Yesterday, Brazil’s president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told Pope Benedict XVI that Brazil will help Africa develop biofuels.
Brazil is  Pope Benedict arrived on Wednesday in Brazil, a world leader in developing ethanol from sugarcane.

Lula told the Pope he wanted to help with reducing African poverty by helping countries there develop biofuels, like ethanol.  Brazil’s ambassador to the Vatican, Vera Machado, said that although the Pope didn’t know much about biofuels, he certainly appreciated any action in support of Africa. Brazil currently has collaboration agreements with African crop scientists in Ghana through Brazil’s Embrapa crop-science institute.

Brazilian officials have said that it is also in the country’s economic interest to help create new ethanol-producing markets in order to expand global trade of the renewable fuel.  Brazil is the world’s only major ethanol exporter.

Texas A&M Agriculture is scheduled to host U.S. Department of Agriculture Under Secretary Gale Buchanan and Texas Agriculture Commissioner Todd Staples today for a behind-the-scenes tour of some of the most promising biomass research efforts within The Texas A&M University System.
 

“Corn is a viable way to produce ethanol from starch,” said Dr. Elsa Murano, who serves as Vice Chancellor of Agriculture and Life Sciences for the A&M System and also directs the Texas Agricultural Experiment Station, where scientists are digging into a range of biofuels alternatives. “But that’s not the only option for Texas and the southern part of the country.”
 

Texas not only grow corn for biofuels, but it can also capitalize on decades of sorghum research at the Experiment Station, Murano said. The giant sorghum varieties being grown in experimental plots today are drought-tolerant, can be grown across the state, and offer high yields in ethanol.  “Based upon our analyses, we find it’s efficient to take something like our new sorghum varieties or sugar cane that produces large volumes of biomass, rather than producing grain and then converting grain-starch to ethanol,” Murano said.
 

Texas is uniquely posed to take advantage of this developing technology as a leading agricultural state with a large forest industry, a major biomass producer with diverse growing environments, and major universities and agencies with energy expertise, said Bob Avant, program manager for the A&M System’s Texas Agricultural Experiment Station.
 

Avant adds that Texas is an energy-friendly state, producing 26% of the U.S. domestic oil and 29% of natural gas.  The state already has an “extensive energy infrastructure in place,” with 26 existing refineries, 135,000 miles of natural gas pipeline, and a large structure of pipelines for transporting crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas.