Today in Biofuels Opinion: “Obama has also stayed true to his hard-line position against big agricultural subsidies by nominating Vilsack.”

From alibi.com: “That [Tom] Vilsack is a proponent of ethanol and biotech shouldn’t come as a surprise, as Obama campaigned on the same page…while some had hoped that the president-elect was simply playing politics and telling Iowans what they wanted to hear in order to win the caucus there, Obama has also stayed true to his hard-line position against big agricultural subsidies by nominating Vilsack, who is a rare farm state politician against that kind of pork.”

Carl Hodges, CEO of Global Seawater, in CNN.com: “[Salicornia] is an amazing plant. When we first started looking for plants…the only reason we had salicornia was that it was pretty.A young lady was counting the seed, and she wiped her fingernails on a paper towel and she noticed that the towel looked oily. And she was right. It has about 30-40% very high quality vegetable oil. And so we said: ‘My God, it’s an oil seed crop’. It’s like soy bean.  Salicornia produces a high quality vegetable oil on sea water. On land it’s not competitive for food production. It produces at a rate that is probably one of the most economical biofuels on the planet.”

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