Farm Aid President Willie Nelson and Keith Bolin, president of the American Corn Growers Association (ACGA) have announced their organizations' sponsorship and facilitation of a series of renewable energy and farm policy workshops slated for over a half dozen farm states this year.
The first installment of this year's Farm Aid/ACGA collaborative endeavors was an "open-to-the-public" workshop held at ACGA's annual convention on Jan. 15 in Coralville, Iowa. The event featured ethanol expert and pioneer David Blume and covered the fundamental concepts for setting up an Alcohol and Biofuel business for small and medium size farmers and entrepreneurs.
In line with its mission of keeping family farmers on their land to strengthen local and sustainable food production, Farm Aid recently granted 71 family farm groups across the country $552,500.
The grant from Farm Aid will assist ACGA in the underwriting of the workshops and facilitate presentations on the following topics:
Our goal is to ensure we improve our continuing endeavor to communicate, educate and advocate the opportunities, challenges and possibilities for energy production on U.S. family farms," said Bolin. "This will include issues relating to bio-diesel, ethanol, bio-mass, wind and other farm based energy producing possibilities."
To learn more about Farm Aid, and see the full list of 2009 grantees, visit their Web site at www.farmaid.org or call 1-800-FARM-AID.