In the case of rice straw, for example, well over half a billion tonnes is available in Asia, and this material is routinely burned. Biorefining rice straw would reduce GHG and other emissions by avoiding burning. The USDA has been addressing the needs for new feedstocks (Box 1) while at the same time helping to maintain and develop the first generation ethanol and biodiesel industry. One advantage of this USDA programme was that it provided incentives for field researchers, those optimising crops as feedstocks for biofuels, to work closely with researchers developing biorefinery technologies. As the industry evolved, focus has gone from creating corn and grain-derived ethanol to creating cellulosic ethanol, and now toward development of integrated processes that produce drop-in replacements for petroleum products. Technologies to produce advanced biofuels such as n-butanol, pyrolysis bio-oil, hydroxymethylfurfural, liquefied biogas, and even (bio)hydrogen have been developed and are arguably commercially viable.