Soybeans & Corn
at the Gas Pump

by Martha Jackson

For years, Gerry Hayden has raised soybeans, corn, wheat, and Angus cattle on his McLean County farm. This year he hopes to raise some fuel, too, when some of his soybeans are turned into biodiesel.

"The bottom line is that I hope it raises the price of soybeans," Hayden said about the increasing market for biodiesel. But Hayden, who is on the Kentucky Soybean Board, knows that "it will take awhile for the demand to increase enough to affect us that way."

Hayden's soybeans will go to Owensboro Grain, a family-owned business in Daviess County, which has a brand-spanking-new biodiesel plant next to its soybean oil refinery. (Commercial biodiesel is also produced by Griffin Industries near Butler in Northern Kentucky.) The Owensboro biodiesel plant is expected to be in full operation by the middle of this year.

That means a stronger soybean market for Kentucky producers. But that's not the only thing about biodiesel that Hayden likes.

"Another piece of the pie is that it's better for the environment, it's made in the U.S., and it's a renewable fuel," he said. "And it can help us get to be energy-independent."

Fueling the Economy

For Kentucky , the package gets even sweeter, because the Commonwealth sits on a vast treasure of natural, renewable resources that could serve as starter material to make biodiesel, ethanol, and other oil-based products.

Consider this:

• In 2005, Kentucky ranked 13th in the nation in corn production and 15th in soybean production.
  
  
• Nearly half of Kentucky is forested. That means an ample potential supply of waste from normal forest operations that might one day serve as starter for a renewable fuel source.
  
  
• Animal wastes also have potential for alternative fuels, and here, too, Kentucky could be a player. In 2005, it ranked among the top 20 states in the nation in the size of its major livestock industries.
  

Gerry Hayden and other farmers are seizing the day. Some of them are focusing on soybeans for biodiesel and others on raising corn for ethanol.

Western Kentucky farmers like Wayne McAtee (see sidebar) have markets for their corn with Commonwealth Agri-Energy, LLC, which is farmer-owned by the Hopkinsville Elevator Company and Kentucky Corn Plus cooperatives. Production began in 2004 and is now at more than 30 million gallons of ethanol a year.

But much more research has to be done to find ways to produce renewable fuels efficiently in Kentucky and elsewhere.

The UK College of Agriculture is in the thick of that research. Our scientists are collaborating across departments, with other colleges and research facilities at the University, with researchers at the University of Louisville , and with private industry.

The Research

Here's some of what's going on and who's involved:

• Sue Nokes, Czarena Crofcheck, and Mike Montross in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering and Herb Strobel in Animal and Food Sciences are working with nearly 60 other scientists in the land-grant system's southern region to build the science for alternative fuels and other bio-based industries. They also are developing the training for students who will work in this new frontier.
  
  
  
  
  
• Chad Lee in Plant and Soil Sciences, Montross, and Bill Pearce in the College's variety testing program are determining if certain corn hybrids are better for producing ethanol than others. They also are looking at how to grow corn and soybeans more efficiently, so that farmers could turn more profit as they produce the feedstocks for ethanol and biodiesel.
  
  
  
  
  
• Scott Shearer in Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, Montross, and Crofcheck are searching for ways to efficiently turn corn stover—everything but the grain—into ethanol. They are finding out which corn varieties and which parts of the stover would work best. They also are configuring various versions of a combine to see which version would be best to harvest the stover while leaving some on the field to ward off erosion.
  
  
• Herb Strobel in Animal and Food Sciences, Barbara Knutson in Chemical and Materials Engineering, Bert Lynn in Chemistry, and Nokes are analyzing how a specific bacterium (Clostridium thermocellum) works at high pressure and high temperatures. Their goal is to improve the use of bacteria to convert plant material to biofuels and other chemicals.
  
  
• Crofcheck and Mark Crocker from UK 's Center for Applied Energy Research are looking for a catalyst for biodiesel production that could be recycled instead of moving on to the next step of the process, where it would have to be extracted. Such a catalyst also would make production more automated and should help bring down production costs.
  
  
• Ling Yuan in Plant and Soil Sciences and the Kentucky Tobacco Research and Development Center (KTRDC) applies protein-engineering technologies to reduce the number of different enzymes needed to turn plant material into sugar, which is part of the ethanol-making process. He is also attempting to "rewire" bacterial gene networks to increase the hydrogen production for hydrogen fuel cells, which are another alternative fuel frontier.
  
  
• Yuan, Nokes, Montross, and Indu Maiti of the KTRDC are using transgenic plants as a factory for large-quantity and low-cost production of enzymes for turning plant biomass into sugar.
  
  
• The College has a memorandum of understanding with Owensboro Grain to work with that company to promote alternative uses for soybeans, including biodiesel.
  
  
• Montross and Shearer, with Darrell Taulbee and Rodney Andrews at the UK Center for Applied Energy Research, are figuring out how to make biomass briquettes from agricultural products, which could be used as an alternative fuel source.
  
  
• Crofcheck and Crocker are working on increasing the stability of bio-oils (the raw product used in making bio-fuels) so they could be more easily stored and transported.

Many say that the 21st century
will have a bio-based economy.
Kentucky is positioned to be a player
in that economy, with its growing
renewable fuels industry,
willing agricultural community,
vast natural resources, and
research that is pushing
bio-based industries forward.

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