POET Director of Corporate Affairs Doug Berven highlights the changes and opportunities in agriculture in a bourgeoning energy market at two separate events next week in Orlando.

Berven will outline agriculture’s growing role in America’s advancement toward energy security and the role legislation can play in achieving that goal. His presentation titled “Energy Independence Through Ag and Ethanol” will be given at the Agricultural Equipment Technology Conference on at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Jan. 12.

He then joins experts from equipment manufacturing, ag production, academia and the petroleum industry at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the AgConnect conference in a panel discussion titled “Biomass: The next generation in biofuel production.”

Both events take place at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando.

For some time, POET has been working closely with ag equipment manufacturers on different ways to harvest corn cobs: the company’s preferred feedstock for producing cellulosic ethanol. POET operates a pilot cellulosic ethanol plant in Scotland, S.D. and will commercialize the process soon through Project LIBERTY in Emmetsburg, Iowa. Project LIBERTY is a 25 million-gallon-per-year cellulosic ethanol plant that will be co-located with POET’s grain plant at the site.

In November, POET brought equipment manufacturers together with Emmetsburg-area farmers for a demonstration field day to show the latest cob harvesters available now or coming soon.

About POET
POET, the largest ethanol producer in the world, is a leader in biorefining through its efficient, vertically integrated approach to production. The 20-year-old company produces more than 1.54 billion gallons of ethanol annually from 26 production facilities nationwide. POET recently started up a pilot-scale cellulosic ethanol plant, which uses corn cobs as feedstock, and will commercialize the process in Emmetsburg, Iowa. For more information, visit http://www.poet.com.

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