Bio-Mass

[Animal]

I just could not stand it, I had to sign up for the seminar on bio-mass they are having next week. Hopefully I will get the skinny on all this stuff. I sure hope that it is not a waste of time. If it turns out to be something worthwile it could be interesting. I am all for something that gets this country rolling again.

 

[paul]

This would be 'switch grass for ethanol' tho they may try corncobs, corn stalks, wood chips, or other biomass source? Was a lot of buzz about corn cobs about 4 years ago. Three different companies set up equipment to collect the corn cobs as well as the corn when combining, and so forth.

Hope they get it worked out soon, couple bigger plants are being build - more so altering small corn ethanol plants - to see if they can get it going. Just been very hard to breed the right bugs that are good at breaking down the lignin.

--->Paul

 

[Animal]

Their are supposed to be buyers, producers and some gov't big shots there. I hope they cover more than just switch grass. 3 of us are going so we should have a lot of questions as we have been talking the pros and cons about it for a week now..

 

[paul]

Sounds interesting. Minnesota, with our terrible basis because we are so farm from markets but produce a lot, has always been out in front of such things in the past. Ethanol, biodiesel, even burning alfalfa stems in coal plants, and so forth.

Always interesting topics for me.

--->Paul

 

[LAA]

Do you have a coal fired plant that can burn fiber fuels or a celluosic ethanol plant within 50 miles of your farm? If not it probably won"t be economical, at that it would depend on the type of land available for growing bio-mass crops as compared to row crops or grazing, in all studies that included grazing as an alternative there was more money in grazing calves than bio-mass production. At the present time none of the bio-mass crops would net return anything near the rent you could get for even marginal land. Corn stalks, rice straw etc. all remove valuable nutrients that have to be replaced, current useage and price of bio-mass do not support the use of these by products. The fact that the government is involved should tell you all you need to know, if there was any money in it business people would be all over it.

 

[Animal]

AS a matter of fact, we have two of them.

 

[Anonymous-0]

that corn cob and stover idea gives me the creeps, thats alot of much needed residue, organic matter and free potash out the window for some govt hoopla. I think you'll find in time stover is worth more if it stays on the field. The only better option for it is too graze it after harvest for cheap feed and it gets returned to the ground the same day as manure. I planted 3 acres of corn in a pasture lot this spring, cultivated it twice, hand cranked clover in it and now they are grazing again, worked great.