[permaculture] Harvesting of prairie biomass for energy?

Toby Hemenway toby at patternliteracy.com
Fri Jan 26 09:46:20 EST 2007


I'm at an ag conference in Guelph, Ontario and just learned about
http://www.reap-canada.com

They harvest prairie biomass in early spring. Dried plants, pelletized and
burned without the ethanol step. 10:1 ERoEI compared to ethanol's 1:1, and
the prairie stays intact. 50lbs/acre of nitrogen added instead of corn's
160, and as they improve the mix of N-fixers that will improve further.
Convert all those cornfields back to prairie!

Toby
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Learn permaculture in a tropical food forest in Belize this February.
Details at http://patternliteracy.com
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On 1/25/07 6:15 PM, "Lawrence F.London, Jr."  wrote:

> Rael Bassan <rael at ...> writes:
> 
>> 
>> In a recent [Permaculture Forum (Upper Midwest)] post there was some
>> concern about the proposed harvesting of prairie biomass for energy,
>> suggested by the  Minnesota studies of David Tillman's group. According to
>> their analysis, using a prairie plant mixture of up to 14 species "comes
>> out 6 to 16 times better than corn grain ethanol or biodeisel [sic] ."
>> www.vnps.org/chapters/princewilliam/wildnewsjanfeb07.pdf
> 
> Doesn't hrvesting prairie plants for conversion to ethanol result in serious
> organic matter and accompanying soil microflora depetion in those soils?
> 
> LL
> 
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