permaculture

[Will Carey <cure@rtinet.com>]

Rob....

All I know about the subject is from this Mother Earth News Seminar I took
in '79 or so.  Check Chapter 6....

<http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_motherearth/meToC.html>

The fellows leading the seminar said that cattle "really love" that
stillage... It makes for a happier cows, I guess.  Something to do with
residual alcohol content or something.

It's assumed that you'd be harvesting the bamboo while "green" on an annual
basis.  Bamboo is, after all, a grass... Just like corn and sugar cane.
Which are great for alcohol production.  And corn's great for silage.

I'm not sure if all bamboos are good for this purpose, but I know that
they've done field trials for silage making. Try contacting Carol Miles at
WSU extension for the results of their studies.  Her email's at the bottom
of this web page:

<http://agsyst.wsu.edu/>

Her bio:
Dr. Carol Miles, WSU Vancouver Research and Extension Unit, investigates
vegetable crop production and alternative crops such as edamame, wasabi,
bamboo, and organic seed production. Work is targeted for both small-scale
and large commercial growers, with emphasis on organic production...

You can also try finding this, but it's published before their bamboo silage
trials:

Lewis, Daphne. 1995. Bamboo people promote bamboo as a food and fiber crop
for Northwest farmers. Pacific Northwest Sustainable Agriculture. December.
Vol. 7, No. 4. p. 4-5.

And check here...

<http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/bamboo.html>

....for a reference to bamboo as livestock forage under Bamboo Agroforestry

Carol Miles co-authored, with Daphne Lewis, a book about Bamboo for Farms...
But it hasn't been published yet, from what I know.   Daphne finished her
contribution about four years ago.

But here's the rest of the WSU bamboo research...

<http://agsyst.wsu.edu/BambooReport2002.pdf>

And here's Daphne's site...

<http://www.dogscooter.com/dogscooter/about.html>

Hope this helps.  

Will from Oregon.




on 1/29/06 08:53, permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org at
permaculture-request@lists.ibiblio.org wrote:

> To Will from Oregon,
> 
> I'm interested in this.
> 
> Could you say more about the "stillage" -- are you saying that bamboo is
> used for alcoholic fermentation, and then the alcohol goes to the stills
> while the bamboo skelatons are then processed by lactic acid fermentation
> microbes to produce a silage for cattle?? What on earth are the microbes
> using at that point, lignin?!?
> 
> It's an awesome concept - skimming alcohol before feeding instead of
> wasting methane after - but I requires more details to understand this.
> 
> Rob Scott
> Urbana, IL