4/7/2009

I was invited to attend the Eastern Oregon  BEST meeting held at the Blue Mountain Community Collage in Pendleton. This is a rural development project sponsored by OSU. 

Oregon Built Environment & Sustainable Technologies Center  at OSU. This particular meeting was titled Bio-based Products for Rural Economic Development Workshop

http://www.oregon.gov/ENERGY/RENEW/Biomass/resource.shtml

This meeting brought about 50 people with interest in developing bio-based (biomass) products to small towns in Eastern Oregon. There was a range of  interests, business, government and economic development people who attended. 

There were several good presentations and then an invitation to work with OSU research to find out about ways to use biomass to produce biomass utilization technologies to support economic development in rural Eastern Oregon.

My specific interest which has yet to be followed up on is with three elements of the Oregon Higher Education System Research. 

Agricultural Experiment Station

 http://agsci.oregonstate.edu/research/agricultural-experiment-station

Once we are up and running we want to see if there is an interest in using biochar and prove the value to Oregon farmers. These could be valuable in promoting biochar as a product.

 Institute for a Sustainable Environment

 http://www.uoregon.edu/~enviro/

 It seems that part of supporting the concepts or removing biomass from the federal lands and proving that this is supportable as sustainable land management.

Oregon Renewable Energy Center

 http://www.oit.edu/orec

This contact could prove the value of what we are doing can be valued with scientific support.

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This was a good meeting where I met a lot of people who have since helped me as we continue to move forward on our efforts.