Crop residue supply for energy generation: A prototype application to midwestern U.S.A. grain farms

Economic Impact of Harvesting Corn Stover under Time Constraint: The Case of North Dakota

“…In their model, they considered the sensitivity of grain and residue collection to the availability of days suitable for field work at harvest time. Apland et al [12] employed the discrete stochastic programming model to examine the impact of production process, sequential decision making, and fall field time availability on crop residue supply in midwestern US grain farms. Recently, Erickson and Tyner [13] examined the economics of harvesting corn cobs for energy generation using their farm plan model.…”

Soil Management Implications of Producing Biofuel Feedstock

“…Harvesting only cobs would remove 3 to 10 kg N ha −1 (Table 24|3). Harvesting cellulosic feedstock removes plant nutrients and has the potential to reduce soil fertility (Apland et al, 1981;Smil, 1999;Lal, 2008). It is straightforward to determine nutrient removal from plant concentration and harvest rate, but more diffi cult to predict subsequent impacts on nutrient cycling and availability.…”

“…The importance of these eff ects also depends on the biomass price. Higher biomass prices increase the value of biomass production, so that it may be profi table to incur additional production costs, including paying higher nutrient replacement costs and making expenditures or production changes to reduce interference with grain harvest activities (Apland et al, 1981;Bender et al, 1984).…”

“…Other potential production changes include the use of cover crops (Anex et al, 2007) and changes in crop varieties or crop rotations to increase crop residue cover or biomass production, or to make biomass harvest more timely. Potential examples include changing from a corn-soybean to a continuous corn rotation to increase average biomass production (Sheehan et al, 2004), inclusion of perennial biomass crops in annual cropping systems (Anex et al, 2007), long-term conversion from annual crops to perennial crops (Varvel et al, 2008), or inclusion of wheat in rotation with corn to allow early fall straw harvest instead of late fall corn stover harvest (Apland et al, 1981). Policy analyses helped identify the production shi s that might occur across broad areas and a limited set of production alternatives (De La Torre Ugarte et al, 2003;Schneider and McCarl, 2003).…”

“…Traditional amendments such as inorganic fertilizer (Apland et al, 1981;Smil, 1999), animal manures, and composts (Kapkiyai et al, 1999), or unconventional amendments, such as pyrolysis char, gasifi cation ash, or other energy-processing residues (Reij nders, 2006) can be applied to replace removed nutrients and improve soil fertility. For example, in a Kenyan study, application of only dry manure (10 Mg ha −1 ) improved yield compared with applying comparable amount of inorganic N and P (Kapkiyai et al, 1999).…”