Australia and New Zealand are on my radar this week. I received an interesting email from an online reader from New Zealand, plus Mike Bryan’s column this month is about Australia.

The reader from New Zealand says the country has little interest in biofuels, even though New Zealand is an agricultural exporter with over 6 million dairy cows in a country of 4.1 million people, plus millions of sheep and beef cows.  “Very little bio fuels or discussions of here sad to say,” he says. “Gas is now $1.95 a liter NZ (about $7.50 NZD per gallon, $6.00 USD ) of which 50 percent is tax. High socialism and being pretty remote on the planet contribute to this price as well.” The only ethanol production in NZ is by Fonterra the giant dairy cooperative who uses excess whey to make mostly food grade ethanol and a little industrial grade.

Dean Tatro has lived in New England and the Midwest, though he’s been in New Zealand for a decade. He remembers driving by miles of corn fields as a kid. He commented how the negative press about ethanol in the U.S. comes from the East and West Coasts, and rarely from the Midwest. “Oddly these are two areas most dependent upon imported oil and the most removed from agriculture. There’s also constant remarks about higher food prices. So when farmers start to make money that's a problem?  There rarely seems to be any discussion (in these media) about the future of ethanol or how the country is expanding outside of corn based ethanol.”

We’re working on the February issue, getting it ready to upload to the printer. Mike Bryan, who founded BBI International and this magazine with his late wife Kathy, is now living and working in Australia. He gives an overview of the Australian ethanol scene in his column. Look for it in the February issue.