Atibaia, Brazil

Worldwide there have been large investments made in biofuel production infrastructure and long term policies have been put in place that call for large increases in biofuel production. Nowhere is this truer than in the United States and Brazil. In addition, increasing demand for agricultural commodities driven by biofuel production will spill over into international and regional markets having the strongest impacts on the nearby neighbors of those countries producing the largest quantities of biofuels.

Recently raised concerns about the land use change and water use impacts of biofuel production pose fundamental questions about biofuel policies and demand new methods of analysis.

This workshop, with participants from Argentia, Brazil and the United States, will address the needs for new analysis methods and build the internal collaborative research teams needed to address these cross-border impacts.

One of the goals of the workshop is to develop networks of researchers who will work collaboratively to address key challenges associated with global biofuel production and who will train the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers particularly qualified to address these complex issues.