Firms Eye Profits in Leftover Corn Plant Products

by Philip Brasher (Des Moines Register) ...Now, agribusiness companies Monsanto Co., Archer Daniels Midland Co. and Deere and Co. see profits in stover and are collaborating on research into economical ways of harvesting, processing and using the stuff, including as substitutes for petro-chemicals.

"We're back to the future," said Darrin Ihnen, who farms near Sioux Falls, S.D. He provides stover to a Poet LLC ethanol plant for powering the facility and has started feeding some to his cattle instead of alfalfa.

Stover already is valuable to farmers because it adds organic matter to the soil, boosts fertility and protects the ground from erosion. But the amount of stover being left in fields each fall is growing as corn yields increase, and it makes sense for farmers to find a way to make money off of it, because some of it needs to be removed anyway, the companies said. A 200-bushel-per-acre corn crop, which is common today, produces 3.8 dry tons of stover an acre. The 300-bushel crops of the future will produce 4.7 dry tons of stover, according to Monsanto, the seed giant.

"We're trying to figure out ways to convert stover from a management cost into a source of assets," said Mike Edgerton, a Monsanto official who recently briefed a National Research Council panel on the research. If there's too much of the crop residue on the ground, seeds may not germinate properly, and Monsanto estimates farmers spend $15 to $30 managing the stover. READ MORE