Published: October 10, 2008 03:14 pm            

The cutting edge — 10/12/08

Switchgrass may replace corn as primary source for ethanol

While most ethanol now produced in the United States comes from corn, many scientists believe there is another plant that can produce a more efficient and effective type of ethanol that will not send the price of corn flakes and corn chips soaring.

It’s switchgrass, and retired Boyd County High School teacher Danny Blevins is testing just how well switchgrass will grow on his family’s 600-acre farm along East Fork River in Boyd County. He is one of 20 eastern Kentucky farmers participating in a $650,000 program funded by the Agricultural Development Board by the state’s tobacco settlement funds.

However, instead of planting switchgrass on the farm’s best land, Blevins has planted it along the ridges and upland pastures that have never been used for crop production. If the switchgrass — which is native to this part of Kentucky — can thrive there, it won’t interfere with the production of other crops on the farm.

The immediate plans for the switchgrass is it is to be transported to the East Kentucky Power Cooperative’s Spurlock Station, where it will be mixed with coal to produce electricity. However, the potential for switchgrass is much greater than that.

Dr. Ray Smith, a forage specialist with the University of Kentucky’s College of Agriculture, believes switchgrass has the potential of replacing corn as the primary producer of ethanol in the U.S. While corn used in ethanol production will return 130 percent of the energy that’s put into planting, growing and harvesting corn, Smith said switchgrass will yield 500 percent.

Smith said switchgrass is drought resistant, uses little fertilizer and requires only one cutting each summer. It is a perennial that does not require replanting each year, and Blevins is learning just how well the plant does on substandard soil.

Some farmers who have seen the money they receive for their corn crops rise significantly because of ethanol may not like the idea of switchgrass — or any other crop, for that matter — replacing corn in the production of ethanol, but switchgrass has a potential that has barely been tapped for becoming a major source of alternative fuels. That puts Danny Blevins and his small patch of switchgrass on the cutting edge of new technology.

        

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