Grass Makes Better Ethanol than Corn Does

Farmers in Nebraska and the Dakotas brought the U.S. closer to becoming a biofuel economy, planting huge tracts of land for the first time with switchgrass—a native North American perennial grass (Panicum virgatum) that often grows on the borders of cropland naturally—and proving that it can deliver more than five times more energy than it takes to grow it.

Working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), the farmers tracked the seed used to establish the plant, fertilizer used to boost its growth, fuel used to farm it, overall rainfall and the amount of grass ultimately harvested for five years on fields ranging from seven to 23 acres in size (three to nine hectares).

Once established, the fields yielded from 5.2 to 11.1 metric tons of grass bales per hectare, depending on rainfall, says USDA plant scientist Ken Vogel. "It fluctuates with the timing of the precipitation,'' he says. "Switchgrass needs most of its moisture in spring and midsummer. If you get fall rains, it's not going to do that year's crops much good."

But yields from a grass that only needs to be planted once would deliver an average of 13.1 megajoules of energy as ethanol for every megajoule of petroleum consumed—in the form of nitrogen fertilizers or diesel for tractors—growing them. "It's a prediction because right now there are no biorefineries built that handle cellulosic material" like that which switchgrass provides, Vogel notes. "We're pretty confident the ethanol yield is pretty close." This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies.

A.D. 1776. From Hunter=s text p.16: Thomas Jefferson's rough draft of the Declaration of Independence is written on four pages of Dutch paper and may have been from any of a dozen mills. The original Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776. The officially signed Declaration of Independence was engrossed upon parchment by order of the Congress of July 19, 1776.

A.D. 1782. First Bible printed in America in the English language, by Robert Aitken, Philadelphia. The volume embraces more than 1400 unnumbered pages, the page size being 3 2 by 6 inches

A.D. 1916. United States Department of Agriculture Bulletin 404, Hemp Hurds as Paper Making Material, by Lyster Dewey and Jason Merrill, gave a dire warning about the dangers of using tree pulp for paper. Our forests are being cut three times as fast as they grow. It is advisable to investigate the paper-making value of the more promising plant materials before a critical situation arises. Bulletin 404 proved the value of hemp hurd or pulp for paper. The report noted that hemp produces a new crop every season, while trees took 20 years to be ready for cutting, and hemp yielded more than four times as much pulp per acre as timber, making it a cheaper and more sustainable source for all grades of paper. It also declared that hemp is easy to produce, treat, and transport and is fully adequate to the task: The permanency of the supply of hemp seems assured.@ Bulletin 404 noted that hemp hurd (pulp) stock acts similarly to soda-poplar stock, but will produce a somewhat harsher and stronger sheet and one of higher folding endurance. In fact, the hurd stock might very possibly meet with favor as a book-stock furnish.

The conclusions of USDA Bulletin 404, 1916, are timely today and bear repeating:
There appears to be little doubt that under the present system of forest use and consumption the present supply can not withstand the demands placed upon it. By the time improved methods of forestry have established an equilibrium between production and consumption, the price of pulp wood may be such that a knowledge of other available raw materials may be imperative.

A.D. 1938. Popular Mechanics magazine dubbed hemp the A New Billion Dollar Crop and predicted a bonanza for farmers and industry alike, in a report prepared in 1937. With its 25,000 viable uses, hemp will provide thousands of jobs for American workers throughout the land, reported the magazine.]