UC Davis Agronomy RIC | Agronomy Research and Information Center
The Agronomy Research and Information Center (AgRIC) is an outreach service, which provides research-based, comprehensive, and reliable information on California agronomic crops to the general public, industry, and governmental and private agencies. The agronomic crops comprise major food, fiber, and forage crops grown on six million acres in California.
These include alfalfa, winter cereals (barley, oats, wheat), corn, cotton, dry edible legumes, rice, safflower, sugarbeet, sunflower, and specialty crops (kenaf, lupin, and sesame).
Fueling speculation | Solano County Renewable Energy
Technorati Tags: Solano County,Renewable energy,biomass,algae,biodiesel,molasses,sugar beets,ethanol
After sitting through the General Plan meetings, it’s nice to see that the Solano County’s General Plan update will include a lot of attention to renewable energy.
Corn is used for ethanol because it’s the overall price leader to process. Using stockpiled sugar is even more cost effective. Looking into the byproducts of sugar shows that molasses has the cheapest total cost aside from corn.
As we’ve been discussing, obtaining ethanol from molasses has several orders of magnitude greater return rather than just simply breaking down sugar beets, a Solano County crop staple for years which grows well in the sandy clay loam found throughout the county.
Corn Hits $6 a Bushel on Tight Supplies
Corn prices have shot up nearly 30 percent this year amid dwindling stockpiles and surging demand for the grain used to feed livestock and make alternative fuels including ethanol. Prices are poised to go even higher after the U.S. government this week predicted that American farmers — the world’s biggest corn producers — will plant sharply less of the crop in 2008 compared to last year.
“It’s a demand-driven market and we may not be planting enough acres to supply demand, so that adds to the bullishness of corn,” said Elaine Kub, a grains analyst with DTN in Omaha, Neb.
Corn for the most actively traded May contract rose 4.25 cents to settle at $6 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, after earlier rising to $6.025 a bushel — a new all-time high.
Corn Hits $6 a Bushel on Tight Supplies: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance