Breaking the Cycle of “Agricultural Landfill”: Can Cellulosic Ethanol Offer a Path to More No-Till Farming?
by Jim Lane (Biofuels Digest) Could diverting agricultural residues for cellulosic ethanol solve the problem of tilling agricultural residues into the topsoil — and help provide a path towards pristine soils not seen since the days of prairie sod?
DuPont says, amidst the focus on renewable fuels, cellulosic ethanol’s potential contribution to sustainable agriculture can get overlooked. “The secret to soil health,” says DuPont’s John Pieper simply, in speaking with the Digest, “is that all the things above the ground should really stay above the ground, and all the things below the ground should stay below the ground. That’s Nature’s way, how it was intended.”
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Pieper pauses. There’s a problem. “But the farmer has to get some of the biomass off the field at the end of the season, in most areas. Some of that material is needed, but the more corn we produce by increasing yield, the more corn stover we’re producing, and the grower has to do something with it, and for many growers that means tilling it back into the ground.”
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There’s no one we know that believes that an infinite amount of biomass left on the field is a good idea for soil health and farm productivity. There’s some disagreement about exact amounts. But somewhere around 1 ton per acre is emerging as a consensus. And that’s where cellulosic biofuels can come in handy. You see, one of the reasons all the biomass is left on the field, and one of the reasons why growers are ultimately tilling, is that there’s no good economic use-case for the biomass.
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Today, it’s changing. Growers are realizing payments in the $70 per ton range for biomass, before harvest costs. Plus, improvements in soil productivity and consequent savings in fertilizer costs. That market is bringing biomass off the field, and ultimately encourages no-till farming, since there’s no biomass that needs to be “landfilled”. READ MORE
