01/25/07 Business plan for straw for ethanol

Farm and Ranch January 25, 2007 A group of southern Idaho growers has developed a business plan for providing grain straw for cellulosic ethanol production. Farmer Duane Grant was chairman of a committee that spent three years on the project. Grant: "The model we put together was that the growers would own the company that harvested, stored, ground and transported the straw. And then at the point it reached the refiner, title would pass to the refiner." Grant describes what would happen out in the field. Grant: "There is a lot of flexibility in our plan but essentially we envision using 4x4x8 one ton balers gathering up the straw on a ¼ section by ¼ section basis and then bringing a tub grinder to the field to powder the straw and then ship the powdered straw." Iogen may locate a cellulosic ethanol plant in southern Idaho and that's who the group of growers had in mind when developing their plan, but Grant says the model is transportable anywhere biomass is harvested in dry form. That is 15% moisture or lower. The price growers would receive for the straw was 45 dollars a ton delivered but that was based on the economics of 2003 when oil was only 30 dollars a barrel. Iogen had said 800-thousand tons of straw was the minimum needed annually for an economic scale of production but Grant says now that figure may be as low as 300-thousand to 400-thousand. I'm Bob Hoff and that's the Northwest Farm and Ranch Report on the Northwest Ag Information Network.