I think I married Captain Planet?

Nate came home one night not too long ago and offered a few scary words.

“Karyn,” he said. “I have a million dollar idea.”

I’m probably exaggerating slightly. Although his ideas can be a little off the mainstream, he’s batting about .500 in his money-saving ideas. He built his own sprinkler system last summer for the cows that impressed me, but the deer corn business flopped a few falls ago.

“Here we go again,” I told Nate as I closed my book to give him my full attention. Now I will admit, I sort of hesitate to talk about this because it’s very preliminary, but I do believe it’s a good idea that has the potential to help farmers a lot. For that reason, it’s important enough to discuss even if some of you farmers out there borrow his idea. Actually, his idea is already on loan. He showed me an article in The Country Today about farmers in Barron County who are growing their own diesel fuel.

There farmers are growing canola and sunflowers, both high oil crops, and pressing them to extract the magic juice. That oil is then mixed with a few other ingredients to make biodiesel. Biodiesel is a clean, safe, ready-to-use, alternative fuel. It burns cleaner than traditional diesel, and actually helps clean all the gunk from the lines. That’s why plugged fuel filters are common the first few weeks of use. From the research I’ve done, it doesn’t look like any modifications are needed to our existing farm equipment to use it. Nate’s been doing a lot of reading on the subject since that fateful day a few weeks ago. He’d like to grow a small amount of sunflowers next year to test. We’re a little worried about bird damage and harvesting it, but not enough to deter Nate’s enthusiasm.

The processing will be the challenging part. Before all you farmers get all gung-ho and start spreading sunflower seeds on your corn fields, consider a press and mixing equipment costs well over $20,000, from what we’ve learned so far. Also, it takes a chunk of land. An acre of sunflowers yields about 90-100 gallons of oil, if it’s the high-oil variety. But we use over 5,000 gallons of diesel fuel a year. It’s pretty likely farm fuel is going to hit $3 a gallon. At that price, payback for the equipment will be less than two years. And we’ll have by-products. The leftover solids from pressing seeds can be fed to the cows. Biodiesel production also produces glycerin, the same ingredient as in soap. Nate has read glycerin can also be spread on fields to alter the pH of the soil like lime.

Nate also hopes to get a partner in the deal and is researching grant opportunities. We have connections in the DATCP and the UW-Extension, so I’m hoping that will pay off. With fuel prices now reaching the sickening level, I encourage all farmers to consider how they can help prevent an energy crisis. With digesters and biodiesel, dairy farmers can make their own clean energy right in this area.