Copyright © 1998 by Bill Drake
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Tobacco thrives on poor quality soils, but doesn't produce good smoking leaf on these soils without extensive fertilizing. However for biomass production leaf quality isn't an issue, and biomass tobacco can be produced on marginal lands not useful for other agriculture.
Because biomass tobacco is harvested every couple of weeks from freshly-coppicing shoots there is minimal nicotine in the materials. Animals are not harmed or negatively affected by such small amounts. In addition, trials with ethanol production from tobacco in Virginia in 1984 show no negative impact of nicotine on the fermentation process.
Biomass productivity of tobacco also appears to be unrelated to the nicotine content. The NCSU biomass project grew @ 30 varieties, both high nicotine and low nicotine genotypes, and there was no relationship between biomass yield and nicotine content.
What makes biomass tobacco unsmokable is the fact that the leaf flavor components never develop due to crowded growing conditions and low soil nutrients, and the stuff tastes awful. Exactly like Nebraska and Minnesota roadside cannabis - maybe worse. So diversion into commercial channels isn't remotely possible.
When grown for smoking purposes tobacco has some specific soil/climate requirements. When grown for biomass, tobacco thrives under a very wide range of conditions, including the extreme northern & southern temperate zones. Tobacco grown for biomass should produce particularly superior yields throughout much of China, India, and Africa
When grown for smoking tobacco is a labor intensive crop. When produced for biomass, NCSU trials have shown that mechanized labor is a minor cost factor in production, and there is no significant hand labor involved.
When grown for smoking, tobacco needs many different chemicals, but when grown for biomass, none are needed. Biomass tobacco is literally grown like a weed, and trials have shown that minimal chemical treatments are needed.
Tobacco does harbor some potentially destructive plant viruses and molds, and it will probably be necessary to separate biomass production from certain other crops such as tomatoes.
This is true of smoking tobacco, but not of biomass tobacco, which is harvested and processed just like any other biomass material.
Smoking tobacco production results in a high value per pound, whereas biomass tobacco production results in a very low cost per ton - comparable with sugar cane bagasse but much higher in energy potential.
They will quite likely be very low, since tobacco cellulose has very low lignin encasement and the sugars are the most easily fermented kinds.
If you are delivering biomass tobacco to a central bioenergy processing facility, you will certainly add cost. However, because of the interplay of low cost and high yield from small acreage biomass tobacco doesn't have to be transported in order to reach critical mass for cost effective processing.
Since tobacco will produce between 100-400 tons/acre, and since it can be grown virtually anywhere, transportation costs will actually be much lower than most other biomass materials. I think it's more important to note that the data strongly suggests that with very small acreage devoted to biomass production, an individual farmer/rancher can produce enough manure economically enough to make energy independence a cost-effective reality.
This is in contrast to all scenarios involving industrial biomass resources like corn, with such small per-acre yields that transportation to a central point for bioenergy production is necessary because of the required economies of scale.
Only if you are concerned about holding a quota for smoking tobacco production, otherwise there are no restrictions on growing tobacco anywhere in the US or, to the best of my knowledge, in the rest of the world. The Quota and related regulations apply only if you are growing tobacco for sale into the regulated market AND if you want a subsidy.
Since nobody has ever anticipated anyone growing tobacco who didn't want that subsidy, and the guaranteed market, the regulators may be in a tizzy at first about biomass tobacco grown for on-farm animal feed and bioenergy production.
Only specialty seeds. Each tobacco plant produces between 200,000-500,000 seeds so there is no problem producing enough seed for many acres of biomass tobacco on a few square meters of seedbed.
I can't answer that. What is the nature of illusion? People still talk about the sun rising and setting, hundreds of years after the scientific revolution. I don't know why the initial enthusiasm for producing energy AND protein died away and communication stopped.
I also don't know why tobacco has never been investigated for bioenergy potential, while all other conventional crop plants and hundreds of obscure plants have been thoroughly assessed. I also know that the biomass tobacco work was aimed at tobacco protein extraction only, and has largely ceased. And I do know that the tobacco industry is, to say the least, uninterested in alternative uses for tobacco that it can't control.
The NCSU biomass project data (1979-1984) establishes that yields of 70-80 MT/acre are routinely achievable in a mid-length growing season.
In a letter to me in 1984 Ray Long estimated that 150-200MT/acre would be possible in a 180 day season like Texas.
I have seen, but don't have, records of an insecticide manufacturing company in Albuquerque N.M. in the 1920s which produced several years of crops of N. Rustica at @ 300 Tons/Acre in bottomlands alongside the Rio Grande. This leads me to conclude that 100 Tons/Acre is a reasonable average tobacco biomass expectation across a fairly broad environmental range.
Based on the five years of NCSU data, $2000/acre is a reasonable mid-range figure for biomass tobacco production. However, a major cost component in the NCSU data is agricultural chemicals, including soil treatments and specialty pesticides. The NCSU researchers concluded that most of the chemical expenses would not be needed in a production setting. I believe that costs of $1000/acre without most of the chemicals but including real labor costs, are a reasonable estimate. At 100 tons/acre that's $10/ton.
Dry weight ranges between 10 - 20% of green (wet) weight depending upon the development stage of the coppicing shoots at cutting and environmental variables.