In a televised address to Congress on January 31, 2006, President George W. Bush detailed the pressing issues of our nation; among them, he singled out our dependence on foreign oil as a particularly worrisome and growing problem. President Bush also proposed developing non-petroleum based energy sources as a solution to this problem, and he mentioned, among others, switchgrass as one potential solution. Switchgrass—which is a native North American plant, thereby requiring little, if any, water-, land-, or animal-damaging fertilizers or pesticides—can be converted, as corn is, into vehicle-powering ethanol. In addition to reducing the demand for gasoline, ethanol derived from plants such as switchgrass provides the added environmental benefit of not augmenting the ozone-damaging problem of automobile carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions (plants absorb and use CO2 as they grow).
One expert on switchgrass, namely, Auburn University professor David Bransby, has reported that there are many native varieties of switchgrass in the United States, such that it can be easily grown from the lowlands of the coastal south to as far north as Canada, thus making it practical as a cash crop to a wide swath of American and Canadian farmers. It is also being grown and studied in Holland, England, Italy, Greece, and Germany, as the EU hopes to find it a viable, renewable energy source. Dr. Bransby has also reported that switchgrass has an energy exchange ratio of about one to four: for every one unit of energy it takes to grow and harvest a specific quantity of switchgrass, one obtains four units of, say, ethanol. Because it is a densely growing tall grass (some varieties grow to about ten feet tall, which has an additional benefit of providing habitat for deer, wild turkey, and quail), switchgrass yields per acre are high (Dr. Bransby reported yields of 1,500 bushels per acre). This could make it a highly profitable crop at today’s ethanol prices, and its widespread use as an alternative, renewable and environmentally friendly energy source would help to decrease gasoline consumption by increasing ethanol production. Native grasses also appear to be better for the global environment than are soybeans and corn. Growing and harvesting soybeans and corn (for example, for ethanol production) actually increases greenhouse gases in the atmosphere because CO2 is released into the atmosphere with these plants, whereas with native grasses the carbon dioxide stays out of the atmosphere (the CO2 remains initially in the roots where it is dispersed eventually into the soil). Ethanol from corn and soybeans is said to be CO2-positive on the environment (it adds CO2), whereas ethanol from switchgrass is carbon-negative.
Recently, researchers from Minnesota have found that growing a variety of native tall grasses on a parcel of land increases yields above and beyond that which is found when just growing one type of tall grass, such as one variety of switchgrass. Thus, even if Dr. Bransby’s reported yield of 1,500 bushels per acre of switchgrass production is on the optimistic end of crop production estimation, such a figure is probably a fairly reasonable, if conservative, estimate of what farmers could hope to produce if growing a mixture of native tall grasses for ethanol production. Five- to six-year yields at Auburn University’s test fields have averaged 23,000 dry pounds of switchgrass per acre (or 11.5 dry tons per acre).
Data obtained from the United States Department of Agriculture tells us that in 2005 there were 72.1 million acres in the United States devoted to soybeans, 57.229 million acres devoted to wheat, and 81.76 million acres devoted to feed corn (that is, the stuff fed to animals not humans). This is a total of about 211 million acres just for these three crops. It has also been reported that it takes about 20 pounds of switchgrass to make one gallon of ethanol; using Auburn University’s average yield of 23,000 pounds of switchgrass per acre, one acre of switchgrass could produce 1,150 gallons of ethanol yearly. Now, if American farmers would collectively switch just 2% of the acreage they committed to growing feed corn, wheat, and soybeans, and instead grow native tall grasses for ethanol production that would be a total of 4.22 million acres of farmland used to reduce greenhouse emissions and our foreign oil dependence. Converted to ethanol, this would mean a yearly domestic "harvest" of 4,953 million gallons of vehicle-powering ethanol for American consumption. This is domestically grown energy that keeps dollars from increasing our national debt by going to the Middle East instead of remaining in the United States; it is domestically grown energy that reduces, not increases, greenhouse gas emissions.
Aside from the altruistic motive of wanting to help the global environment, farmers would want to seriously consider switching to switchgrass first and foremost for purely economic reasons, since farmers are first and foremost businesswomen and men. As I have said, native tall grasses require little, if any, water-, land-, or animal-damaging fertilizers or pesticides. Although the agri-chemical industry would take a huge hit on the loss of fertilizer and pesticide sales to American switchgrass growers, the farmers would equally benefit from not having that financial expense. (Data available at the USDA's website shows that in 2005 about 96% of corn-planted acreage received nitrogen-type fertilizers. About 87% of the acres used to plant wheat and 20% of the acres used to plant soybeans in 2005 used the same type of fertilizers.) Less cost means more potential profit. In addition, farmers would have that much less personal body exposure to these fertilizers and pesticides which are health hazardous. Moreover, because native tall grasses can be grown in relatively wet and relatively arid regions, there is no need for irrigation which is another major business expense that would be avoided.
There is yet another major benefit to farmers for growing native grasses for ethanol production: the crop is anything but labor-intensive. It goes without saying that not needing to apply fertilizers and pesticides, and not needing to irrigate their switchgrass crop, our overworked American farmers can be a little less pressed for time if they begin to grow native grasses. There is yet another financial benefit to the switchgrass grower: there is no need to buy yearly seed, since the grasses are perennial. To be sure, the agri-chemical industry—an industry that profits from selling their patented seed to farmers—would financially suffer from our nation switching to switchgrass for ethanol production. It goes without saying that the petroleum industry and OPEC nations would also have their financial interests threatened as the United States gained its energy dependence from American farmers instead of from the world’s oil exporters. I’ll speak more about this later. First, however, I want to mention one more reality regarding switching to switchgrass. Ethanol-powered vehicles, unlike electric and plug-in electric-hybrid vehicles, require no re-tooling of infrastructure as far as the consumer is concerned. Using "switchgrass powered" cars, for example, does not require homes, parking lots, parking garages, and "gas stations" to be retro-fitted with electrical outlets. Having said that, it would be certainly better for the environment if the cars of tomorrow were all hybrid vehicles, particularly if the hybrid cars of the future would run on electricity and ethanol, rather than powered by gasoline and electricity.
Don't get too optimistic: there’s some problems with all of this.
Remember the man I mentioned earlier, the man who wisely singled out switchgrass as a source of renewable energy? The president. Well, Mr. Bush along with those members of Congress who, like Mr. Bush, are significantly influenced by the oil, coal, and agri-chemical industries will likely put the kibosh on switchgrass as a viable, large scale source of ethanol and/or augmentation to coal-burning power plants, while providing some money for its research. Maybe, the kibosh is already happening and we just don’t know it yet. Although information about switchgrass is readily available using simple Internet search engines, using the search engine on Bush’s USDA website provides nothing when searching for information about it. To me that’s incredible: almost a year after Bush touted the potential benefits of switchgrass the federal government’s agency in charge of agriculture is virtually silent on the topic aside from the USDA's small Biomass Research & Development Initiative.
There’s another problem too: getting the public educated about the potential value of switching to switchgrasses. Example: here at daily.kos a search of the word "switchgrass" provided (before posting this diary anyway) only one hit. And what a hit it was: mcjoan misidentifying it as a weed in April, 2006, and also debasing it by calling it "over-hyped" (there goes my chances of having this diary rescued!). Now, I very seriously doubt mcjoan was paid by a coal company to take such an uninformed swipe at switchgrass, but given mcjoan’s influence on this highly viewed website, it was the kind of statement that makes anti-environmentalists salivate. Americans cannot afford to be partisan or ignorant about our energy consumption, where it comes from, and how it has and will continue to degrade the global environment on which we are wholly dependent. Also we cannot afford to focus our attention to other pressing issues at the exclusion of global warming-related issues. Former President Jimmy Carter remarked in one of his recent books that the most dire issue this globe faces is the growing divide between the world’s rich and the poor. Mr. Carter is, in my opinion, a phenomenally intelligent person, and it would be a dream come true for me to converse with him; but, I disagree with him here. I believe that the most dire issue our planet faces today is the growing fragility of our very existence caused by man-made climate changes. So the American public, until it is educated, cannot hope to be a force against the powerful energy and agri-chemical industries that will continue to try to prevent alternative, renewable, and environmentally healthy energy sources.