05/30/07 Promising Biofuels Crop

Promising Biofuels Crop. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. It has been known by many names. Gold-of-pleasure, false flax, wild flax, linseed dodder, German sesame, and Siberian oilseed. Its real name is camelina sativa and it just may be an answer to our future fuel needs. According to Dr. Duane Johnson, Vice President for Agricultural Development with Great Plains in Montana says that camelina has been around for quite some time and does show great promise. JOHNSON: This one dates back to the Romans. It is a crop that is very low input. For the farmers that is going to be a huge issue right now, in terms of the oil itself it's an oil that is pretty high in omega-3 which makes it a little less desirable as a biodiesel fuel but actually we've found it's pretty easy to get around that. And so what we're looking at, with the lower inputs that means we can purchase it at a lower cost and we can pass that on to consumers at a lower cost. There's still that high value as an omega-3 option. Omega-3's are an essential fatty acid our bodies need. But Johnson says the main goal of Great Plains research is the biofuels market. JOHNSON: All our oil is basically designated for biodiesel. At this point in time we are still waiting  the Food and Drug Administration still have to approve camelina oil as an omega-3 for human consumption so at this point in time the only legitimate market is biodiesel. Camelina is being grown in several areas across the northwest and Johnson says it looks promising. JOHNSON: Our input costs are typically running between 45 and 60 dollars an acre which is about 20-25 dollars less than a spring wheat crop. In return what we're getting is an average is about 1500 pounds per acre of grain, you know of seed and that's going to have a value of around 10 cents a pound. So we're making 150 bucks gross and it costs us about  say 50 bucks an acre to produce that. Tomorrow we'll look at how camelina may impact the biofuels market. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.