Aaron Smith

Now at aaronsmithagecon.com

@dunnde Just saw D4 jumped last two days.

@dunnde Anticipating this could be one reason D4 barely declined as fossil diesel prices increased in the last month. Maybe.

Interesting results What we know - with supplemental the total volume is 26.81 billion hard to see us net generating more than 14.2 D6s Cellulosic is 1.36; only question is how many D5s which is probably 200-500mm thats a lot of D4s needed

“While using 20 year warming instead of 100 year warming has been a convenient way for opponents of natural gas to inflate the impact that natural gas has on the warming of the planet, it also makes a mockery of the notion that climate change is centrally an issue of intergenerational equity.” @TedNordhaus in 2024

Farmer pays $5–$8 per cow per month. A New Zealand company puts a solar-powered smart collar on cows. It tracks location 24/7, health, temperature, chewing activity, breeding. Farmer just opens a simple app and draws a line on the map. That line becomes the fence. As cows approach the boundary, the collar beeps and vibrates. With one tap, the whole herd moves to fresh grass or the milking shed. No physical fences. Less labor. Huge cost savings for farmer. Already on 700k cows across New Zealand, Australia, and the US. and now in talks to raise at a $2B valuation led by Peter Thiel.

People, it's daylight saving not daylight savings. And it's a good system.

@asymmetricinfo Very real. Expensive, so currently used only in crops with few herbicide alternatives, such as onions or anything organic. The laser weeder is best at killing really tiny weeds (1mm). Other tech uses spray instead of lasers, is better for larger weeds. open.substack.com/pub/agdatanews…

Ag folks: how real is this, and how useful?

Aaron Smith examines how new legislation will effect CA gas prices in new #AREUpdate article “California Now Allows More Ethanol in Gasoline: Is This Going to Save Drivers Money?" Read more: tinyurl.com/ybazbbre #E15 #GasPrices @ASmithUCB

This week in Ag Data News (cross posted in EI Blog), California now allows more ethanol in gasoline — is this going to save drivers money? Short answer: No energyathaas.wordpress.com/2025/12/08/cal…

@dunnde @OilandGibbs @ScottIrwinUI @CCapLP @JarrettRenshaw Well, nerds like me will advocate for higher ILUC values or some other way of dealing with LUC. In LCFS: biogas, electricity and others benefit from higher credit prices. One way to raise credit prices is to limit liquid biofuel credit values by imposing higher ILUC.

@OilandGibbs @ScottIrwinUI @CCapLP @JarrettRenshaw ILUC is here to stay even under dems, imo who on earth would lobby for it to go away? growth / rfa - hell no SBA (national / states) - double hell no refiners - still a hell no (well those with RD facilities anyway) first rule of biofuel policy - embrace the grift

@JarrettRenshaw with the update. "Trump administration may delay biofuel import credit cuts as refiners balk" Are folks finally listening?! Remember you can still raise the D4 mandate to 8.8B from 7.1B proposed IF this is the case, which is our preferred, constructive view. reuters.com/sustainability…

Link to post: agdatanews.substack.com/p/using-vegeta…

This week in Ag Data News, using vegetable oils for biofuel accelerates tropical deforestation and increases CO2 emissions. In a new paper, Tzu-Hui Chen, Rich Sexton, and I show that biofuels from vegetable oils have likely increased, rather than reduced, global emissions.

This week in Ag Data News, Kostas Metaxoglou and I have a new publication. Link in first comment.

Read the article at this link: open.substack.com/pub/agdatanews…

Bonus mixed fact: Soybean prices mostly did not react to tariff news, except for today

This week in Ag Data News, soybeans and China.