Breakout Session I
What are the Drivers of Current Biofuels Policy? What Has Been Accomplished? What Are the Challenges?
Rick Tolman
Rick Tolman serves as Chief Executive Officer of the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA), a producer directed trade association headquartered in St. Louis, Mo., with a second office in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create and increase opportunities for corn growers. NCGA is a federation of state organizations, corn boards, councils and commissions that develops and implements policies and programs on a state and national level to help protect and advance the corn producer’s interests. NCGA represents nearly 33,000 individual members in 46 states, including more than 300,000 corn producers. As CEO, Tolman is responsible for managing and coordinating programs at the national level for NCGA and its 46 affiliated state corn grower associations and checkoff boards.
Tolman joined NCGA in September 2000. He previously served as executive director for the U.S. Grains Council, a non-profit organization that promotes the use of U.S. barley, corn and sorghum and related products worldwide. In addition, Tolman has served as marketing planning manager for the Advanced Harvesting Systems Group at International Harvester Company, market research analyst for the Gehl Company, an equipment manufacturer, and a graduate research assistant at Purdue University, assisting in the analysis and reporting of selected research projects sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Tolman has served on the USDA Agricultural Trade Advisory Committee (ATAC) for grains and oilseeds, and currently serves as Chairman for the Midwest Area River Coalition (MARC 2000).
Tolman is a graduate of Brigham Young University and received his master's degree in agricultural economics from Purdue University. He and his wife Linda have five children and reside in Ballwin, Mo.
David Morris
David Morris serves as Vice President of the 33 year-old Minneapolis-based Institute for Local Self-Reliance and directs the Institute’s New Rules Project www.newrules.org. David’s focus is on designing policies that maximize benefits to communities and regions. He has been an energy consultant and advisor to the energy departments of Presidents Ford, Carter, Clinton and George W. Bush. For six years, Morris served on a Congressionally-created Advisory Committee to the US DOE and USDA on biomass-related issues, being appointed by the Secretary of Energy under Bill Clinton and reappointed by the Secretary of Energy under George W. Bush.
Morris is the author of four books and more than a dozen monographs on energy and biomass, including his pioneering 1992 report The Carbohydrate Economy, and the 2004 report A Better Way: Driving Without Oil, which was the first to argue for a national initiative to introduce plug-in, flexible fueled hybrid vehicles.
Nathanael Greene
Nathanael Greene received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Public Policy from Brown University and a Master of Science Degree in Energy and Resources from University of California Berkeley. He joined NRDC in 1992 and worked two years before getting his master’s degree and returned to NRDC in 1996 and working there since. He is a senior policy analyst and is responsible for working on energy policy and related issues including utility restructuring, energy taxes, energy efficiency, renewables, and low-income services. He has particular expertise in clean energy technologies including wind, solar and biomass energy, fuel cells, combined heat and power and energy efficiency and in regulations and policies to promote these technologies. For the last few years he has been focusing on assessing the sustainable potential for biofuels and developing policies to advance them.
Bruce Babcock
Bruce Babcock is a professor of economics and the director of the Center for Agricultural and Rural Development at Iowa State University (CARD). Professor Babcock’s primary research interests are in understanding agricultural commodity policy in a global context, development of innovative risk management strategies for farmers, and the evolution of agriculture away from a primary focus on commodity production. His risk management research has led to the development of several new crop insurance products currently being sold under the auspices of the USDA and by the private sector.