Switchgrass instead of corn please

With the price of everything that uses corn going up, we need alternatives to converting corn into biofuel. USDA completed a 5-year study that shows Switchgrass could very well be that alternative.

Here’s the scoop, switchgrass grown for biofuel production produced 540% more energy than needed to grow, harvest and process it into cellulosic ethanol, according to estimates from a large on-farm study by researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The test covered farms from Nebraska, South Dakota and North Dakota who grew the prairie grass as a biomass fuel source and showed that yields were significantly higher in energy than is consumed in producing and converting the grass into cellulosic ethanol, said Ken Vogel, a U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service geneticist in UNL's agronomy and horticulture department.

This is great news for everybody concerned, with the exception of the people selling all of that fertilizer to the farmers that gets washed down into the Gulf of Mexico.

"This clearly demonstrates that switchgrass is not only energy efficient, but can be used in a renewable biofuel economy to reduce reliance of fossil fuels, reduce greenhouse gas emissions and enhance rural economies," Vogel said.

The study also found greenhouse gas emissions from cellulosic ethanol made from switchgrass were 94% lower than estimated greenhouse gas emissions from gasoline production.

Sounds like a major winner to me.

Researchers reported their findings in this week's (Jan.7-11) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research paper is available online for those of you who like to exercise your scientific mind.

In the future, perennial crops, such as switchgrass, as well as crop residues and forestry biomass could be developed as major cellulosic ethanol sources that could potentially displace 30% of current U.S. petroleum consumption, Vogel said. Technology to convert biomass into cellulosic ethanol is being developed and is now at the development stage where small commercial scale biorefineries are beginning to be built with scale-up support from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Now, will you please, return corn to its rightful place as a food source and away from the biofuel fanatics who are driving our food prices up.

Source: Institute of Agricultural and Natural Resources

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