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Southern ThoughtsSouthern Thoughts   
A look at hot topics, news and information picked up in travels around the region.
 
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Contradictions in Life Cycle Analysis and Cap & Trade
Posted on October 02, 2009 at 3:38 PM
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When Luis Ribera, an economist at Texas A&M, started laying out numbers on the life cycle analysis of biofuels then followed it with estimates on crop agreage under Cap and Trade at the Southern Region Agricultural Outlook Conference this week, I was a bit confounded.

Obviously, I didn't understand. In the life cycle analysis of biofuels, the Environmental Protection Agency penalizes biodiesel made from soybeans and ethanol made from corn because they think U.S. acreage that goes to those uses will be replaced by acreage in developing countries where they'll tear down rainforests to grow soybeans and corn. Yet, under cap and trade, U.S. growers likely will reduce crop acreage and put in forests. They'll be rewarded to doing so. But doesn't that also mean the crop acreage will be replaced with land that once was rain forests in developing countries?

Yes, Ribera said.

I didn't misunderstand. But I still don't understand.

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Contradictions in Life Cycle Analysis and Cap & Trade
Posted on October 02, 2009 at 3:38 PM
One penalizes land use changes; one rewards it.
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About The Writer
Southern Thoughts

Pam Golden, editor of Southern Farmer magazine, has 25 years experience chronicling life in the south.

She served 11 years in daily newspapers and 3 years in weekly newspapers before being released for good behavior to the blessed world of agricultural journalism.

Pam’s agricultural journalism experience started as a freelance writer for Rural Press USA, while she still worked in daily newspapers. After five years, she became editor of Georgia Farmer magazine, waded through a series of changes and mergers in agricultural publishing, and now continues to work for the same parent company, Rural Press Ltd. of Australia, as an employee of its U.S. subsidiary, Farm Progress Cos., of Chicago. Rural Press was acquired by Fairfax Media in 2007.

Pam and her son, Russ, a freshman at Northwest Florida State College, live in Crestview, Fla. As editor of Southern Farmer, Pam writes about agriculture in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Pam earned her bachelor’s degree in communication arts with an emphasis on print journalism from the University of West Florida, Pensacola. She started her studies at Livingston University, now known as the University of West Alabama.


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