President Barack Obama announced today a new effort to find out from farmers, ranchers and rural communities how to revitalize rural America. Obama outlined the effort Tuesday during an interview with South Dakota’s WNAX radio. Obama’s plan for rural America includes economic development, conservation and renewable energy.
Biofuels will be a critical part of improving American agriculture’s profitability, he said. “I think there’s huge potential around biofuels,” Obama said. Obama, a former U.S. senator from Illinois, said ethanol has been a boon to many rural communities’ economies. “What we also are recognizing is that the key for us is going to be to move into the next generation of biofuels” such as wood chips, switchgrass and refuse, he said. Click here for Obama’s interview with WNAX-AM.
After talking about the need to increase efficiencies of current biofuels plants in the U.S., Obama said (about 4:20 minutes in to the interview) that he “wants to be able to compete with countries like Brazil that are now running their entire automobile fleet with biofuels. If Brazil can do it, there’s no reason the U.S. can do it.” Too bad he didn’t remember that for thirty-years Brazil has been trying to compete with the U.S. biofuels industry, which benefits from huge subsidies and high protectionist barriers.
Filed under: Biofuels, Cellulosic, Climate Change, Corn, Enviroment, Ethanol, Sugarcane, Tariff | Tagged: Biofuels, Climate Change, Ethanol, Obama, Renewable Fuel Standard, Rural Tour, Sugarcane, Trade Policy
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