New cash crop — 05/06/09

May 06, 2009 01:59 pm

— It is safe bet that until recently most area farmers had never even heard of miscanthus, much less considered planting it as a cash crop.
But Midwestern Biofuels LLC hopes to use miscanthus and switchgrass to produce fuel intended for use in coal-fired electricity generating plants, but in order for its ambitious plans to be realized, area landowners must be willing to plant a grass not native to North America and harvest it for exclusive use by the biofuels plant being developed at the site of the former Hooker Chemical operation in South Shore.
Switchgrass — which, unlike miscanthus, is native to this region — has been promoted by many as being far more efficient than corn in producing biofuels, but researchers at the University of Illinois say miscanthus is even more efficient than switchgrass, making it a more viable alternative fuel source.
Midwestern Biofuels executives Jeff Lowe and Brandon Minix are trying to persuade area farmers within a 50-mile radius of South Shore to grow miscanthus. The company will pay farmers so much per acre to plant miscanthus and buy all of their yield.
Planting miscanthus is labor intensive. Because it is a sterile hybrid, it must be propagated by planting underground stems. However, tobacco is also a labor intensive crop, and the same equipment area farmers use to plant tobacco can be used to plant miscanthus. And once it is planted, miscanthus will continue to produce annual yields for at least 20 years.
Miscanthus can produce far more biofuel per acre than either corn or switchgrass, University of Illinois researchers found. Using corn or switchgrass to produce enough ethanol to offset 20 percent of gasoline use — a current White House goal — 25 percent of U.S. cropland would have to be taken out of food production, researcher said. Getting the same amount of ethanol from miscanthus would require only 9.3 percent of current agricultural acreage.
University if Illinois researchers also pointed to other advantages of miscanthus:
‰ It can be grown on poor soil, meaning it could be a cash crop on land not now suited for agriculture.
‰ Because miscanthus is a perennial grass, it accumulates much more carbon in the soil that annual crops like soy beans.
‰ Miscanthus is completely unimproved as a crop. If research on the plant increases the same types of improvements in yield as research on corn, soy beans and other crops have, the plant will become an even more efficient source of ethanol.
Midwestern Biofuels hopes to be on the cutting edge of using miscanthus and switchgrass to produce ethanol. The biofuels industry still is in its infancy and must be considered something of a risky investment, but if Midwestern Biofuels’ hunch is right, it could be on the cutting edge of an industry that not only reduces our dependency on oil and coal but also produces a new cash crop for area farmers.