ff-bio-08-perkis.mp3]
You can also download the interview using this link (mp3).
Besides those out working in the industry we also heard from some university students today at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference. Lance Andrew Stewart is a grad student at the University of Tennessee. He did a very technical presentation on locating ethanol plants.
We had USDA Rural Development represented here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference by Tony Crooks. He works with their rural business cooperatives program and has done a lot of work with communities in the area of ethanol and biodiesel.
The luncheon speaker at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference focused on managing risk. Paul Willems works for 
Two key words in a presentation at the Transition To A Bio Economy Conference were flexibility and diversification. These are important to managing risk, especially in R&D for renewable fuels.
The second session here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference was on risk and uncertainty.
One of our speakers here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference brought the discussion down to the farm level. John Miranowski, Iowa State University, spoke about the impact of biofuels on the rural economy and the farm structure.
Like the first speaker on our program today here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference, our second speaker, David Zilberman, University of California, Berkeley, says we need to increase agricultural productivity.
The first speaker here at the Transition To A Bio Economy conference is Michael Wetzstein, University of Georgia. His talk deals with two issues. One is on price volatility and the other is on food and fuel.