| For the week of April 16, 2007 |
Back to the Future With Switchgrass |
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Time travel into the past was the subject of Back to the Future, the Oscar-winning film starring actor Michael J. Fox. In the movie, Fox's character, Marty McFly, uses a time machine to go back several decades to when his parents met in high school. Naturally, hilarity ensues. But McFly also learned a few useful things about the past that he brought back with him to the future.
Now, imagine using a time machine to go back five centuries to when 70 million bison roamed the prairies. Before pioneer settlers came from the East...before railroad lines crossed the nation...before the invention of the steel plow that revolutionized agriculture.
What did those 70 million bison eat all those years ago? A large part of their diet consisted of millions and millions of acres of tall grasses native to North America, including switchgrass.
Most of the switchgrass that covered the prairies disappeared along with the bison. But it may be making a comeback in a new role, as a source of clean-burning renewable fuel.
Today, corn and soybeans are the undisputed workhorses of the exploding renewable fuels industry. Nearly all commercial ethanol is produced from corn and just about every gallon of biodiesel is made from soybeans.
But corn and soybeans may soon have to share the spotlight with crops grown solely for their ability to produce energy, including switchgrass, hybrid poplar (cottonwood) trees and hybrid willow trees. A great advantage to using these crops for energy production is that they grow quickly and some do not have to be replanted after harvest.
Fast-growing and high in sugar that can be distilled into ethanol, switchgrass is the subject of intense government research to improve yield and hardiness. It is known for growing well in a variety of conditions and reaches deep into the soil for water that it uses efficiently. Switchgrass has been grown to feed livestock in the U.S. for some time. It's also useful when planted as a groundcover to control erosion. Another plus is that farmers do not have to buy special equipment to harvest the crop. Regular hay baling equipment does the job just fine.
Canola, sunflowers and safflowers are a few crops that you may hear more about as research continues into new sources for biodiesel. Canola in particular, now grown primarily in North Dakota and Minnesota, is known to be a high-oil crop. That is what makes it intriguing for biodiesel production.
Are switchgrass, fast-growing tree crops and canola poised to topple corn and soybeans as renewable fuel powerhouses? Probably not any time soon. But with a technical advisory committee to the Agriculture and Energy departments predicting renewable fuels will supply 20 percent of our nation’s fuels by 2030, and with industry goals set at 25 percent by 2025, there's plenty of room for all the energy-producing crops to contribute a fair share. And that’s information that adventurous time traveler Marty McFly would have been proud to take back to the future.
Cyndie Sirekis is director of news services for the American Farm Bureau Federation.