Peoria Pundit

(press release)

Area Farmers and Scientists Discuss Pennycress Planting Plans for Fall

Peoria, IL – (September 4, 2008) Wednesday, September 3rd, local farmers, scientists and members of BioFuels Manufacturing Illinois, Incorporated (BMI) met at the Peoria NEXT Innovation Center to discuss planting plans for a Pennycress crop this fall. Pennycress is a winter annual in the mustard family and is a common weed throughout the United States. Pennycress seeds are 36% oil, making them highly attractive for creating biofuels and bioproducts.

BMI President & CEO Sudhir Seth, asked farmers to volunteer between three and five acres of their land for this winter’s Pennycress crop for further research. Seth said, “By partnering with BMI on this project farmers will be helping discredit the food versus fuel argument for bio fuels. Pennycress is not a crop used for food therefore it is not taking food off the table.” Another benefit according to Seth, “Pennycress is a winter crop it offers farmers an alternate source of income in their off-season and it can be planted in rotation with other winter annuals like winter wheat.”

Scientists from the USDA AG Lab and Western Illinois University shared their latest test results on the crop with prospective farmers. Terry Isbell, lead researcher for the new crops and processing technology group at the National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research in Peoria, said “If we were to plant Pennycress, in all the available soybean fields for a winter crop, we could see nearly 6.5 billion gallons of additional diesel produced domestically without upsetting the current planting schedules for farmers.”

Fred Lutzi, Research Agronomist with Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs at WIU, said that while the information is based on preliminary field research and field trials, many numbers will change when full scale research and production take place. However, the results look promising. Iutzi says the crop can be planted from mid-September to early November with harvest dates from late May to early July. He explained to farmers that their current equipment will need some minor modifications because the seed is quite small and must be planted very shallow in the ground, but can easily be used for planting, harvesting and transportation of Pennycress.

Seth said he is hoping to have 150 acres of Pennycress planted this winter and has received positive response from area farmers showing interest in planting the crop as soon as late this month. Seth says BMI plans to develop, own and operate a 45MGY biodiesel production facility in Mapleton and to scale it up to 60MGY in the next two years. Seth plans to use the oil from Pennycress to develop a cost effective & sustainable feedstock. This facility would be the only bio-diesel plant within 100 miles of Central Illinois, making it a strategic location.

This entry was posted on September 5, 2008 at 1:01 am and is filed under Local with tags bio-diesel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Both comments and pings are currently closed.