THE US Senate voted to confirm Thomas Vilsack, former governor of Iowa, to be President Barack Obama's secretary of the US Department of Agriculture.
Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said Vilsack, as governor of "one of the nation's top agriculture-producing states ... was an ardent supporter of furthering the use of renewable fuels such as ethanol, biodiesel and wind, as well as an advocate for biotechnology."
Vilsack, in Iowa, chaired the Governors' Ethanol Coalition, a group of 24 governors that sought to boost production.
But the US ethanol industry has been plagued recently by widespread financial problems and falling gasoline prices that have led to bankruptcy in some cases, such as VeraSun, the largest ethanol producer.
Vilsack received a warm reception to Washington by the Senate Agriculture Committee at his confirmation hearing on Jan. 14. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said at the hearing: "I don't think President-elect Obama could have picked a better person."
The US produced about 9 billion gallons of ethanol in 2008 and all of it was corn-based.
Biofuels, Vilsack told lawmakers on the Senate Agriculture Committee, are key to the farm economy, but he stressed the importance of the government's role in helping the industry evolve to produce "second generation" ethanol from cellulose feedstocks.
There are challenges, he said, to create infrastructure in the U.S. to better distribute, store and produce cellulose ethanol, made primarily from agricultural waste products like wood chips and corn cobs.
"I think USDA has a very important role to play in making sure that we provide the research, focus and direction to meet whatever the requirements are," Vilsack said.
-By Bill Tomson; Dow Jones Newswires
