Biofuels and land use: It's all how you look at it

What happens when you take a group of thoughtful people with quite radically different perspectives on agriculture and land use to Brazil? Really interesting conversations, for one.

In March, IATP took a group of farmers, researchers and environmental advocates to Mato Grosso, Brazil—the heart of that country's agricultural explosion. We were there to learn about Brazilian agriculture, and specifically, to investigate the effects of U.S. biofuel production on Brazil's land use—something known as "indirect land use change" (ILUC). Over about the last three years, ILUC has become a point of extreme contention between biofuel proponents and environmental advocates. This trip was an attempt to begin to bridge some of that contention. (Read our blog reports from the trip.)

During the course of the trip, we sat down with each participant to ask them about their perspectives on agriculture, Brazil and ILUC. You can listen to the interviews on iatp.org. There's something to learn from each interview, and we hope you enjoy them. You can also find preliminary information about our upcoming ILUC conference in Minnesota. We'll be posting more details, and a link to registration, very soon.

(Thanks to journalist Jacob Fenston, seen here with his microphone, for putting together these interviews.)

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