Alex Tiller's Blog on Agriculture & Farming

Optimizing Silage Management

To optimize silage management, it’s critically important to stay on top of the moisture level in the silage feedstock. The key is the timing of your corn harvest, because timing controls the moisture level in the silage – and the moisture level is the key to the highest quality feed.

The moisture of the corn you chop for silage needs to be between 60% and 70% - on the lower end if you’re silaging in an upright silo, on the higher end for a bunker. Your chopped pieces should be 3/8” to ½” in size to optimize the pack. You can determine the moisture level of the corn with a simple hand test – squeeze the chopped silage into a ball and hold it for 30 seconds. If the ball contains more than 75% moisture, it will hold its shape entirely – too wet! If the ball falls apart quickly, it’s under 60% - too dry! If the ball starts to fall apart and produces some juice, but holds together somewhat, it’s right in that 60 to 70% sweet spot.

Silage that’s too moist will lose nutrients, and can even do damage to your silo. It takes longer to ferment, as well. Overdry silage will not pack well and will have too many air pockets, and will take a long time to go anaerobic. The extended period of aerobic fermentation raises the silage temperature, increasing the chance of a burn and lowering the quality.

To detect moisture levels before chopping the corn, you can check the kernel milk line. Break open an ear and examine the developing kernels, and find the milk line. A line that’s between halfway and two-thirds of the way down from the crown is at the 60 to 70% moisture level. You can also use a microwave oven or commercial forage moisture tester, if you get inconsistent results from these hand tests.

Weed Control On The Farm

It is a fairly common assumption that weeds will outlive you me and our great-great grandchildren fifty times over.  Once they arrive, the take over and regaining any sort of control is not only a chore, but a necessity. 

Weeds are capable of destroying croplands in short order.  Once a weed takes root, they use vital nutrients which weaken the crop.  Over time, it will overtake the area and completely run out the desired species.  Weeds can cause changes in the natural process of the land which causes volumes of ecological damage over time, never mind what is happening to your crops.  Many areas have a weed management control program that targets invasive species of weeds.  In the case of the farmer, however, the only good weed is the one that doesn’t exist.

Here are a few ideas for controlling the ever persistent weed: 

1.        In crop it is important to star controlling weeds before you ever plant.  Be sure to choose a well adapted hybrid, maintain proper soil pH and use adequate plant populations.  When the crop that you are working with gets a head start on the weeds, it gets the advantage on everything from nutrients to sunlight.  As the corn grows it will shade the area around it cutting off the possibility of photosynthesis for the plant, which is imperative for growth. 

2.       Map it out.  To choose the right herbicide you need to determine what weeds are going to pose challenges.  Create a map and then do a little research on appropriate herbicides for each problematic area.  If you are pre-planting, take note of what weeds are out there the season before.  This will give you an idea as to what is going to be where for the upcoming season.

3.       Get mowing!  This is probably the first and easiest step to take in controlling weeds – at least for pastures and rangeland.  This is one of those things that is all about the timing.  If you notice you have a new crop of weeds coming up in a pasture, mow it before it goes to seed.  If you mow before a plant goes to seed you are keeping it from producing more seeds.  By keeping the grass height to about four inches (minimum for grazing pastures) the grass shades the dirt, thus preventing the new seeds from germinating as well.  Mowing can also make the grass that is there grow in thicker over time, thus running out the ever persistent weed.   –Keeps the farm looking tidy and well attended too.

4.       Down and dirty – The all time most surefire way of getting rid of a weed is to dig it up by hand.  No, this technique cannot be applied to huge tracts of land, but is plenty effective in the garden or in smaller pasture areas.  Also, be careful; it is not advised to pull weeds if herbicides was ever applied.  And, by digging them up, you can disturb root systems of the desired crop(s) and bring other weed seeds to the top to germinate.  Moisture loss can also occur.  

5.       Consider Crop rotation.  Rotating crops not only helps to control weeds, but nematodes, insects and diseases in other following crops as well. 

Bottom line, get to them before they get to you.  That is the best way to get the job done.  Most extension agencies have Web sites or other program dedicated to weed control specific to your region as well as the crop.  For more specific information regarding weed control check out this Web site http://weedext.ifas.ufl.edu/.  Happy weeding!!

2008 Pre-Harvest Yield Estimates

Pro Farmer has made their fall harvest estimates for corn and soybeans, and it’s shaping up to be a fairly decent year. Pro Farmer’s estimates assume that there won’t be any major changes in the weather (especially early frost) over the remainder of the growing season, and they calculate their estimates should be within 1% on corn and 2% on soybeans, given relatively normal weather patterns.

For corn, the national estimate is 153.3 bushels per acre, with a total harvest of 12.152 billion bushels. For soy, the national yield estimate is 39.95 bushels per acre, with a total of 2.930 billion bushels harvested.

For corn, the figures represent a slight decline from last year’s record-setting yield of 155 bushels/acre. Soy yield is also down a bit from last year’s 41.2 bushels/acre. These are still extremely high yields by historical standards – last year was just exceptionally good.

State-by-state, Illinois and Iowa are the reigning corn champs in terms of yield, with estimates of 168.5 bushels/acre in both states despite a poor start to the growing season and a lot of dry weather (ironic given the floods, but then, Mother Nature always has a sense of humor when it comes to farm production). Indiana is up sharply with 167 bushels/acre. Ohio is turning in a notably poor year, with 151 bushels/acre, due to a rocky start to the planting season. For soybeans, Nebraska tops the charts with 50 bushels/acre, and analysts credit this to the development of precise irrigation skills among Nebraska’s bean farmers.

Overall the estimates are on-track for a solid if not spectacular and record-setting production cycle. These numbers do indicate that the ability of the farming sector to absorb major blows from the weather, such as the floods this summer, have improved over the past decades. Part of that can be attributed to greater capitalization – it’s easier to shift your planting when you’ve got multiple/scalable tractors to do it with – but I’d wager that the biggest change has been in the access to weather technology, and in the greater education and skill possessed by the modern US farmer.

9 Simple Methods to Control Erosion on the Farm

Erosion is the bane of every farmer, particularly those who farm in erosion-intensive environmental conditions. Aside from the relatively minor inconveniences of erosion such as fields collapsing and drainage systems getting clogged up, erosion actually costs farmers money – I’ve seen estimates that indicate even mild erosion on a field can reduce the yield on that field by 20%. Less visible, but equally expensive, is the fact that subsurface erosion on pastureland can reduce the rate of regrowth by as much as 80%. The paddock looks fine on the surface – but erosion has reduced that field’s productivity to a fifth of its maximum.

Fortunately there are some relatively easy ways to keep erosion under control. It’s almost impossible to completely stop erosion – water and wind moves soil and that’s all there is to it. But with a little planning and effort, you can reduce erosion to a minor nuisance instead of a budget-busting disaster.

The first things to look at are what you should stop doing. Here are just a few of the practices which can accelerate erosion:

• Planting under extreme cold or dry conditions. (The slow growth of germinating seeds mean that the top layer of soil is open to the environment.)

• Cultivating steep slopes. Its probably not worth it.

• Heavy grazing on sown pastureland.

• Burning stubble after harvest.

There are also some positive steps you can take to control erosion.

1. Minimum tillage. The less you tear up the top layers of soil, the more resistant that soil is to water runoff. –Despite my last name, I encourage no-till whenever possible.

2. Stubble mulching. Putting that harvest waste back onto the ground provides an additional layer of insulation against environmental effects.

3. Contour cultivation. It’s not suited for all farmland, but it can reduce erosion by 25% to 90% when done properly.

4. Rotate foraging animals in fields before the pasture is depleted.

5. Plant filter strip in low lying gullies and runoff areas of your fields.

6. Plant grasses and small trees on those steep slopes.

7. Use strip cropping to control erosion in windy areas.

8. Consider using a cover crop (especially legumes) during off season times.

9. Plant tree line windbreaks, or keep the ones you’ve got.

By controlling erosion on the farm, you preserve the value of your land and prevent yields from declining over time.

4 Tips to Cut Your Farm Operating Costs

Looking to boost your farm’s income over the next few years? You can always hope for higher commodity prices – although things have been softening up there recently so that might not be a winning strategy. Unlike some other businesses, farmers generally don’t get much input in the prices they receive for their products. So improving the farm’s bottom line generally means either making and selling more product, or cutting costs. Here are a few ideas for doing the latter.

Tip 1: Go Organic

Organic farming techniques are more labor-intensive, but zero out some of your largest line-item costs. No pesticide spray passes, no weedkiller applications – it adds up. If you’ve got more time/hands than you have work, and less money than you have bills, a switch to organic production methods can make hard financial sense.

Tip 2: Let Mother Nature Feed Them

If you’re maintaining a dairy herd, consider moving to natural pasturage rather than confining your herd and providing the feed. This interesting article details some of the findings of research around grazing, and it may surprise you. The conventional wisdom is that naturally grazed cows produce less milk – and they do. The surprising part is, they don’t produce much less milk – and the net financial output per cow is as much as two or three times higher, even after taking into account the increased management work of keeping track of pasturage and moving animals around.

Natural grazing doesn’t just mean letting the herd out onto the first open field you see and trusting to luck – you’ll need to understand what your soil conditions are, ensure that there’s enough nutritional energy in the available forage, etc.

Tip 3: Get Bigger or Change Businesses

The simple truth is that for conventional farming techniques, small herds lose money. If a herd has less than 500 animals, then you’re not likely to be at the break-even point for your fixed operational costs. If you can expand into the profitable range, then that might be worth looking into. If you can switch to organic production, that’s one way to keep a small herd viable. Otherwise, sell your small herd and the associated equipment and use the money to optimize your other farming activities.

Tip 4: Get a New Lease on Life

If you are leasing your land, one way to cut costs is to change the terms of your lease. Rather than a cash arrangement, consider going to a share-lease arrangement. The downside is that if you have a great year, you don’t keep all the profits – but the upside is that a portion of your operational costs get charged to the landlord instead of to your bottom line. If your farm steadily makes a profit, this is a bad option – but if like most farmers you have good years and bad, then a share-lease can make the bad years much more survivable.

Russian Agriculture, The Come Back Kid?

Agriculture in Russia has a long and often tragic history. This interesting article in the New York Times (not my usual source for cutting-edge agriculture news!) talks about how the wheel has turned around – what once were individual peasant farms, then noble estates, then savagely collectivized national farms, are now on track for global agricultural development. The collective farm system, one of the last vestiges of communism, is finally on the verge of being swept away.

Foreign investors are beginning to buy millions of hectares of prime Russian farmland. What earnest Russian political reform efforts proved unable to accomplish, massive world market price increases on staple agricultural commodities has brought into being. Because of the inefficiencies of the collective farm system, a sixth of Russia’s arable land – nearly 35 million acres – has remained fallow for years, if not decades. The price of food has risen so much that these acres were coming back into cultivation even with the tiny Russian yields enjoyed by Russian farms (yields owed to poor access to chemicals and infrastructure, not weather or soil quality).

The collective farms are being reorganized – not into small freeholds as original reformers had envisioned – but into enormous clusters of consolidated farms, run by corporate organizations. Western-educated Russian industrial oligarchs, hedge fund managers, and investors are bringing Western capital and technology to this acreage. Yields have doubled on investors’ plots, and almost a seventh of Russia’s land has been brought into the consolidated system.

There is still looming peril that has limited outside investor’s enthusiasm – unlike a software company or even an industrial concern, a farm cannot pick up and move when the local government gets acquisitive or overly assertive. Many analysts warn that a renationalization of the Russian farm industry is not only possible but may even be likely.

Follow Up; Mexican Salmonella Peppers

About a month ago, I reported on the false connection of tomatoes to the salmonella outbreak, and how it turned out to be peppers imported from Mexico that were the source of the infection. Now it seems that not only were the Mexican peppers the source of the problem, but that Federal border inspectors have been turning back Mexican produce imports for months.

FDA officials told reporters during the salmonella crisis that they hadn’t looked at Mexican produce imports because they didn’t know there were problems there. Yet according to an Associated Press analysis, the FDA’s own records clearly show that shipments of Mexican peppers and chilies were regularly turned away at the border for being literally filthy and disease-ridden for months prior to the outbreak.

Between January and the AP’s record review in August, 88 shipments of fresh or dried chilies and peppers were turned away at the border. Ten percent of those shipments were turned away because they were contaminated by salmonella. In July alone, six shipments of fresh jalapenos were found to be contaminated with salmonella. The FDA has offered no explanation for the discrepancy between these statistics, and the statements of Dr. David Acheson, FDA’s food safety chief, that peppers and chilies had not been a source of concern for the FDA because they hadn’t seen problems with those products.

Almost 500,000 tons of Mexican peppers are imported annually, and only about 1% of those shipments are inspected. In August, the FDA finally put about a dozen Mexican food producers on its watch list, meaning that their products would have a higher chance of being screened.

Again, I believe that this points to the importance of produce labeling requirements – (Country of Origin Labeling; COOL) - consumers have a right to know where the food they are eating came from. When particular countries have health risks associated with their products, then consumers need to be able to make informed and rational decisions about what to buy.

Farmers Get Diversified to Gain Stability

Many farmers find that vertically integrating their product lines is an excellent way to increase profitability. In the case of Pat and Sharlene Daninger, owners of the Autumnwood Farm in Forest Lake, Minnesota, it’s saved the farm that’s been in their family for 100 years.

The Daningers decided to open an organic creamery on-site, and after just six months in operation they are selling around 500 gallons of milk a week. A dozen stores in Minneapolis sell their products, and there is also a retail shop at the farm itself, stocked with half-gallon bottles of milk and chocolate milk.

Locally-produced and hormone-free, the Daninger’s creamery experiment has been a lot of work. “We knew how to get the milk out of the cows, but nothing about processing,” Pat Daninger said. “It’s labor-intensive. But to hear people say, ‘This is the best milk I’ve had,’ that makes you feel like you’re doing a service to the community.”

Pat Daninger’s family has worked Autumnwood Farm since 1982, when his grandparents immigrated from Austria. Pat and Sharlene took over in 1982 – and realized that they would need to enhance the farm’s revenue stream to keep afloat. Expanding their dairy farm was one option – but when your farm is surrounded by suburban development, additional acreage is impossible to acquire. However, the Daninger’s realized that their problem was also their opportunity – all those houses, all those people, were customers for the products they produced on their farm. While giving tours of the farm to local schools, the question kept coming up – “can we buy milk from your farm?”

That inspired the creamery venture. It took a lot of research and planning, and a $500,000 mortgage, but the Daninger’s are now in the finished milk business using their own dairy herd as the raw material. The Daninger’s teenage children help with deliveries, manning the store, and stocking. 14-year old son Nathan was even moved to start his own beef operation, selling the meat in the family store.

Next time you have a nice glass of milk, raise a glass to the Daninger’s and their venture. It’s exciting to see farmers getting control of the process and ensuring their own financial futures.

US Farmers Help Hungry Africans

Farmers feed the world – and in the case of Amazeing Grace, a coalition of Iowa farms, businesses and churches, they feed some of the world’s poorest people. Amazeing Grace supports agricultural development programs in sub-Saharan Africa, the Caribbean, Central America, and in developing countries all around the world.

A twenty-acre cornfield in Grundy County, Iowa, is the latest addition to Amazeing Grace’s donor base. The charity doesn’t ship food to the developing world – that’s not cost-effective. Instead, they sell donated crops on the US market, supplement the funds with donations from other sources, and contribute the money to development programs in the poorest nations on earth through the Foods Resource Bank. The money goes much farther than it would here, and supports local farmers and local food producers instead of undercutting their markets, as many direct food donation programs often unintentionally do.

Amazeing Grace focuses on self-help programs, teaching small farmers around the world how to enhance their incomes and provide educational opportunities for their children. The Foods Resource Bank started in 1999 and consists of 15 Christian denominations (or their aid agencies) that fund projects that supply seeds, livestock, tools, and – most importantly – advanced agronomical knowledge to help poor farmers feed themselves.

The foods bank raised more than $2.6 million last year, through crop donations, private donations, and other funding sources. Last year, Amazeing Grace had 74 acres of corn donated by two Iowa farmers. The harvest of 189 bushels an acre raised more than $60,000 for the food bank.

If you’re interested in working with this charitable organization, they can be contacted via their website, www.foodsresourcebank.org.

Side note to this blog post: I have some friends that run an organization called the Cunningham Foundation. They are extremely active in providing help to the poor orphaned children of Africa.  Although they don’t have a huge agricultural component, I can tell you this; I know them well. I trust their organization, and I encourage you to also check out their website to learn more about what you could do to help.  Please visit http://www.cunninghamfoundation.org

Government, Farming, & Knowing Your Soil – Lessons Learned

There’s an interesting article about soil problems around the world in the online National Geographic. (Soil problems! Water crisis! Fuel shortages! I swear, I will find some good news to report on this month.)

The author visited the Wisconsin Farm Technology Days (lucky stiff, I had to miss it this year) and used that as the jumping off point for talking about soil issues. This being National Geographic, there was a lot more about China and Burkina Faso than about Wisconsin – but some of the lessons he picked up apply here as well.

The most interesting part of the article for me is the way that local farmers, using their own expertise and knowledge of the conditions on their own plot of land, have vastly outperformed government mandates for soil conservation. (In fact, in China, the government actually told farmers to take measures that ended up destroying soil and increasing erosion greatly in an attempt to boost yield – talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!)  Among many stories told in the National Geographic piece:

One farmer in the Sahel, the semi-arid zone south of the Sahara in Africa, rebuilt his compacted, overworked land bit by bit. He started with “cordons pierreux”, a clever and simple technique well-suited to the low-infrastructure African farming environment. To build a cordons pierreux , a farmer builds a line of rocks across the path of rainfall runoff. The rocks hold the water back and let it percolate into the Sahel’s damaged soil. Suspended silt in the rainfall settles back onto the soil rather than running off, and over time seeds that are caught by the rock line turn it into a line of plants, which then serve as a permanent water retention system.

The farmer, Yacouba Sawadogo, then used the downtime of the dry season to use a traditional technique for land reclamation. He hacked thousands of holes in the land with his hoe, about one feet deep, and filled them with manure. The manure attracted insects, which dug through the surrounding soil and greatly increased the aeration and looseness of the earth. He then planted trees in the holes, and planted millet in the spaces between the trees, converting what had been an arid wasteland into a productive forest/farm combination. The technique spread, and soon many people in his region were reclaiming their land as well. Unfortunately for Sawadogo, it worked so well that the local government ended up claiming the forest and redistributing it among local farmers – leaving him with one tiny parcel of the wealth he had created.

That points to the importance of government in the process – for good and for ill. A civil government that respects the knowledge and skill of the local farmers can be a force for good, providing the stability that farmers need in order to make it worth their while to practice good land management. A government that sends down irrational mandates or, worse yet, punishes labor by appropriation, makes it foolish for farmers to do anything but maximize their immediate profit. Yacouba Sawadogo is unlikely to create any more forests.

Water – For Agricultural Use, Change is Inevitable

There is no solution to the water problem. Instead, there is a set of solutions and approaches that, taken together, will improve humanity’s ability to manage this most precious of commodities. Anyone who reads about the water problem quickly realizes that many of the people pushing the “crisis” are also pushing an agenda. Socialists think the water crisis means that the government needs to nationalize the water table. Capitalists think that everything should be privatized. Even farmers have an agenda, and it probably involves making sure that agriculture is #1 on the priority list for water.

There will undoubtedly be some structural changes in the way that water is managed – and whether that means privatizing decrepit and mismanaged public systems or creating markets to set rational prices for water or investing the billions it will take to put public water systems on a sound footing is more a question of local conditions than it is of the ideological merits of various forms of management. The truth is that, as with our energy problem, we’re going to need to try a lot of different approaches and ideas.

Fortunately, people are already applying their ingenuity to the water situation, both on the local level and on a global scale. Some municipalities are shipping in fresh water from nearby ports that have a surplus. Activists are raising public awareness of the water problem with traveling exhibits encouraging conservation and more responsible use of water. Wild-eyed geniuses are developing technologies to literally pull pure clean water out of the air – or just collecting the incredible bounty that often falls on developed land and then runs straight into the sea. Other organizations take a larger scale approach, urging the adoption of better irrigation techniques and conservation in the developing world. (where much irrigation water is wasted because the water infrastructure is so primitive)

From an agricultural point of view, there are two key points to keep in mind. One is that water for irrigation, over the long run, must come from sustainable sources. We cannot indefinitely “mine” the aquifers, nor will urban populations accept the diversion of drinking water into the fields past a certain point. Water for agriculture is an incredibly important priority, but it is not the only priority. The second point is that solving the water problem is going to require changes both on the large scale and at the level of the individual farm. Farmers, whether in Oklahoma or Thailand or Zaire, cannot rely on irrigation techniques that put more of the water into gulleys than onto productive fields. Many US farmers are already highly efficient in their water use, but others have become accustomed to plentiful cheap, or even free, water because of local weather or because of fortuitous water treaties and agreements that were made in decades or even centuries past. Many of those agreements are simply going to change, whether farmers wish them to or not; it would be wise for farmers to understand the changes that are coming and make adjustments in advance, rather than being taken by surprise.

In coming weeks, I will have some posts on the types of things that farmers can do to improve their water use, saving both the water and in many cases, a lot of money. From tillage techniques to land-use planning, there are a lot of ways for a farm to make better use of the water it has access to – and the better the use we make of what we have, the more likely we are to be able to keep using it in the future.

Previous post on this Topic Series Below

August 15, 2008: Water – 80% to 90% of Global Freshwater Used for Irrigation; Sustainable?

August 6, 2008: Water – Agriculture and Changing Weather Patterns

July 30, 2008: Water – US Farmers, Count Your Blessings

July 23, 2008: Water - The Next Farm Crisis  

Algae Farming Continued, Thoughts from an Expert

I have a treat for all of you that expressed an interest in my Algae Farming piece from June 9, 2008. 

Mark Edwards, a professor at Arizona State University, has provided us with his speaker notes on Green Algae Strategy: Engineer Sustainable Food and Biofuels which summarizes his many years of research on algae production for food, fuel and other coproducts and solutions.  Mark said, “Algae is not a silver bullet for energy independence and I say in paragraph #2 that energy solutions will be a suite of renewables.  I believe algae present an important piece in the energy and food puzzle.  Algae will play a pivotal role in liquid transportation fuels.”

I have reviewed Marks materials and while I can’t say I agree with all of his comments, (example: “End Subsidies Now!”) I can tell you that he has provided some thought provoking research that has truly opened my eyes to the raw potential that algae provides.  His research is extensive, robust, and comprehensive and deserves further consideration by all of us. 

I have provided links to four (4) PDF documents below.  Please check them out. 

Speaker Notes: http://alextiller.com/agribusiness_resource/green_algae_strategy_paper.pdf

Additional Information:

http://alextiller.com/agribusiness_resource/green_algae_supplemental_1.pdf

http://alextiller.com/agribusiness_resource/green_algae_supplemental_2.pdf

http://alextiller.com/agribusiness_resource/mark_edwards_speaker_brief_2008.pdf

If you like Mark’s work or want to learn more, he also has a book called Green Algae Strategy available for purchase on Amazon.

Farming Alternative Fuels

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, this is NOT the “alternative fuels” blog. But I keep finding these great information resources about the viability of ethanol and other alcohol fuels, and I really think this is something that is important to farmers. The agriculture sector is already an important player in the energy economy and that trend is gong to get stronger.

A lot of people are a bit at sea about what the new fuels are, and how they’ll work or be produced. I was going to create a summary, but then the nice people at Popular Mechanics went and did it for me. They break out the current research and development into seven basic fuels. I won’t repeat what they say about the various production methods and research breakthroughs that will be needed but I’ll talk about the impact on agriculture and what these fuels mean for farmers.

The first two fuels are our old friend ethanol – cellulosic ethanol, to be specific. PM calls this two different fuels because there are two different ways to make it – one biological, where enzymes “cook” the cellulose into simple sugars, and a gasification method where extremely high temperatures are used to break down the feedstock into synthetic gas. Cellulosic ethanol is likely to be a boon for agriculture because it will use waste material that has no economic value right now. When cellulosic ethanol is viable (probably in the early 2010s) it will mean every farmer has two harvests, one for the primary crop, and another to sweep up the detritus (cornstalks, broken plants, etc.) for shipment to the ethanol plant.

Algal biodiesel is produced by having genetically-modified algae plants convert waste CO2 from CO2-intensive industries like power plants into an oil-like sludge that can then be processed into diesel fuel. This is an exciting technology from the environmental point of view but doesn’t have much impact on farmers, who won’t be producing the CO2 the process requires.

“Green gasoline” is a produced by taking cellulosic feedstocks or sugarcane and using a catalytic reaction to create high-powered hydrocarbon fuel. This one will be good for farmers (especially sugar growers) but like cellulosic ethanol, we have to get the costs of breaking down the cellulosic feedstock into a reasonable range before the economics work.

Biobutanol is a high-energy alcohol fuel derived from sugary feedstock – again, cellulose after we invent some new technologies or sugarcane today – produced by genetically modified microbes that essentially excrete long-chain hydrocarbons. Butanol is a great fuel for current infrastructure because we can use existing pipelines to move it around.

Designer hydrocarbons use simple, tiny organisms which have been genetically modified to turn sugar into fuel. The difference is that with the right genetic engineering, it might be possible to produce fuels chemically identical to the fuels we use today – a big advantage in terms of infrastructure and being able to fuel existing vehicles right out of the vat.

“Fourth generation fuels” is a buzz phrase that essentially just means algal biodiesel, but with additional genetic manipulation. Current algal biodiesel requires a processing phase where the oil-bearing algae are centrifuged or pressed to extract the oil; it should be possible to engineer the organisms to excrete the oil, however, meaning that processing would simply involve skimming off the floating oil from the algae tank.

Environmentally, the algae- and microbe-based fuels are better because we don’t have to use any existing farmland to produce the fuel. Economically, however, those techniques aren’t likely to do the entire job on their own, and crop-based feedstocks will provide the bulk of the energy budget. That will mean better revenue per acre for farmers, as the new fuel techniques will produce a strong and permanent demand both for waste material from food crops, as well as creating new potential for high-energy cellulosic crops like switchgrass. It is an exciting time to be a farmer!