BIOENERGY: The crop that could save the Ontario farm

In 30 years, says one expert, half of Ontario’s farmland will be growing energy crops. And one big-time former cash cropper in Huron County is transforming his operation accordingly in the belief that this prediction is on the mark    

by DON STONEMAN

A motorist driving past a particular farm on highway 8, east of Clinton, in Huron County, sees a healthy crop of foxtail. Former cash crop farmer Don Nott sees energy -- and a new future for Ontario agriculture.

The weeds in the fields mask a thin, first-year stand of switchgrass. The fibrous perennial can be pelletized to make a renewable fuel grown with minimal inputs. Nott hopes to cultivate and process switchgrass for energy markets on a commercial scale. And agronomists familiar with the warm season grass assure him that as few as five plants per square yard in the planting year will become a full stand, capable of producing between eight and nine tonnes of biomass per acre in year three.

The heat produced by burning 300 acres of switchgrass in a modern pellet furnace will heat a one-acre greenhouse for a year. One acre will heat a house for the same period.

Roger Samson, executive director of Renewable Efficient Agriculture Production (REAP) Canada, at McGill University, predicts a gradual transition from agriculture to energy production in eastern North America. In 30 years, he thinks that half of the farmland in Ontario will be growing energy crops.

“Natural Resources Canada says that peak natural gas (production) will occur in 2011,” Samson says. After that, Canada may be relying upon shipments of Russian liquefied natural gas. “It is much easier for Ontario to import beef from outside the province than to import energy,” Samson says.

Nott is already selling crop-milling residues at prices 30 per cent below the cost of natural gas and 50 per cent below the cost of heating oil, says Samson. “There is cash flow. It is not really great,” says Nott. Potential profit from switchgrass is “an unknown.” The supply of crop milling residues is going to run out, says Samson. Ontario Hydro wants to use them to run power-generating plants instead of coal.

But generating power only collects 20 to 30 per cent of the energy in the biofuels. Combining heat and power generation is a much better use, he says. The pulp and paper industry already burns wood residues to generate electricity and produce heat needed at the mills.

Ted Cowan, policy advisor with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), warns that farmers shouldn’t get ahead of themselves by producing a fuel when there isn’t a market yet.

But Don Nott isn’t fazed. He sees a brighter future growing energy crops such as switchgrass than with traditional soybeans, corn and wheat. He knows all about the downfalls associated with those crops.

Until three years ago, Nott and his family farmed 12,000 acres of cash crop land. Some farms were 70 miles north and some were 70 miles south of their base east of Clinton. Returns from 2003 and 2004 crops took their toll on the farm’s finances. “I realized farming 12,000 acres was just entertainment,” says the 60-year-old.

So Nott signed off on rental agreements on thousands of acres of land and sold off several million dollars worth of equipment. Now he grows and sells 900 acres of hay and the Nott elevator east of Clinton processes white hilum soybeans destined for locally based Huron Commodities and the human consumption market. A third business, selling oat hull pellets to the horse market, has taken Nott on a new track. He began selling the same oat hull pellets to greenhouse operators seeking a substitute for high-priced natural gas. And, because he thinks switchgrass will serve that market and go far beyond, he has planted more than 300 acres. There are probably another 1,000 acres of switchgrass grown in Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes, Samson says.

Competitive with natural gas
Nott expects a three-year-old stand to yield 18 3x3x8-foot bales per acre, and he already has a 360-by-160-foot storage, enough to hold 13,000 bales. The switchgrass will be ground up, pelletized and burned in biomass burners.

A tonne of switchgrass produces about 18 gigajoules of energy. That’s equivalent to 459 cubic metres of natural gas, 486 litres of fuel oil, 702 litres of propane or 4,986 kW of electricity, according to Natural Resources Canada.

“I heat my house with pellets,” says Samson. He says his heating bill was cut in half. The conversion to pellet heat from electrical baseboard cost about $4,000. Samson says his heating bill was cut in half. Because electrical rates are rising steadily in Quebec he expects a payback on the conversion in six years.

Nott thinks biofuel production works from both an environmental and an energy point of view. Not only is growing corn, soybeans and wheat unprofitable, even with the current upward trend in markets; it also requires fossil fuels for planting, harvesting and weed control. Carbon is the big trend word in the environmental circles these days. Burning fossil fuels contributes to the greenhouse gases that lead to global warming. And it is expensive.

Growing switchgrass, on the other hand, “is carbon neutral,” Nott argues. “What we grow sucks up carbon and what we burn disperses it.” And handling the crop is energy-efficient compared to growing corn. A single switchgrass planting is good for 10-20 years.

Moreover, down the road, switchgrass has the potential to replace corn as a biomass source for ethanol. Corn is about 30 per cent efficient in producing ethanol, he says, while switchgrass is 90 per cent efficient.

 “The greenhouse industry has really jumped” on biofuel, Nott says. “They say they want to be environmentally friendly and they have a hedge against the price of natural gas going up.”

One of Nott’s customers is Branchton greenhouse operator Ken Tigchelaar (profiled in Better Farming, January 2006). Tigchelaar says Nott’s oat pellets are easier to work with and burn cleaner than does corn in the furnace that he and his wife Karen use to heat their greenhouse. They are dealers for one brand of furnace that burns either corn or pellets. Vineland-based Wayne Brown, a floriculture specialist with the Ontario agriculture ministry, says most large operators in the Niagara area still use natural gas. “It’s not something where we have seen a wholesale conversion,” he says. Smaller and medium-sized wholesale producers have adopted technology to burn grain milling products or corn.

The switch to switchgrass Clinton area farmer Don Nott bought his switchgrass seed from a company in Pennsylvania and planted it with a drill. “We picked (a variety) that is right for our heat units,” he says. He is testing planting switchgrass by itself and also as an underseed to oats. At first glance, the under-seeding seems to be a better bet. Not all of the seed germinates in the year that it was planted. That’s why the stands are uneven in the first season. Once it gets going, switchgrass grows more than seven feet tall, shading out any weeds that started with it. The ideal harvest method is still being developed. Roger Samson of McGill University’s Resource Efficient Agricultural Production (REAP) Canada told Nott to wait for a killing frost and then cut the crop let it dry in the field and bale it. Nott thinks it should be swathed and windrowed in the fall, and baled after it is turned over in April. Samson will test this technique over the winter at a farm near Ottawa, Nott says. Nott planted 326 acres of switchgrass, counting on the residual fertilizer that is in the ground. There is no harvestable crop the first year and a 70 per cent crop the next year. It will take three years of growth to get a fully productive crop. “You can cut it with a disc bine,” Nott says.Soils are fertilized to meet the nitrogen demand of the crop that is removed, Samson says. Sixty pounds of nitrogen per acre will sustain an eight to nine tonne crop of switchgrass. BF

Looking for biofuel partners
Demand for biomass fuels like switchgrass can only go up, Nott predicts. How will homes be heated in the future, when the natural gas supply runs out? he asks. “Ethanol won’t do it. Just imagine Toronto if you turn off the natural gas,” he says. Methane and butane might be replacements, but they would have to be produced in massive quantities.

“I think energy will save the farm. It will take a lot of time.”

Electrical heat is another possibility. “If push comes to shove, you’ve got to be warm,” he says. With this in mind, Nott is trying to find partners to join him in a project that would involve burning biofuel to generate electricity and also to use the heat that would otherwise be wasted.

“We are seriously looking at production of electricity, if (provincial regulators) will let us in the door.” Wind turbines can’t produce power at peak times all the time, Nott argues, whereas a biomass generator can be built where the power is needed - as long as the crop can be grown there to feed it.

“I have to be somewhere I can grow the fuel. We like to stay within 100 miles,” Nott says. “I have to be close to my market. I can’t ship to Florida.”

 “We see this as a major new strategy for rural Ontario,” Samson says. “We have surplus production capacity in agriculture. Farmers like Don only survived by getting bigger and now the bigger model doesn’t work any more.”

With 327 acres, Nott may be the largest switchgrass grower in eastern Canada. Samson says he knows of farmers in Manitoba, Quebec, Ontario and Nova Scotia who are growing another 1,000 acres of switchgrass. “We are looking at how we can scale up the fuel supply for an enormous biofuel market,” he says.

One limiting factor holding back bioheat and biogas production is government policy, which is aimed almost exclusively at ethanol, says Samson. “We aren’t saying, ‘Let’s have special subsidies for bioheat.’ We are saying, ‘Let’s have a level playing field in terms of renewable incentives for all of the bioenergy technologies and let the marketplace choose the winners.’”

Growing switchgrass is 7.5 times as effective per acre in abating greenhouse gases, as is growing corn for ethanol production, he stresses. Incentives similar to those afforded to ethanol would “take the risk away” from potential producers like Nott.

Even if a power generation plant were planned to burn switchgrass pellets it would likely take six years to get it on line. That’s the timeline for a 600-megawatt, natural gas electrical generation plant that will be built in the port area east of downtown Toronto.

Burning natural gas to make electricity still makes economic sense, at least in the short term, Cowan says, because the power will be used nearby. There’s no need to build costly transmission lines to get the power to users.

But Cowan thinks that the next plant built in Toronto should be fired with biofuels, whether it is switchgrass pellets or corncobs, for that matter. He muses that these biofuels might be a return cargo for the trucks that haul garbage to Michigan and, after 2011, to the landfill that the city purchased west of London. “If you are going to burn corn or switchgrass, it doesn’t matter if it’s being carried in a garbage truck,” he points out.

Better price needed
There are many pressures on governments to change how they are dealing with the issues of renewable energy. One advocate is Amherstburg energy consultant Garry Fortune, who wrote a brief in support of biogas producers to the committee that is developing regulations for the Standard Offer Contract, which sets prices for private sector electricity generation.

Biogas producers want and need a better price than the 11 cents per kilowatt that they were offered in the draft regulations, Fortune says, and biofuel producers do, too. Solar-powered generators are getting 43 cents under the draft standard offer rules that came down in the spring. The final decision on pricing power under the Standard Offer Contract was scheduled to be announced in November.

Cowan says it makes economic sense “provided that you are using enough fuel to justify the cost of conversion and provided that your operations schedule gives you time to convert.” Cowan notes that a year ago $100-worth of natural gas bought 6.5 million BTUs of heat while $100 spent on grain bought 15-17 million BTUs. Natural gas prices have come down and grain prices have gone up, but the results still aren’t that much different “when you do the math,” he says.

However, he warns that fuel crops will have to compete with other fuels. “Electricity generators will be built to burn any number of things,” he says, and they will be built where there is a market for electricity and for waste heat.

The gap between generating capacity and demand keeps growing, he points out. Demand is continuing to go up and the power supply is shrinking as aging generators are shut down more frequently for maintenance. There are six biodigesters in the province, he says, and the biggest one has capacity to generate about one megawatt of power - about as much as one big wind turbine. “It would take several thousand of these to add up to one gigawatt of power,” Cowan says. The province presently has generating capacity for about 28 gigawatts of power.

Nott says there are no government programs to help get his biomass project going. When governments say they are going to promote biofuel and clean air “they are the BSers of the world. Try to find a program you can get any money out of.”

Rather than looking to federal or provincial governments, Cowan prefers the local approach to getting government support. He thinks biofuel producers like Nott should be “making a lot of noise” about the advantages of generating electricity and heat from biofuel for public buildings in his local area. “It’s not just a little bit cheaper. Its half the price” of natural gas, he says. On top of that, biofuel supports local producers. Another possible market is the cement manufacturing industry, a big user of heat and electricity.

For all his enthusiasm, Nott accepts that that it may be years before this industry gets going. “Maybe I’m too early and starting gun’s not quite fired yet. “Will I live long enough to see it? I’m not sure.” BF

Don Nott
Roger Samson
Ted Cowan

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