Local Energy Independence

Folks around Medalia, Minnesota are taking a unique approach to biofuels (h/t Ritholtz):

Meschke thought she’d found the key to saving America’s prairie farmland: Third Crops. That was her term for, basically, anything that isn’t corn or soybeans. There was extra credit if it’s native and perennial. Her idea wasn’t unique. Some farmers already use a Third Crop system by rotating fields through corn first, soybeans second, and alfalfa or hay third, which helps keep the soil healthy and reduces the need for fertilizer. Yet Meschke wanted to take this further. First, she promoted planting a wider variety of Third Crops. When a lot of different plants are grown in one region, it becomes less of a Club Med for species-specific pests, which means a decreased need for farmers to buy expensive pesticides. Meschke also wanted farmers to put Third Crops on some land full time, not only in rotation schedules. Land that’s severely nutrient-deficient, land that’s sloped or has a lot of loose topsoil, and land that sits alongside creeks and drainage ditches could all benefit from the dense, water- and soil-retaining root systems of perennial plants.
The trouble for Meschke was how to make Third Crops profitable enough that farmers actually wanted to grow them. The perennials native to Minnesota’s prairie—mostly, various species of tall grasses—are fairly cheap to grow and are ecologically friendly, because they don’t need much fertilizer or irrigation, but they also aren’t worth very much. This was where Meschke’s interest in water quality and soil health dovetailed into her interest in local energy. There’s not really any money to be made in growing Third Crops for topsoil protection or to clean up a polluted stream. Meanwhile, large-scale biofuel production—which currently means corn ethanol—only adds to those ecological problems. You could grow native grasses and turn them into fuel. The technology already exists. In fact, there are many different ways to do the job. The problem is that so far, nobody’s been able to make any of those methods financially viable on a large scale—the kind of system that would allow big companies in the Midwest to produce barrels and barrels of fuel for use all across the country. To most people, that means corn-less biofuel simply isn’t ready for the real world yet. Linda Meschke, on the other hand, looked at that same problem and asked, “Why should people at Madelia worry about whether Florida has enough energy?”
A small refinery that could pay farmers for Third Crops, create some jobs for non-farmers, and produce enough fuel to sell within this one little region of Minnesota would do the trick, Meschke thought. Especially if gasoline prices continued to rise. If that wasn’t viable, she said, you could go smaller still. Even the opportunity to make fuel for their own use—a chance to save money, rather than earn it—could be enough to get at least a few more farmers growing Third Crops. Meschke supports local energy because it’s on the scale that prairie grass biofuel seems to work at, and because right now it offers the best opportunities to set the Madelia Model into motion.

It is an interesting concept, but current commodity prices and additional work will probably cause large farmers to resist.