Podcast Episodes

Future of Agriculture – Cellulosic Biofuels (Part 2) with Michael McAdams, President of the Advanced Biofuels Association

Michael McAdams knows biofuels. He knows the issues, the history, the players, and the future. He is passionate, well-researched, and you can hear it in his voice that he truly cares about this topic.

If you listened to episode 009 you heard the basics of cellulosic biofuels. In this episode, we learn about the governmental and private industry sides of the equation. What does it take to get cellulosic ethanols up and running? What is meant by a drop-in biofuel and why is that exciting?

Mike even describes some exciting work being done to turn algae into biofuels with 20x the per acre efficiency of corn. There are so many interesting aspects of this topic, we could make this a 10 part series! But sorry, we’re only doing three.

Visit the Advanced Biofuels Association website to learn more about their work.

Thanks for listening!

We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to the Future of Agriculture Podcast. The response has been outstanding. Please feel free to leave a note in the comment section below.

The best way to spread the word about our Podcast is to share your favorite episode using the social media share buttons in the podcast player you are using.

You can also leave a review on iTunes. This helps us spread the word about the people, perspectives, and innovations that will provide our future food, clothing, fuel, shelter, and natural resources.

Future of Agriculture – Cellulosic Biofuels (Part 1) with Dr. Robert Brown of the Bio Institute at Iowa State University

This episode begins a three-part series on cellulosic ethanol and other cellulosic biofuels.

What if we could take one of the most prolific, abundant, renewable, and sustainable items on the plant – Cellulose – and make fuel from it?

Well, we can! Sounds fantastic, but there are, of course, challenges. It’s expensive, the conversions aren’t as great as we’d like them to be, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to improve the processes in order to make cellulosic biofuels a widespread reality.

This is the first part of the three-part series where we explore these opportunities and challenges with cellulosic biofuels. Dr. Brown describes a future where farmers can produce biomass that is specifically bred to be processed into fuels that can go directly into an engine. This would, of course, take collaboration between seed companies, farmers, ethanol plants, and fuel manufacturers and retailers.

Check out Dr. Brown’s Bio Institute at Iowa State University.

To learn more, pick up a copy of Dr. Brown’s book “Why Are We Producing Biofuels?”

Thanks for listening!

We really appreciate you taking the time to listen to the Future of Agriculture Podcast. The response has been outstanding. Please feel free to leave a note in the comment section below.

The best way to spread the word about our Podcast is to share your favorite episode using the social media share buttons in the podcast player you are using.

You can also leave a review on iTunes. This helps us spread the word about the people, perspectives, and innovations that will provide our future food, clothing, fuel, shelter, and natural resources.