By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

ST. LOUIS, Mo. — As he faces the end of his term heading the USDA, Secretary Ed Schafer talked of the importance of his department keeping steady pressure on biofuel advancement, international trade talks and agreements and a smooth transition for the next secretary under a new president within the next three months.

Saying only that he’ll be heading back to North Dakota once his term is up, Schafer addressed primarily biofuel – especially cellulosic ethanol – at the “Transition to a Bio Economy” conference in St. Louis last week.

“A lot of the things I’m doing for the very first time, I’m also doing for the very last time,” he observed.

Earlier this month, President Bush signed an executive order to ease the transition between his administration and the incoming after the Nov. 4 election. Schafer said the USDA also has a transition plan which relies mostly on career employees to make the transfer to a new administration more “seamless.”

His advice to the next secretary is to get to know the USDA employees and their strengths. He said a good secretary is like a coach – direct the employees to the proper end zone, and then get out of their way so they can work.

Schafer said the Bush administration has committed to getting another round of Doha trade talks in place before the end of 2008, which were suspended not long ago.

“Whether we get it done or not this year, we don’t know,” Schafer admitted – regardless, he said it is important the U.S. continues to pursue its own bilateral trade agreements with individual countries, such as the U.S.-Peru agreement Congress passed late in 2007.
Importance of biofuel

Two weeks ago, the USDA and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) jointly released the National Biofuels Action Plan, which he said breaks down biofuel advancement into manageable modules.
These ask questions such as: Where and how should biofuel production grow? How to get feedstock from farms to refineries and how to convert it to fuel? How to deliver the final product to consumers?

Schafer explained the plan recognizes that the maturity the biofuel industry has reached warranted more commitment from the Bush administration. The United States, he said, is first in the world in ethanol production, second in biodiesel and the leader in solar and geothermal energy research. Now, he added it is becoming the world leader on taking cellulosic ethanol from lab- to commercial-scale production.

“When it comes to biofuel production, we do have one big advantage,” he said. “Congress and President Bush have given us some pretty clear direction on where we need to end up. The question now is how do we get there from here?”

Drawing from his home state’s sport of bird hunting, he added, “You don’t shoot at the goose – you shoot out in the air ahead of the goose. We need to be out in front.”

According to the Energy Information Administration, Schafer said if the U.S. does nothing more to secure a domestic energy supply, our dependence on imported oil is likely to increase to 85 percent of all we use, by 2030 and greenhouse gas emissions will likely increase by 40 percent.

Schafer emphasized biofuel production must be economically sustainable, environmentally friendly and depend mostly on feedstock from sources other than food. Corn for ethanol, he added, should only be “the bridge” between total petroleum and a petroleum/biofuel mix.

Asked if there is anything in the USDA energy policy to help livestock producers with feed costs, Schafer said there is not. He explained the department continues to fund feed research, as always, and does buy products to help producers – such as a recent $52 million purchase of pork from American producers liquidating their inventory.

He added the U.S. needs to continue research on high-yield biomass systems and the impact they have on the natural resources needed to sustain them, such as air and soil.

The science to achieve this depends on strong partnerships among federal agencies, land grant universities and the private sector.
To that end, Schafer said the 2008 farm bill is granting $1 billion over the next five years to support research and development of cellulosic biofuel technology, and enables the USDA to provide loan guarantees of up to $250 million for new cellulosic plants.
Further, the DOE has an agreement with POET to construct and run a commercial-scale biorefinery in Iowa, using corncobs and corn stover to add 25 million gallons per year to its corn-based ethanol output. The DOE’s grant is for $80 million, out of a $200 million project cost.

As for the future, the USDA is leading a group to issue the first of a series of federal interagency reports on feedstocks, conversion technologies and biofuel distribution, which Schafer said should be ready in the next few weeks.

He likened the need to secure new energy sources to his stint as team leader on a 2003 episode of the television show “Junkyard Wars,” in which two teams competed to use salvage parts to build the best car-dozer in 10 hours. He explained the hosts say nothing for the first few hours, so contestants don’t know how much time is passing – and when they are alerted halfway through, “as the time starts ticking down, it gets worse and worse.”

By way of inspiration, he said his team did finish in time – and won. “In the end, we had a good design, we had a lot of good preparation and we had built our machine in modules and it came together.”