Last Revised May 15, 2009
A Quick Profile of Tobacco as a Bioenergy Substrate/Feedstock
Let's begin by defining biomass tobacco and summarizing some of the main reasons I believe it should be seriously considered as a bioenergy resource. If you have questions or comments on any of the data, arguments or projections presented here, please don't hesitate to contact me.
Tobacco biomass is simply one or more conventional tobacco varieties planted very tightly together rather than spaced in neat little rows. When grown as biomass rather than for conventional use as tobacco products, tobacco has remarkable potential as a bioenergy resource, which we'll cover in detail.
It is important to emphasize right upfront that tobacco grown as biomass for bioenergy production might as well be a completely different plant from tobacco grown for conventional smoking products. Everything about the process, the purposes, and the outcome is completely different. So please don't let any of the impressions that you have of conventional tobacco, tobacco farming, or tobacco products get in the way of considering the evidence I am about to offer regarding tobacco as a bioenergy resource. After reading the evidence and arguments that follow, perhaps you'll agree with me that tobacco biomass is, everything considered, potentially far superior to all other purpose-grown bioenergy plant resources including corn and sugar cane.
But first let me deal with some of the objections/questions raised by thoughtful people when they first hear of the idea of using tobacco as a biomass feedstock for bioenergy production.
The first issue that crops up is that conventional tobacco is such a demanding crop, requiring all kinds of expensive infrastructure, large capital investment, great skill and expertise, and constant attention - how could such a crop be suitable for bioenergy production? The answer is, as just mentioned, that biomass tobacco is a completely different crop in every way. Please bear with me and I'll go into great detail on this subject.
Another commonly raised issue has to do with the pesticides and other agrichemicals used on conventional tobacco crops. Tobacco growers typically apply huge amounts of pesticides at every stage of the crop's development because they want to prevent damage to the valuable leaves. (We'll leave aside the damage that these pesticides cause to human health when the polluted leaves are smoked - I cover those issues in detail elsewhere on this site.) With only a few thousand plants per acre, each leaf on each plant represents a substantial investment for the conventional grower, and they see the use of expensive chemicals as a necessary cost of doing business - however wrong that may be. However, when tobacco is grown as biomass, the plant population is approximately 1.75 million plants per acre, and you really don't care if the bugs eat a ton or two. The cost of pesticides to prevent insect damage on a biomass tobacco crop would far exceed the cost of the relatively small loss they cause, and if the leaves have bug holes in them, so what - it doesn't affect their usefulness for bioenergy at all.
(Incidentally, at 1.75 million plants an acre, if biomass tobacco use for biogas and biofuels becomes widespread it will make a significant contribution to carbon sequestration on a global scale just in the process of growing, not to mention its contribution in replacing fossil fuels for transportation and electric power generation.)
A related concern often expressed by environmentally-conscious people is that tobacco biomass will deplete the soil of vital nutrients, requiring either extensive remediation or leaving behind a wasteland. While the tobacco plant is a heavy feeder, and while conventional tobacco production does remove lots of vital nutrients that have to be replaced before the next crop - usually using agrichemicals rather than natural methods - when tobacco is grown as biomass for bioenergy purposes, the residue of the biogas energy production process leaves behind materials that are high in available nitrogen and other nutrients, free of pathogens, and that make an excellent, organic soil amendment when re-applied to the land. Because biogas electricity can (but doesn't have to) use biomass tobacco along with animal manure as a co-substrate, the spent manure adds to the richness of the soil conditioning properties of the materials remaining after energy and byproduct production. The same is true to a large extent when the biomass is used for biofuel production, although since manure isn't used in this process the materials remaining after biofuel production are somewhat less potent as soil amendments.
Another question that often arises is whether biomass tobacco will require genetically altered, patented strains of tobacco that would allow big agrichemical corporations to dominate tobacco-based bioenergy. Quite simply - no. Non-GMO, non-hybridized conventional varieties of Virginia tobacco have been proven to produce excellent biomass results - and interestingly enough, Cuban cigar tobacco varieties will probably prove to be the very best for bioenergy production when all the testing and proving of the concept is completed. In addition, since a single tobacco plant produces between 300-500,000 seeds if allowed to go to seed, biomass tobacco growers can easily produce all the seed they will need next year simply by allowing a few plants to go to seed each season.
Experienced conventional tobacco growers have expressed doubt that tobacco can be successfully broadcast-seeded, citing the vulnerability of tobacco sprouts to drying out as they emerge. They have told me that tobacco MUST be started in a seedbed and then transplanted out into the field. While legitimate, their assertions ignore the fact that all Native American tobacco was broadcast-seeded, (usually mixed with ashes and sand) and the fact that all the North Carolina State University biomass trials (covered in detail later on) were broadcast seeded. There have also been numerous trials conducted - principally in Florida - where tobacco was successfully broadcast-seeded using a variety of methods. Now, there will clearly have to be some trial & error efforts made to establish the most productive broadcast seeding methods for large acreage biomass production, and the method may vary from one environment to another, but there is no question in my mind that using a combination of Native American methods, and those established in three years of NCSU biomass tobacco trials, broadcast seeding tobacco for biomass production will not prove to be a problem.
Questions also arise about where biomass tobacco can be grown - doesn't tobacco have very specific soil and climate requirements? Wouldn't biomass tobacco be limited to 'tobacco country'? Again - no. If you are growing tobacco for smoking then yes, there are all kinds of soil and climate considerations, but if you are growing it for bioenergy then it can be grown literally anywhere in the world. In fact, the only real consideration is the length of the growing season because the longer the season the more cuttings you can get and thus the greater the biomass production.
This means that biomass tobacco can be produced virtually anywhere in the US, and virtually anywhere in the world. Arguably the ideal regions in the US will be those with the longest growing season - Florida, the deep Gulf Coastal region, South Texas and California - but even in North Carolina with its medium-length growing season NCSU scientists were able to produce 60-70 tons/acre. Please just keep in mind that with biomass tobacco there's no such thing as 'tobacco country'. In fact, anywhere can be 'biomass tobacco country'.
A related concern is that, like the vast acreage of corn used to make ethanol, biomass tobacco will displace food crops. In fact biomass tobacco can be produced very effectively on land that is unsuitable for food production and, as you will see when you read further, a major co-product of biomass tobacco bioenergy production will be food-grade protein that is the equivalent in nutrition of soy or milk protein. This isn't to say that biomass tobacco is best produced on waste land unsuitable for food crops; the point is that it isn't necessary to displace food crops in order to grow biomass tobacco since it can thrive on marginal lands. Also biomass tobacco can be grown using wastewater or water that's otherwise unsuitable for food agriculture. We do have to draw the line at brackish water - not even tobacco will thrive if there's too much salt in the water.
As an example of the economic potential that biomass tobacco holds for American farmers, consider corn. A pretty good corn crop yields 125-140 bushels/acre, and a good price range is $4-$5 a bushel. The farmer who sells his corn to an ethanol plant for $5 a bushel is making a gross of, at most, $700/acre. Out of this he has to pay all his operating costs, plus put food on the table, pay his taxes,send his kids to school, pay his health insurance, etc., etc. Now, my colleagues at the German bioenergy company, Biogas Nord, that has been conducting full field trials with biomass tobacco for biogas electricity production figure that they can pay their growers 20 euros a ton - around $28/ton at today's exchange rates. They calculate that paying this price will still allow them to produce enough biogas cheaply enough that they will be able to generate electricity with that biogas at a price to the consumer that is highly competitive with electricity generated by all other conventional and renewable sources.
Among other things, this means that, perhaps arguably, one of the greatest potential US beneficiaries of biomass tobacco-based electric energy will be the members of the vast network of rural electric cooperatives. While some of these coops are now making first steps into generating their own renewable energy, mostly using wind and solar, so far very few are using biomass to generate electricity. Biomass tobacco could change that picture dramatically. Unlike wind and solar, biomass energy is relatively low technology with somewhat lower capital costs per installed megawatt of generating capacity, and it also has fewer moving parts - so to speak. The greatest problem until now with biomass for electricity generation is that all the purpose-grown biomass sources used cost way too much, which is why almost all biogas electricity plants in the world use "free" waste materials like manure. In addition, both wind and solar only generate electricity, while tobacco biomass-based electrical generation not only can employ local growers to supply the biomass (perhaps in return for electricity credits rather than cash, thereby eliminating out-of-pocket fuel costs for the generating plant) but the generating plant can be coupled with low tech units that harvest the huge amounts of valuable food-grade protein in the tobacco biomass before electricity is generated, and then can produce valuable fertilizer and soil supplements afterwards from the sludge that remains. The economics of biomass tobacco-generated electricity in this scenario are compelling, as are the economic and social benefits for rural communities. We'll go into more detail later on.
You can also check out the calculations for a 4 MW electricity plant powered by biomass tobacco here and here. Also, if you would like to view a flow chart that expresses the principal inputs and outputs of biomass tobacco as a bioenergy substrate/feedstock click here.
As an aside on the question of wind energy, let me tell you a short story. I live in central Texas on a small ranch, and most of my friends and neighbors are also small ranchers whose entire life's work is invested in their property. As you probably know, one of the major issues with wind energy in Texas and elsewhere is that the wind blows primarily in the wide open spaces of West Texas, whereas almost all of the urban population is in the Eastern half of the state. So, in order to realize the dream of wind energy as a solution to soaring electricity rates and polluting coal-fired plants it is necessary to build REALLY BIG power lines supported by 160' steel towers from where the wind turbines are located to where the city folks need the power. Those power lines have to cross a lot of land, and several hundred small ranchers and retired homeowners in my part of the state have just been told that the power companies, backed by the state's power of eminent domain, are going to take their land in order to build these lines. Now, they aren't going to be completely bought out at a fair price so that they can start over somewhere else. No - the power companies are simply going to buy a swath of land, by force, running through their properties, leaving them with largely unsalable homes. In other words, they are going to be wiped out. This would not happen if instead of wind power the state of Texas made the decision to install dozens or even hundreds of small decentralized biogas electricity generating plants on the periphery of the major cities, feeding electricity into the existing power grid. In fact, such a plan would mean incredible economic opportunities for ranchers and farmers in each area, and for the small rural communities that surround the big cities. But - how likely is it that this will happen? Virtually zero, as far as I can tell, in a state and a society inflicted with the 'bigger is better' mentality which is now being justified by a self-righteous reference to the icon of 'green energy'. As far as I am concerned green is the wrong color here. The correct color should be red- as in blood.
OK - end of diatribe. Now, if you would like to experience a real eye-opener, check out this spreadsheet I've constructed using a combination of hard data and projections. (This is still a work in progress and needs some refining, but I'm posting it here in response to numerous requests I've received for some 'show me the money' data.) In constructing this spreadsheet I've been very conservative on the revenue side and very generous on the cost side of all the factors. You'll see how an investment of approximately $155 million in an integrated biogas electricity/ethanol/co-product facility will generate almost $1 Billion in cumulative net profits after ten years while completely paying off the initial investment. Please notice that these calculations do not include any renewable energy tax credits, which will only make the bottom line look better when all is said and done.
Leaving aside electrical energy for a moment, let's look at the economics of a tobacco biomass-based ethanol fuel plant. Let's say that an ethanol plant in the US decides that the Europeans are paying their growers too much at 28 Euros/ton, and they are only willing to pay $10/ton for biomass tobacco. As you will see, achieving 100 tons/acre is a good, conservative estimate for areas where growing conditions are favorable. In the NCSU trials referred to elsewhere, researchers achieved 146 tons/ha, which works out to around 70 tons/acre, and this was in an area where it took the biomass crop nearly 90 days to reach its first 60 cm cutting height, and the season was only long enough for four cuttings. So in areas where the biomass tobacco crop can reach 60 cm in -say- 60 days, and where re-growth will permit new cuttings every 4-5 weeks rather than the 6-7 weeks experienced in North Carolina, you can see where the 100 tons/acre estimate comes from. In fact, the chief researcher for NCSU estimated in a letter to me that 300-400 Mt/Ha ( or 150-200 tons/acre) would be achievable in places with early warm springs and longer growing seasons. But even if we stay with $10/ton and 100 tons/acre, we still have a farmer's income at $1000/acre.
And that ethanol refinery paying $10/ton for 100 tons will be able to produce 1500-1800+ gallons of ethanol for their investment in the farmer's crop - explained further on. So jiggle the figures however you like - biomass tobacco will still come out as one of the most profitable no-hassle high profit crops for American farmers to grow just about anywhere in the US - and it is certainly the only biofuel feedstock proposed to date that will allow ethanol to be competitive with fossil fuels without needing any government subsidies.
Just for a quick & dirty but useful comparison, a 50 million gallons-per-year ethanol plant utilizing corn as its feedstock requires 178,000 acres of corn at 100 bushels/acre (17,800,000 bushels) whereas that same plant using biomass tobacco produced at 100 tons/acre would only need 50,000 acres of farmland to support its ethanol production.The feedstock costs of the corn/ethanol plant will be @ $80 million cash, whereas the feedstock costs of the tobacco/ethanol plant will be $50 million - probably all or part in fuel credits rather than cash. The tobacco ethanol plant will be much more profitable, need far less farmland to produce its feedstock requirements, and pay the feedstock growers better. End of story? Not really. There's more, and it gets better.
Another issue often raised by those familiar with conventional tobacco production has to do with the question of irrigation. Since leaf quality is the primary concern of conventional tobacco production, irrigation is necessary in many growing areas to keep the stress on the growing plant to a minimum. However, there are several reasons why biomass tobacco has different requirements. First, as long as there is adequate rain during the season to support non-irrigated field crops like corn, wheat, alfalfa, hay and forage grasses, tobacco being grown for biomass will not require irrigation. This includes almost all of the US,and most of Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa. Second, in areas where adequate rainfall cannot be counted on but where wastewater is available that could not be used on other agricultural crops, it can be used for biomass tobacco production without any health concerns. And finally, the issue of water is one that will give tremendous advantages to areas that are +/- 20 degrees from the equator around the world where there is in many cases more than adequate rainfall, plenty of sun, lots of available land, cheap labor, and a need for energy. That is not to rule out biomass tobacco production in more northern or southern parts of the world- not at all - it is simply to say that biomass tobacco for bioenergy applications will probably be produced most cheaply, and most abundantly, in those parts of the world that lie between the two tropics. (More about the potential for these areas to form an OBEC - Organization of Bioenergy Exporting Countries - later on.)
A further concern, that has been expressed by several of the biogas producers that have contacted me, is that biomass tobacco will be a seasonal crop and raises the question of what can be done to ensure a steady supply of biomass for their digesters in the winter. While producing, drying and storing enough biomass in place for winter operations is one option, another option would be to treat biomass tobacco in much the same way we now treat oil and natural gas - contracting to produce it in the tropics, drying it to remove 80-90% of its weight and bulk, and then moving it by bulk ocean transport to the northern countries where it is needed. The economics of biomass tobacco production, and the value of its highly concentrated energy, would mean that tropical countries with plenty of land, sunlight, water and labor could become energy producing and exporting countries in much the same way that OPEC countries now supply the world's energy needs. The difference, of course, is that the world's energy supplies would not be controlled by a fortunate few countries with hydrocarbon reserves, but would be open to virtually all countries with the requisite sun, water, soil and manpower.
Finally, some folks wonder whether nicotine will inhibit fermentation for ethanol or methanation for biogas, and that question has been definitively answered - no, it does not. This has been shown, in the case of ethanol, by both university and commercial trials in the early 1980s and in the case of biogas by commercial trials in 2008. Neither the little bugs that make methane nor the little yeasts that make ethanol are affected in the least by the nicotine in tobacco.
So, those are the major objections I've had raised by people when they first encounter this idea. In fact, most of the problems that people have arise because the word 'tobacco' has so many (mostly negative) associations in their minds that it is hard for them to get past those ideas and see that biomass tobacco for bioenergy might better be looked at as a completely different plant. I've even considered calling it "Occabot Biomass" in the hope that people would then say "What the hell is Occabot?" rather than "What do you mean, tobacco for bioenergy?" But, I think I'll just stick with tobacco and count on you, dear reader, to come to the conclusion on your own that we really are talking about something completely different here.
So, here we go.
Whether grown conventionally or for biomass purposes, tobacco is remarkably rich in all of the natural sugars and other carbohydrates, and also is almost unique among plants because it produces such a high proportion (by dry weight) of complete and well-balanced human food and medical grade protein.
The fact that smoking commercial so-called "tobacco" products has killed tens of millions of people has evidently totally obscured tobacco's potential for cost-effective bioenergy production, both for ethanol and, more promising, as a high-yield substrate for production of biogas. The time has come for the veils of illusion around tobacco to drop away and for tobacco biomass to be fully investigated by the bioenergy community.
Like most plants tobacco is mostly water - between 80-90%. This means that its dry weight, the actual amount of biomass produced by the plant, is between 10-20% of total green weight production right out of the field. So let's say that we are producing 100 tons of fresh, green biomass tobacco per acre (as you will see this is a reasonable figure) which means that we will be getting a total of between 10 and 20 tons of solid, dry weight. While this may seem like a very high per-acre yield to you if you're familiar with biomass literature, as you'll come to see this is actually a very low yield for biomass tobacco.
PLEASE NOTE: since you have to leave lanes for harvesting the biomass tobacco, the yield-per-acre figures used throughout this essay refer to acres of biomass, not acres of land. My calculation is that growers will have to leave @ 20% of an acre of biomass for access lanes.
- Of this dry weight of tobacco biomass, from our hypothetical 100 tons of green weight, approximately 20% will be pure, natural sugars, or approximately 2-4 tons of sugars per 100 tons of green weight.
- Another 10% or so will be starches, or about 1-2 tons of starch from a 100 ton crop.
- About 20% of the dry weight will be mixed proteins, which break down into what is called Fraction 1 and Fraction 2 protein, or between 2-4 tons of pure protein per 100 tons of fresh, green weight.
- Also, since the tobacco plant is about 40% cellulose, dry weight equivalent, we'll be harvesting between 4 & 8 tons of very low lignin, easily fermented or digested cellulose per 100 tons green weight.
- Mark that point regarding lignin - the cellulose in tobacco is 90% hemicellulose, the most easily digested kind of cellulose, and there is minimal lignin encasement. This means that no expensive enzymes are needed to obtain the energy from tobacco's cellulosic material, in contrast to all other currently used cellulosic feedstocks and substrates.
Corn Stover Tot. Cellulose 35% hemicellulose 28% Lignin 16-21% Switchgrass Tot.Cellulose 44-51% hemicellulose 42-50% Lignin 13-20% Sugar Cane Tot.Cellulose 32-48% hemicellulose 19-24% Lignin 23-32% Biomass Tobacco Total Cellulose 40% hemicellulose 90% Lignin 1.5% Tobacco proteins have some remarkable qualities, but perhaps none as impressive as the potential uses of the Fraction 1 proteins. The following quote from a report by the long-closed Floyd Ag Energy Cooperative illustrates this point extremely well.
"Fraction 1 protein from tobacco would appear to be a valuable food ingredient for the treatment of chronically uremic patients and subjects undergoing maintenance hemodialysis," according to Dr. Benjamin Ershoff, a researcher writing for a company called Leaf Protein International (LPI) in the 1980s. "It has a biological value superior to any of the available plant proteins and is comparable to the proteins of high biological value (such as found in) meat, milk, fish and fowl... It contains at most only traces of sodium, potassium and other minerals and is ideal for the preparation of low sodium diets and other diets whose mineral contents must be rigidly controlled."
The FAEC report goes on to note that "Use of Fraction 1 could substantially reduce medical costs to kidney patients in several ways. First, Fraction 1 is less expensive than the amino acid compositions. Secondly, Fraction 1 is much more palatable than amino acid compositions, and can be whipped into puddings and other meals which would encourage maintenance of the pure protein diet. Also, consistent use of Fraction 1 could, it is believed by LPI's medical experts, decrease the frequency of hemodialysis, saving patients and the government billions of dollars over the long run. While these benefits are probable given current information, a considerable amount of research needs to be performed on the human nutritional level before the benefits are certain. "
Finally, the FAEC report notes "An important additional use for Fraction 1 protein may be for emergency food relief in situations where time is critical and transportation problems are difficult. The Ethiopian famine of 1984-86 involved food shortages due primarily to politically imposed transportation difficulties. Airlifting dense proteins, which can then be mixed with water and/or local grains in short supply, might be a valuable new approach to these problems."
In summary, Tobacco biomass can be produced at well over a hundred tons per acre, using either hand labor or simple machinery, on land that is unsuitable for food crops, and that biomass material can not only provide low cost bioenergy, extracted as biogas or ethanol or both, but also after that energy has been produced, pure unadulterated food grade protein, along with medical grade protein and other economically valuable byproducts, can be extracted from the fermentation tank or digester sludge. Then that sludge, which is very high in available nitrogen, and other nutrients and trace elements, can be returned to the soil.
Even if the tobacco has been mixed with another substrate, most likely manure for biogas production, high quality protein can still be cost-effectively produced from the remaining sludge, although aesthetics will probably prevent that protein from being used for human nutrition. (Of course, it can still be used as a high value supplement for animal feed, since animals will have no such aesthetic objection to the source of this odorless, tasteless, pure crystalline addition to their feed.)
To my thinking, the most cost-effective, lowest technology way for society to benefit from the remarkable energy potential of biomass tobacco is to use it as a purpose-grown co-substrate to enhance the biogas productivity of manure in existing biogas/electricity production facilities. Significant enhancement of biogas output at a significantly decreased cost per million BTUs can be achieved simply because of the high levels of available carbohydrates at very low production cost per ton for biomass tobacco. I believe that this is the first economically viable use of a purpose-grown renewable bioenergy resource ever proposed, and a full-field demonstration project is in the works for 2009. Please stay tuned.
All of these properties, in combination with other factors to be discussed below, mean that tobacco biomass may well be the key to the low cost decentralized, low carbon footprint bioenergy resource that many people have been seeking for many years.
Background Of The ConceptI began the journey of discovery that has resulted in this web site many years ago in the early 1980s when, along with several friends, I was starting the Santa Fe Natural Tobacco Company. The original purpose of this company was to contract with Native Americans to grow authentic Native American tobacco - nicotiana Rustica - using traditional, organic methods on Native American land, free from regulation by USDA and exempt from US taxes. I felt that it was time for Native Americans to reclaim their heritage and to benefit finally from the sacred herb that the white man had taken from them and degraded into a global killing machine. Working with friends from several New Mexico Pueblos, we produced some excellent crops and found that people enjoyed smoking real tobacco, for a change.
We also had a lot of fun with several groups of Feds complete with suits, sunglasses and black cars who came storming out to New Mexico from DC to set us straight about growing tobacco without a permit, only to find themselves stopped cold at the gates of the Pueblos and told they had no jurisdiction on Indian Land - by armed New Mexico State Troopers, no less. Boy, were those some satisfying moments!
My little company perked along pretty well until I chose some investors unwisely and lost the company to their legal maneuverings, but the idea of organically grown Native American tobacco remains a good one, and I hope that eventually some enterprising brothers and sisters on Native lands will pick it up and run with it. ( You have only to look at a pack of the company's flagship product - American Spirit - and note the blackfaced Indian used as the logo to infer what kind of attitudes the current owners have toward Native Americans and, by extension, their customers.)
At that time I was also researching the alternative properties of tobacco and ran across some research papers by Dr. Ray Long of North Carolina State University. Ray had been looking into the production of food-grade protein for human consumption from tobacco leaves and, in order to make the process economical, he was raising tobacco as a biomass crop rather than as a conventional tobacco crop planted in widely-spaced rows.
At the time I was interested in what he was doing not because of the notion of producing high quality protein from tobacco, but because I was interested in alternative energy and it was clear to me that biomass tobacco might be a great source for ethanol. (I have since realized, of course,that both goals are complementary.)Being able to grow so many such prolific pIants so close together, and to be able to harvest so much rich green high-sugar plant material per acre, seemed to me to have all kinds of possibilities.
I corresponded with Dr. Long for several years, and he and I cooperated in several experiments where he supplied the biomass tobacco and an experimental ethanol facility in Western Virginia did trial runs, ultimately demonstrating that biomass tobacco not only could be fermented to produce ethanol, but that the economics of doing so were compelling.
This research showed that tobacco grown as biomass could produce well in excess of 100MT/Acre, in areas with a long growing season and favorable environmental conditions, with high percentages of digestible sugars and other carbohydrates, and rich in both F1 and F2 proteins. It also demonstrated that there is no inhibition of the biofermentation process by use of a tobacco feedstock, which strongly implies that there shouldn't be any inhibition when tobacco is used as a biogas production substrate or co-substrate since biomethanation is an inherently more stable process than fermentation. ( Since this section was first written laboratory tests have shown that there is NO inhibition of the biomethanation process.) Furthermore this series of successful fermentation runs put to rest the most common objection raised by people on first hearing of the idea of tobacco biomass as a bioenergy feedstock - the fear that the nicotine might somehow inhibit the process of fermentation, which it emphatically does not. ( For a detailed description of this project click here ).
Ultimately these experiments and their unequivocal outcomes came to nothing because the Reagan administration pulled the rug out from under all kinds of alternative energy projects, and in a very short time the team involved dispersed and the experiments were forgotten. Why the tobacco biomass experiments at NCSU were quietly shelved we'll never know, but maybe it's for the same reason that no reference to tobacco as a biomass resource shows up in a search of Oak Ridge National Laboratories (ONRL) bioenergy database - the world's premier database in the field and supposedly an impartial collector of data. Only an institution with tremendous reach and power could shut down a major university research project and ensure that no reference to it ever appeared in a public access database of the stature of ORNL.
The economics of ethanol production from purpose-grown biomass tobacco remain compelling, with the probability of production of 1500-2000 gallons per acre ( from 150-200 tons of biomass per acre) in long-season areas of the country/world) at a fully accounted cost of less than $0.75 per gallon without any subsidies. This figure includes offsets for valuable proteins just discussed, as well as the economically valuable byproducts derived from the sludge remaining after fermentation. The value of these materialshas been thoroughly documented. This ethanol can be very likely be produced from straight fermentation of biomass tobacco material fresh from the field, or from tobacco that has been either ensiled or dried and stored for off-season use, and very importantly this biomass production doesn't replace any food crop. And, since the US automobile fuel system is already set up for cars to use ethanol, perhaps this really is the best use of biomass tobacco production. Biomass tobacco has so many advantages over all other in-use and proposed ethanol feedstocks one can only wonder at why it hasn't yet been given full-scale trials.
As you may know, the US Congress has mandated (typically, without saying how) that the US produce 36 billion gallons of renewable biofuels annually by 2022. While achieving this level of production will require many different approaches, if we simply look at biomass tobacco an interesting picture emerges. If we take the figure of 100 tons/acre as a conservative estimate, and using conventional calculations we arrive at a biofuel yield of 1000 gallons/acre, then it would take 36 million acres to meet the 2022 mandate. 36 million acres is a bit less than 4% of the total US agricultural land, and since tobacco biomass can be produced on marginal lands, that 4% would not have to come out of our most productive food-producing acreage but could come from the margins instead. In addition, the farm income from 100 tons of biomass tobacco @ $10/ton would far exceed the income from field crops like hay and forage (2 tons/acre @ $100/ton), wheat (80-120 bushels/acre @ $4.50/bushel), or corn (100-140 bushels/acre @ $5/bushel). So, farmers producing biomass tobacco on the marginal portions of their land could obtain more income per acre than they could from producing food crops on their best land. It might take some public policy steps to ensure that farmers made the choice to do things this way rather than just plant everything in biomass tobacco, but as long as biomass tobacco was seen as a way to incrementally increase farm income rather than substituting it for other food crops, then government might just be able to stay out of the way.
For full details on biomass tobacco/ethanol production click here Also you can look over some of the original tobacco biomass and protein documents here.
However,as I kept thinking about the possibilities inherent in hundreds of tons of biomass tobacco per acre, harvested by simple technology or even by hand, I eventually came to see that another, potentially more beneficial approach to using biomass tobacco might be to mix either animal manure or human waste ( as in urban waste treatment plants) with fresh biomass tobacco slurry as a co-substrate and because of the ultra low cost of the tobacco biomass it can be purpose-grown to significantly lower the cost per million BTUs of biogas.
This should make it possible, among other things, for small, independent groups of people like villages and towns in remote areas to produce for themselves, free of outside resources except the initial biogas/electric technology, both ultra-low cost, high quality animal protein as well as virtually unlimited quantities of pipeline-quality gas energy, all essentially for the cost of the community's own labor.
Envision, for example, villages in India and China where appropriate technology household biogas digesters are already installed by the millions. While these digesters are designed to use household waste to produce biogas for cooking, boiling water, etc., the amount of biogas that a household can produce is limited by the methane-generating content of its waste. Now envision an acre or two of biomass tobacco grown on non-food producing land next to the village, harvested by hand, requiring zero chemical inputs, yielding perhaps 50-100 tons of biomass material per season. If there are 100 households in the village then each can have 200- 400 pounds dry weight of high carbohydrate biomass to mix in with their household waste over the course of the year. As you'll see further on in this paper, by mixing dried tobacco with manure a 50%+ increase in biogas production can be achieved - imagine what that can mean to a rural household in terms of what amounts to free energy. Also, the harvested biomass can simply be piled next to the home and used as needed - it doesn't matter at all if a few bugs get into it. This means that it doesn't have to be stored securely like food to protect it from mice, rats, roaches and other destructive pests.
Of course, once these villagers become accustomed to the benefits of producing their own biomass for enhancing household biogas production it will be a relatively short step to realizing that they can collectively produce enough biomass to power a small electricity generating facility and they will then be able to enjoy the productivity increases that electric power brings without a need to connect to a grid or to purchase centrally-generated electric power. The availability of low-cost home-grown electric power will mean that children can study at night, that homes can have appropriate technology appliances like refrigerators and computers, that electric tools can come into use, and so many other benefits can accrue without the need for huge capital investment by private or public capital to bring centralized power to these thousands of rural communities. Energy self-sufficiency will no longer be a dream.
At the opposite end of the scale of potential, the economics of biomass tobacco appear to make possible and cost-effective the conversion of existing nuclear plants to biogas electric plants, employing large numbers of growers in the region to produce the tobacco biomass, and almost incidentally producing vast amounts of high grade food in the process of making electricity. Since nuclear power plants are really nothing more than big steam generators, if biogas can be produced cheaply enough and in large enough quantities in close proximity to existing nuclear plants then they could shut down their nuclear fires and power their turbines with biogas. Sweet irony that it might be tobacco, that strange gift of the Great Spirit, that makes this possible.
On another front, it might also prove possible that biomass tobacco could serve as a supplement to animal feed, radically lowering the cost of such feed while adding valuable, low cost proteins and carbohydrates to the animals' diet.
Now, just as there are limitations to which animals can be fed with the DDGS (dried distillers grains with solubles) residue of ethanol production, and how much of their diet these residues can comprise, there will very likely be limitations of both how much fresh green biomass ruminant and other food animals can be fed, and it is also very likely that some animals will tolerate green biomass very well, and others not at all. However, with the costs of production so extremely low compared with other animal feed it makes sense to run the trials and see what results we get.
On a related issue, later in this paper I'll deal with the important issues regarding the massive production of manure by CAFO's (Confined Animal Production Operations), which have been detailed in an important research paper by the Union of Concerned Scientists. One of the many points made in this paper is that biogas production from the manure generated by these facilities does not alleviate many of the environmentally toxic consequences of producing animals using this model. In these introductory remarks I would just like to say that while I despise the CAFO model and the kinds of thinking that support this approach to food production, and while subsidizing these operations with taxpayer money is an abomination, as long as they exist governments can and should require them to use their manure output to generate biogas and then to use that biogas energy to process their waste to remove water and toxic chemicals like ammonia and to destroy pathogens so that the ultimate output of the CAFO is as environmentally neutral as possible. By using biomass tobacco as a co-substrate along with manure the biogas generated from the massive manure output from a CAFO will be cost-effective enough that compliance with such regulations could not be objected to on the basis of cost or impact on profits.
I believe that this potential is all real, quite simply because so much high sugar biomass material can be produced per acre at ultra low cost from Nicotiana Tabacum - ordinary tobacco - the supposed scourge of mankind. What wonderful, cosmic laughter we will all hear if it turns out that tobacco is not only an important part of the answer to our global energy needs but in the process it enables the world to alleviate hunger to a significant degree without the need for either big capital or high technology.
You might also find it amusing, as I do, that I am also the author of The Cultivators Handbook of Marijuana, which I first self-published in 1969 and which was the first 'grow your own' book. I intended the book as a revolutionary act to liberate people by empowering them with vital information they weren't getting anywhere else, and offering them perspectives they might not have thought of before regarding issues like freedom and liberty.
I pointed out, in 1969, that we had a choice in America - we could either take a stand and assert our right to grow any plant we wanted for our own, personal use as free men and women, or we could stand by and watch the criminal drug syndicates and the equally criminal government & police bureaucracies take over our lives. Unfortunately, the latter scenario has prevailed, to the point where the drug lords and the drug police now exist in a truly symbiotic relationship, each feeding the other, each needing the other, and each dedicated to maintaining the status quo so as to continue the uninterrupted flow of obscene profits, for the drug lords, and grossly inflated power and jobs, for the bureaucracies. Does anyone seriously question the assertion that without the existence of criminalized drugs, the vast police bureaucracies of this country would have almost no justification for their continuing abusive powers? Without drug arrest statistics it would be clear just from the numbers that the police are largely incompetent to stop real crime or arrest actual criminals. Criminalized drugs are without doubt the best thing that ever happened for organized police forces - without drug arrests they would essentially have nothing to justify their enormous powers and budgets. Over the years I've received many letters and even phone messages from readers of the Handbook telling me that the small cash crop they grew made the difference between paying their bills and taxes or losing the farm, and knowing that my little book has helped these good people has given me great personal satisfaction. I only regret that my book couldn't rally people enough to stop the spread of the police state that this country has become. And now that we're officially calling it 'The Homeland' the process of corruption has been completed.
So here I go again, after pushing the edge with Marijuana a long time ago I am now proposing biomass tobacco as a potential resource for meeting at least part of the world's need for low cost, decentralized food and energy production. In the process I hope that the power that the corporate giants and rogue dictatorial states that control world energy resources have over our lives will be torn from their hands, and that the ability to generate our own clean, renewable energy at the community level will help us regain some of the independence and liberty that has been stolen from us with such evil calculating stealth over the years will come flowing inexorably back into our own hands. This web site offers what I believe and pray is sufficiently convincing evidence that this proposal is worth the effort to prove or disprove, that some,or many will give it serious consideration, and I am inviting members of the bioenergy community to carefully consider the potential of this approach not just to low-cost, clean, renewable energy, but to liberty and justice for all.
OK, end of soapbox speech. For a look at some of the scenarios that have occurred to me as I've contemplated the compelling possibilities of biomass tobacco, let me take you through my reasoning, and the supporting evidence, for the use of tobacco biomass to produce biogas energy, a relatively simple equation which I believe has the potential to transform much of the world's energy picture as we know it.
Biomass Tobacco For Food & Energy
While the most direct way to utilize biomass tobacco is, as noted above, as a low-cost, high-yield co-substrate in manure-charged biogas facilities, a higher and greater use can occur if it can be shown that biomass tobacco can first be fed to animals, (with the reservations and possible limitations similar to DDGS noted above) and after the animal protein has been produced the manure can be mixed with fresh tobacco biomass and used to produce biogas electricity. If animal feed costs can be reduced to, let's say, under $50 a ton using biomass tobacco, mixed with other more expensive conventional feeds, radical changes in the economics of both animalprotein and energy production can occur. (Keep in mind that using biomass tobacco as an animal feed supplement is a refinement - perhaps an unnecessary one - of the basic, already proven potential for using tobacco as a biogas co-substrate to enhance biogas production from manure very cost-effectively.)
But if feeding animals with biomass tobacco proves feasible, then with the cost of animal feed brought down to under $50 a ton, with a biomass material that can be grown anywhere in that vast country, China could abandon the use of mercury-contaminated brown coal and fuel its huge economy with natural methane gas while providing bountifully and profitably for every human mouth; Mexico could abandon use of high sulfur oil and make its northern deserts the source of wealth and energy; Africa could electrify and feed its most rural communities simply by adding a few hectares of community-farmed biogas tobacco, increasing their animal herds, and feeding a low cost 500KW digestor/generator with manure and tobacco biomass; Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania could shut down their badly designed nuclear reactors and restore their prosperous private farming communities; Japan could turn to overseas energy farms rather than domestic nuclear reactors sited in earthquake zones; India and Pakistan could feed their people and literally electrify the subcontinent with ultra-low capital costs; prosperous but energy-dependent countries like Australia, South Africa, Brazil and Argentina could be energy independent; America's small towns in the Midwest and south could revive and prosper and the lost investment in nuclear generating capacity could be fully recovered. All of this and much more could happen if there was a way to feed animals so cheaply that methane gas from their manure could generate electric power, and other forms of energy at costs competitive with conventional natural gas.
And there's the problem with biogas from manure under present circumstances. Quite simply, it is the cost of animal feed alone that is the limiting factor which keeps energy from manure-based methane non-competitive with energy from natural gas and other fossil and nuclear sources.
The technologies for producing methane from animal manure, and energy from the methane are well-established, but with corn and other quality livestock feed costing between $100 and $300 per ton in the US, and comparably high in the rest of the world, the cost of energy produced from animal manure is, and very likely will remain far too expensive to be competitive on a stand-alone basis. Biogas production from waste products like manure is a great way to extract additional revenues from an existing operation like animal production, but the costs of producing the manure mean that these revenues will always be an offset, not a primary revenue stream. In order to be a competitive source of pipeline-quality methane gas, electricity, methanol fuel, and associated chemical feedstocks at 2008 U.S., European or Asian market prices, penned animals would have to be fed high quality feed costing well under $50 a ton. This just isn't possible with any of the conventional animal feeds, so economically competitive high volume production of biomass-based methane energy & fuel as a primary revenue stream like an oilwell or a natural gas field remains a dream.
And please keep in mind as you browse this site that it is not necessary that the model for tobacco-based bioenergy involve feeding animals first, then producing methane from their manure. As noted above, it has already been shown in European lab experiments and full-scale field trials that direct digestion of tobacco by biomethanation is not only possible, but produces superior gas yields of 550 M3 of 55% CH4 per wet ton of tobacco substrate. I am simply advocating that feeding animals with fresh biomass, then harvesting energy from their manure, may offer the optimal set of economic and social benefits if things work out that way.
I've had this dream for nearly 30 years, and am dedicating this site to offering both personal and university-based research that I believe shows that biomass tobacco can be a superior bioenergy resource as well as a non-bloating animal feed, high in complete protein, sugars and readily digestible cellulose, which can be produced with little/no investment on even poor quality soils in most climates around the world for the equivalent of $5-10 a ton using low technology. - even hand labor can be used very effectively to harvest biomass tobacco. Production costs for this high quality feed have been well-demonstrated by university research to be so low that if it is shown to be a viable feed in any one of several possible forms, perhaps not used as an exclusive source of feed but mixed with other, more costly conventional feed, bringing down the total cost of feed to under $50 a ton or less, then cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats can be raised for their energy production value alone, with the animal protein produced by such herds as a paid-for byproduct of energy production.
We already know, through field trials conducted by the Farm Bureau in Kentucky and North Carolina, that the green sludge remaining after protein has been extracted from tobacco biomass is palatable and accepted by ruminant animals. We also know, from trials conducted by Leaf Protein International in the 1980's, that the protein extracted from tobacco leaf is pure, tasteless, and has the protein efficiency rating equivalent to both soy and milk. This means that it will be accepted by ruminants if added to their feed as a protein booster. What we don't know - yet - is whether or not fresh green biomass tobacco can be fed directly to animals either before or after ensiling.
In addition, still-confidential lab trials by a major European biogas technology company have established (Summer 2008) that tobacco is an excellent co-substrate for biogas production, with no inhibition of biomethanation by any residual nicotine in the material, so even if additional trials prove that it is not possible to feed animals directly with biomass tobacco it can still serve as a high-yield, ultra low cost substrate and the proteins extracted from the residues of the biogas production process can indisputably be used for animal feed at revolutionary low cost. So, whatever the route taken, biogas production from biomass tobacco is in my mind without doubt an economically viable path to low cost bioenergy and food production.
The fact that this basis for this revolution in energy and food production is tobacco, grown and harvested using proven biomass production techniques, may be so startling that many will read no further; but if you do, I welcome you to a discussion of the great possibilities which may flow from these unexamined properties of the tobacco plant, which Native American people rightfully consider one of the most generous gifts from the Great Spirit to his human beings.
Copyright © 2007 by Bill Drake
All Rights Reserved
Welcome to this site. Limited permission is hereby granted to individuals to print a single hard copy of these materials for personal reading, and to individual teachers and health professionals to make limited copies of these materials for distribution to students or patients. With these limited exceptions, none of these copyrighted materials may be printed or distributed, nor incorporated into any other body of work for distribution of any kind in any medium, without prior written permission from the author, which will be readily provided in most cases. Please contact bdrake@ktc.com
The use of plant biomass for energy is nothing new. It probably began when ancient humans burned wood to keep warm. Biomass is simply a name for the total amount of plant material in a particular location - the total plant materials in a forest, or growing on an open field, or covering a mountain.
Since the 1960's there has been a lot of interest in the use of plant biomass as an alternative energy resource, and many different kinds of plants have been used to produce ethanol for vehicle fuel, to fuel boilers for electricity production, and to feed penned animals and produce methane gas from their manure.
There have been literally hundreds of alternative energy projects involving plant biomass of one kind or another, but so far very few projects have managed to produce energy at a cost that makes it competitive with conventional energy.
In the case of ethanol, for example, it has proved impossible to produce enough corn per acre, at a low enough cost, to make corn-based ethanol competitive with gasoline as a vehicle fuel. The same has been true of all other ethanol biomass feedstocks - they either cost too much per ton to produce, or if they do produce high tonnage at low cost, they aren't rich enough in sugars for cost-effective conversion to ethanol.
When plant biomass is used to fuel boilers to produce heat or electricity, it is usually slow-growing wood or sugar cane waste, which cannot be produced fast enough, at low enough cost, or over a wide enough area, so coal, gas or oil remain the conventional choice. Many different experiments have been made to produce fast-growing species, to pelletize fast-growing non-woody plants as fuel - but none have broken through the simple cost-per-unit barrier between biomass fuels and conventional energy sources.
Conventional methane production from animal manure has a somewhat more competitive cost structure, largely because it captures a waste stream and recovers energy from it, so energy costs are offset somewhat by revenues from the animal protein production. However, because of the costs of feed, energy production has to remain a secondary output and must be "subsidized" by animal production - in other words, because of the cost of the conventional animal feeds, the methane gas produced by using these conventional animal feeds can't stand alone and compete on cost with natural gas. Biomass tobacco can change the master equation behind any manure-to-biogas calculations, whether the tobacco is added directly to the manure substrate for biogas production or whether it can be first fed to animals whose manure is then used for biogas production.
In either case, the extremely low cost of producing large tonnages per acre of high carbohydrate biomass tobacco will not only allow increased biogas yield from the digestion process, it also means that this increased yield can be achieved at far lower cost, which in turn means that biogas production does not need to remain a technology that only utilizes waste materials for energy production, but that it can move into an area where it competes effectively and directly with other primary sources of energy like coal, oil and nuclear.
In addition, because methane is being produced by facilities whose primary purpose is animal protein production, usually pigs, rather than energy production, these facilities tend to be environmentally undesirable. A facility whose primary purpose is energy production would have a completely different internal structure and environmental impact, with positive outcomes for all concerned parties.
Incidentally, a number of people are promoting the use of hemp for biomass energy purposes, and while I applaud the political sense that such a campaign makes, there are very basic reasons why hemp cannot be used to produce economically competitive biomass fuels, primarily because it is relatively low in sugars and leaf volume and because its cellulose is protected by very thick lignin walls - which is why hemp produces a superior fiber. Industrial hemp producers have been fighting a difficult battle for acceptance for many years, but perhaps when biomass tobacco is added to the mix the benefits of such production will appear irresistible.
Clearly in an integrated energy/food/fiber production unit a producer would want to have both biomass hemp and biomass tobacco acreage, enabling them to produce energy from both hemp and tobacco, plus high quality animal fiber from penned goats and sheep fed tobacco, plus high quality plant fiber from the hemp. A co-op of such producers could integrate vertically with a regional textile production facility while sustaining the entire membership's operational overhead through co-op energy sales.
So when it's all said and done, there is really only one reason why some kind of biomass energy resource hasn't yet been able to replace oil, natural gas, or nuclear energy - everything tried so far costs too much. And there's really only one reason why it costs too much - because nobody has yet demonstrated a plant biomass material that can be grown at low enough cost, in large enough quantities, across a wide enough range of environments, with high enough energy potential to compete worldwide on a fully accounted energy cost-per-unit basis with oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear fuel.
This is a brief introduction to some of the many remarkable characteristics of tobacco. In some ways it's a very simple story. Tobacco biomass sugars and proteins cost so little per-unit to produce, and are of such high quality, that it should be possible to produce low-cost, high quality ethanol and methane fuels on a small scale which are extremely competitive with oil, coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy. Tobacco biomass appears to me to be an ideal candidate for a wide range of uses which have the potential to increase energy and food availability worldwide, reduce energy costs and increase quality of life, to conserve fossil fuel reserves and replace nuclear energy, to create new economic opportunity, enhance the global environment, and empower small-scale family farm production units.
That's what the rest of this part of the site is about - the various thoughts and ideas which have occurred to me as I've explored the potentials of this remarkable plant. It isn't that the factual content of any of this information has been hidden. Any tobacco scientist, and in fact anyone familiar with tobacco at all knows that it is very high in sugar. Many people know that it's very high in protein too, and that wild animals as well as insects will devour a field of tobacco, given half a chance.
Here are just a few of the things that I believe will be possible if the basic arguments I'm making at this site can be demonstrated and reduced to practice.
I believe that all of these things are possible, and that's what this part of the site is about - visions, dreams, and I hope enough facts and figures to convince a careful reader that these ideas merit discussion and consideration. And finally, I hope that you will contribute your own ideas, information, research, and suggestions. Thanks for visiting.
Many rural communities worldwide already depend on biogas for energy, primarily derived from hand-gathered manure, as a cooking fuel using small household biogas digesters. A high yield source of inexpensive biogas co-substrate that will radically increase biogas yield, that can be produced on limited acreage at virtually no cost right in the community, and that can then be mixed with the manure substrate they are already using could significantly enrich the energy environment these communities while fitting into the installed appropriate technology base.
In order to conceive of biomass tobacco you have to let go of all those images so carefully planted by the cigarette industry over the years - rows of carefully tended plants, rustic farmers and their families picking golden leaves at the peak of ripeness, aging in a rough-hewn but solid American oak barn, etc, etc.
Think of biomass tobacco as a thick, living green carpet of plants, approximately 1.5 million plants per acre according to the NCSU experiments described above. Then visualize several acres of this thick, green carpet sprouting so vigorously that every few weeks the top 75% of the plant can be harvested by simple mowing, and the hundreds of thousands of stumps spring back to life immediately with new growth. The NCSU experiments found that the optimum cutting height was 60 cm, with the removal of the top 45 cm every cutting. Then they waited until the plants reached 60 cm again,and took another 45 cm. These acres of rich, green young tobacco leaves, full of sugars and proteins, have the potential to end big energy as the supplier of energy needs worldwide.
Biomass tobacco is fundamentally nothing more than ordinary varieties of tobacco planted extremely close together for maximum density. Farmers with conventional tobacco growing experience will understand when I say that an ordinary tobacco seedbed is actually a small Biomass tobacco plot. Few people have never seen acres of tobacco biomass other than crop scientists at North Carolina State University, where it has been grown for over ten years for a tobacco protein extraction project .This project, run by Dr. Ray Long of the Crop Science Department of North Carolina State University, has demonstrated the practicality of biomass tobacco production for protein extraction. Dr. Long's researchers have developed and demonstrated biomass tobacco planting, irrigating, harvesting, processing and extraction techniques, and all of the costs associated with Biomass tobacco production are well-established through Ray Long's research
In addition to Dr. Long, several other scientists, primarily Dr. T.C. Tso, have been pointing out for many years that tobacco proteins have remarkable qualities and ought to be seen as food resources for both animals and humans. None of these scientists, as far as I know, did the calculations which we'll cover in this part of the site, which seem to say that if you set up even small-scale systems to extract both energy and animal protein production from biomass tobacco, then it looks feasible to wind up with low/no cost energy and low/no cost high quality protein.
What makes tobacco such a high-production biomass resource is its ability to vigorously regenerate when it is cut, a behavior called coppicing. It is this characteristic which makes possible the enormous yields per acre which have been achieved since the mid-1980's in North Carolina and in the 1920's in New Mexico, and which promise yields well in excess of 200 Tons/Acre in more favorable growing regions. These higher yields will be possible because it will take a shorter time for the biomass to reach its first cutting height, and because re-growth will occur faster between cuttings, meaning more cuttings per season. Coppicing makes possible multiple mowings of a biomass tobacco field throughout a long growing season, with each mowing of the biomass field yielding many tons of high sugar, high protein, high energy young tobacco leaves and stems.
When tobacco is planted for conventional purposes it is planted in carefully spaced rows, and each plant is virtually hand-tended. Under these conditions there is no display of coppicing behavior, because the plant is never cut back. Tobacco plants have their secondary growth removed, and their flowering tops when they begin to spike, but there is never the equivalent of the mowing techniques discovered by the NCSU scientists in their protein production experiments. When tobacco is planted for biomass it is planted so close together that individual plants virtually disappear and the entire field looks like a dense green mat. When this mat is mowed using sidebar mowers, the effect created is that of a level green table. Within days this flat green surface has become a dense tangle of new shoots and leaves of the young tobacco plants, vigorously regenerating and multiplying. These young green shoots are, coincidentally, the most sugar-rich and highest protein stage of the plant's growth cycle, so the combination of tobacco's vigorous coppicing and sugar/protein production cycle coincide beautifully from the perspective of biomass food and energy production.
This coppicing behavior of biomass tobacco is shared by many other field crops, including alfalfa, and accounts for a great deal of the agricultural productivity enjoyed by growers. Coppicing behavior of plants has been studied extensively by crop scientists and others, and the factors which influence coppicing are well established. Irrigation & solar season extension systems will enable growers to control and optimize coppicing factors in biomass production, and to achieve far greater per-acre yields than have already been achieved by scientists at NCSU, and by the author in personal experiments.
The sugars in tobacco are predominantly the most easily digested types, Sucrose and Levulose. The starch is also a readily digestible or convertible carbohydrate. These sugars are prime candidates for direct conversion into ethanol, and the yield per acre achieved in the North Carolina State University tobacco biomass protein experiments leaves no doubt that biomass tobacco sugars will prove to be highly competitive with other plant sugar sources for ethanol production, but especially sugar cane, sorghum, and corn.
The implications of tobacco's sugar content are enormous for biomass energy production, since tobacco thrives in almost all inhabitable, developed regions. This means that only on the basis of its environmental range, established per-acre yield, and rich sugar profile, biomass tobacco is clearly a candidate for cost-effective production of alternative fuels. However, there's much more to this picture, as we'll see.
Tobacco's high sugar content is perhaps the primary reason that conventional producers have to use so much pesticide on their crops, because clearly in an insect world where competition for food is harsh the attraction of sweet, succulent, protein-rich young tobacco leaves is irresistable. In the case of biomass tobacco production Dr. Long's research team on the Protein Project have found that there is no need to use pesticides - the rate of growth of the biomass tobacco effectively compensates for insect predation, and the output of the production cycle isn't materially affected.
The only one of these plants which can yield anything like biomass tobacco's sugar yield per acre is sugar cane, and tobacco can grow in a much wider range of environments, and for many other reasons which we'll cover is superior to sugar cane as a source for sugars for ethanol . However, biomass sugars are only one side of the energy potential of this remarkable plant.
Energy production using tobacco biomass would produce virtually unlimited amounts of contaminant-free human food grade protein as a primary co-product. Maybe such protein is not a practical addition to upscale U.S. diets because of the association with tobacco, but it is in fact an allergen-free, complete and balanced protein, which is actually 1/3 pharmaceutical-grade, and would be produced in such enormous "paid-for" quantities as a co-product of low cost energy production that it may provide a practical and cost-effective approach to helping huge, remote populations bridge famine and starvation and recover their stability as families and communities.
The proteins in tobacco are highly unusual in the plant kingdom in that they are complete and well-balanced in their amino acid content, with all 21 amino acids that it takes to make a nutritionally complete protein, and these amino acids are in an ideal balance very similar to animal protein but, of course, without animal fat. This means that biomass tobacco can easily be a superior protein source for animal feed, with a higher Protein Efficiency Rating than either milk or soy.
We know from the agricultural literature that animals in the South are routinely fed on tobacco stalks and stems from the field after smoking tobacco crops are harvested, and these informal practices, plus USDA field trials, have shown even tobacco waste to be an excellent, well accepted forage material.
Tobacco protein is one of the potentially most valuable components of biomass production. It can be crystallized into a pure, colorless powder which has no taste or odor, and which has extremely high nutritive value with no undesirable side-effects or contaminants. A major proposed use for tobacco protein is for kidney dialysis patients who are on severely restricted diets. Most ordinary protein supplements contain excessive amounts of sodium and potassium, which must be removed before they are useful in such restricted diets. tobacco protein is very low in such contaminants, and what little is there is easily and cost-effectively removed during processing.
Tobacco protein consists of two major components- Fraction One (10%) and Fraction Two(90%). Fraction One protein is the component most valuable for medical & pharmaceutical applications, and is conservatively valued at $2.00/Lb, or half the (2006) market value of dried egg whites, its nearest competitor in Protein Efficiency Ratings. If trials were to prove its application in kidney dialysis, it would command a price of around $40/Lb (2006). Fraction Two is not pure or high value enough for medical applications, but is still higher in food value than either soy or milk, making it a potentially valuable co-product at $.45/Lb.
Other potentially valuable constituents of tobacco biomass include carotene and xanthophyll, which are in demand wherever poultry markets thrive. These two constituents are used in poultry feeding, and currently command high prices. For example, in 2005 carotene retailed to large poultry feeders at approximately $.50/Gram, or nearly $226/Lb.
The technology to extract tobacco proteins has been developed and tested by several commercial companies and research institutions. These efforts to produce commercial-grade tobacco protein have encountered bottom-line problems, in that the costs of production of protein has not yet declined sufficiently to allow a profitable operation.
However, these efforts have always been conducted in an isolated, linear applications environment, rather than as a part of an integrated system. In an integrated system, cost efficiencies developed in one set of system operations are characteristically shared by all components of the system.
Thus, the cost of producing tobacco biomass is high when that biomass is used only for protein extraction purposes, but when the biomass production costs are shared by protein extraction, energy production, soil conditioning materials, and livestock/poultry feed production, the allocated costs of biomass production for each system component is reduced significantly- enough to allow cost-effectiveness and thus profitability.
Similarly, when the waste heat of energy production is used to provide process heat for other elements of the system, costs of production for all components are lowered by what would be a wasted output in an isolated, energy-only system. The concept of integrated farming is similar in all respects to integrated planning of any other type of business which requires multiple inputs for the production of multiple outputs, in that the greater the internal integrity of all system operations, the more efficient and cost-effective the results obtained.
The cellulose in tobacco is unusual because it has very little lignin- a fact that is critical to the high-yield production of energy fuels with tobacco biomass. Lignin has been described using a construction industry metaphor as the concrete in a building encasing the steel, which is the cellulose. In order to get at the cellulose, you have to dissolve the lignin, which is as difficult on a micro level as dissolving the concrete to get at the steel would be on a macro level. So high lignin content is the primary obstacle to use of plant cellulose for conversion to fuel, and to the utilization of digester sludge as a soil conditioning material, and is the primary reason why most animals can extract so little feed value from cellulose.
But because of the almost complete absence of lignin in biomass tobacco cellulose, averaging 1.5% by dry weight, it should be an extremely cost-effective fuel resource compared with other biomass cellulose sources, and because it is very digestible it adds to the already high food values of tobacco biomass. We don't really know because nobody yet has grown biomass tobacco and fed the fresh tops to potential energy resource animals like cattle, sheep, goats, pigs or chickens. We do know that USDA and universities around the South have conducted numerous animal feeding trials beginning in the 1930's involving the successful use of both ensilaged and fresh tobacco stalks to feed animals, but these have been stalks from conventional tobacco production and there has been no evidence of any thought given to actually producing tobacco directly as animal feed, bypassing the usual uses of the biomass entirely.
While there is wide variation among tobacco types, it is possible to draw a general profile of the fermentable constituents of tobacco. This profile indicates the potential which biomass tobacco has for cost-effective conversion to ethanol fuel.
On a dry weight basis at maturity, tobacco's major components are:
In the North Carolina State University protein trials, harvested and dried biomass tobacco normally yields 20% dry weight equivalent of its green weight. This means that for a 100 metric ton (220,000 lb) biomass tobacco harvest, the dry weight yield would be roughly 20 metric tons of potentially fermentable material.
So out of a 100 MT harvest we would get approximately 5 metric tons of sugar and 2.4 metric tons of starch, both of which are directly fermentable to produce ethanol, plus 8 metric tons of cellulose, of which 7.2 tons is highly digestible holocellulose, and 0.8 tons is indigestible hemicellulose.
To calculate energy output from this 100 Metric Ton harvest
(Lbs sugar) X (.47) X (.97) divided by 6.6 = gallons ethanol
Plugging in the numbers we have established for sugar, we find:
(11,000) X (.47) X (.97) / 6.6= 760 gallons ethanol from the sugars
The conventional standard for starch-to-ethanol conversion is:
(Lbs Starch) X (.90) X (1.11) X (.47) X (.97) / 6.6= Gallons
Plugging in the starch numbers we find:
(5290)X(.90)X(1.11)X.47)X.97) / 6.6= 365 gallons ethanol from the starches
So from our hypothetical 100MT biomass harvest we get over 1000 gallons of ethanol fuel. The per-acre direct and indirect cost of producing tobacco biomass has been carefully calculated by Dr. Ray Long and his NCSU researchers for their tobacco protein project, and it falls just under $2000/acre. At this production level, the ethanol would cost $2/gallon - not very good.
However, NCSU researchers routinely achieve 160-70 Metric ton/acre production levels in a mid-length growing season environment. Dr. Long and I have worked together to estimate production in areas with longer growing seasons at between 150-200 metric tons/acre. So at 200MT/acre, which is a reasonable projection, and based on conversion of just the sugars and starches, our ethanol would cost $0.75.
Now we have to add in the ethanol we'll produce from the almost lignin-free tobacco cellulose, which will boost our ethanol production by @ 350 gallons for every 100MT of biomass we produce on an acre. At 200MT/acre production this will add over 1000 gallons to our existing sugar/starch production of roughly 2000 gallons, bringing the cost of the ethanol we produce to approximately $0.50/gallon. At this price ethanol is extremely competitive with oil.
However, it's important to realize that while we can almost certainly produce 2000 gallons of ethanol from 200MT of tobacco biomass produced on a single acre, we are also producing a number of other profit-center materials at the same time, and these materials remain available for exploitation after the ethanol has been produced. These materials, including proteins and other commercially valuable materials, add almost nothing to total costs of production, and result in income streams which effectively offset the costs of ethanol production to zero.
In other words, we're looking at a renewable source of environmentally sound, low/zero cost energy.
The story gets better.
While the economics of producing ethanol from tobacco biomass are attractive, they are not as attractive as using the tobacco biomass to feed animals, then using their manure to produce low/zero-cost, pipeline quality natural gas for low/zero-cost electric power. The reason we can say low/zero cost energy is that the animal protein production pays for 100% of the costs of biomass production, animal production, and energy production.
Here's how it would work.
Using conventional metrics for biogas production, animal manure from a herd fed on biomass tobacco would produce a minimum of 2.5 cubic feet of biogas per pound of manure. This biogas would be at least 65% methane, with an energy content of 650 Btu's per cubic Foot. I believe that the manure of animals fed on tobacco biomass would produce far more methane than this standard figure because it's based on an average of feedlot and ranged animals, and because of the rich protein/sugar content of the tobacco. However, even at the standard methane generation figures tobacco biomass feed generates some very interesting figures.
An easy way to visualize manure production - if, of course, you care to - is in terms of amounts produced per 1000 pounds of live animal weight. Animals differ for many reasons in their manure production per day, and therefore some make better candidates for straightforward energy production than others.
| Daily Manure Production Per 1000 lbs Live Animal | Daily Methane Production Per 1000 lbs Live Animal | |||
| Volume (CuFt) | Wet Weight (lbs) | Volume (CuFt) | Energy (Btu's) | |
| Sheep | 0.70 | 40.0 | 100 | 65,000 |
| Poultry | 1.00 | 62.5 | 156 | 101,562 |
| Dairy Cattle | 1.33 | 76.9 | 192 | 124,963 |
| Pigs | 1.00 | 56.7 | 142 | 92,137 |
| Feedlot Beef | 1.33 | 83.3 | 208 | 135,363 |
Let's say that the basic herd of 1500 animals, which I am using throughout these projections, will produce approximately 10 pounds of fresh manure per animal, per day, or approximately 15,000 Pounds per day. As you can see, this projection is very conservative, as are all of the figures I am using in this proposal.
At a yield of 1625 Btu per Pound, this manure production, when fully digested anaerobically, will yield the energy equivalent of 24,375,000 Btu per day.
Conventional bioenergy literature indicates that 1,707,500 Btu are required to produce a daily yield of 100 KwH electricity, which means that the daily manure output of the basic 1500 animal herd will be 1427 KwH when converted into electricity through combustion, steam generation, and conversion into electricity using conservative energy loss and efficiencies figures.
Working out to slightly less than 1 KwH per animal per day, the manure output of such a herd would be more than sufficient to supply a steam-powered generator with enough energy to produce 50 KwH every hour, 24 hours a day. At a value of $.10/KwH, this represents a value of $142.70 per day in electricity production, or approximately $52,000 per year.
Other assumptions made in arriving at the electric energy output of such a system are:(1) the biogas will be used to fuel an engine generator with an engine thermal efficiency of 25%, and a generator electrical-mechanical efficiency of 80%, and ;(2) 50% of the fuel energy is transferred to the cooling water.
Now here's where the production to tobacco biomass begins to pay off directly for the animal producer. If the farmer were buying just 5 tons of feed per day for his 1500 animals, at an average rate of between $100 and $300 per ton for animal feed, he would be paying $500 to $1500 per day, or $182,500 to $547,500 per year for animal feed.
At that rate just for feed it's easy to see why farmers and ranchers are squeezed by costs. It's also easy to see why beef producers prefer to range their beef cattle, taking advantage of whatever grass and other free forage nature provides, and then fatten them up in a few weeks at the feedlot, rather than having to feed them throughout their lives like Dairy farmers do.
First, imagine what it would do to those dairy producers' bottom lines if instead of having to pay $100-$300/ton for feed they could produce their own feed for $5 a ton or buy it from a neighbor for $10 a ton. Instead of feed costs in hundreds of thousands, their costs are now in the low thousands.
Next imagine what this would do to the bottom line and operational options of the beef rancher. With high quality feed available at $5 a ton it suddenly becomes more expensive to range your animals and to have to spend all that money rounding them up and then taking them to a feedlot than it does to simply restrict them to a limited range of a few acres, feed them in place with biomass materials at $5 a ton, then harvest their protein without additional feedlot costs.
If you are a sheep or goat rancher you have another set of economics affected by the potential of biomass tobacco. Since your production is oriented toward both fiber and meat production your output is affected by feed costs and quality in two areas - amount and quality. Most animal fiber producers range their animals simply because penned feeding at $100-$300/ton is too expensive in return for the prices brought by premium fiber produced by penned feeding. Ranged animals produce commodity-grade fiber because their diet is protein-deficient, and their environment is full of dirt and debris. Their meat grade is mutton for the same reasons.
Imagine the difference if fiber producers could pen feed their animals on high quality feed they produce themselves at $5 a ton - the difference in the quality of the fiber, the prices they would receive, their cost structure, their decreased environmental impact on rangelands, the increased quality of life for the animals, and the ranchers' production options.
These are just a few examples of how the availability of biomass tobacco as an animal feed could revolutionize animal production, increasing quality and profits and reducing costs, without even beginning to take into account the energy potential of the manure output of these penned and presumably happier creatures.
Much of the projected profitability of the proposed integrated energy system derives from the sale or utilization of digester sludge as soil improvement material. While no tests have yet been done on manure from animals fed tobacco biomass, nor has tobacco biomass itself yet been evaluated as direct charging material for anaerobic digestion, a great deal is known about the characteristics of normal digester sludge as a soil treatment.
As a rule of thumb, it is usually assumed that 70% of the organic constituents which are digestible will be decomposed under normal anaerobic conditions. The 30% or so which remains after digestion is composed of three main parts:
Practically the only materials lost from the original materials during digestion are the gasses- methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide. The nitrogen pathway during decomposition is particularly relevant to the use of sludge as soil treatment materials, because the amount of available nitrogen in digester sludge is typically higher after digestion than before.
The higher the nitrogen content of the materials introduced into the Digester as charging media, the higher the nitrogen content of the sludge will be. While no tests have yet been run on the N content of manure from animals fed exclusively on biomass tobacco, it is reasonable to assume that the nitrogen remaining in digested sludge from such animal manure would meet or exceed the levels in ordinary manures and plants materials.
This would mean that approximately 20% of the nitrogen in the biomass manure sludge would be in the form of ammoniacal nitrogen, and the balance in organic nitrogen.
Another major advantage of anaerobically digested materials as soil builders is that during digestion, practically all of the available trace elements are effectively chelated, or converted to a state in which they are readily available to plants when the material is plowed into the soil. This chelation of trace elements will probably prove to be extremely important with biomass tobacco as a digester charging medium, because of the abundance of trace elements taken from the soil by tobacco, and the importance of returning these elements to that soil in usable form for the next planting cycle.
One of the major differences between anaerobically digested sludge and the material produced by aerobic digestion, such as a compost pile, is that in anaerobic digestion only a relatively small amount of the available carbon and nitrogen are converted to bacterial cell mass protein. This means that anaerobically digested sludge is far less likely to smell badly or to attract insects than conventionally composted materials. In addition, during anaerobic digestion almost all weed seeds or spores are destroyed, and pathogens are either destroyed or greatly reduced in number. In addition, most of the organisms responsible for human health hazards in manure, such as intestinal parasites like worms, are destroyed in the anaerobic process, and the die-off of these organisms continues well after the sludge is removed from the digester.
There is simply no other treatment available for treatment of manure or human excrement, whether for disposal or for return to the land, that will reduce the burden of pathogenic organisms as much as does anaerobic digestion. Biomass digester sludge will contain large quantities of cellulose, as well as other original organic plant materials. Since the surfaces of most soils will contain abundant micro-organismic life, the organic constituents of digester sludge will be readily decomposed, yielding abundant humus compounds as well as H2O and CO2. This in turn will improve soil properties such as aeration, moisture-holding capacity, water infiltration capacity, and cation-exchange rates.
The size of digester required to handle a daily load of 15,000 Lbs of manure, plus water to create a slurry, and to retail its charge for 50 days in order to obtain complete digestion and Methane generation, can be calculated as follows:
Biogas technical literature offers numerous proven methods of improving biogas yield from manure and other organic materials. One of the most effective methods is simply to bubble a portion of the daily yield of biogas back through the digester, thereby agitating the slurry. This technique alone has been shown to double the daily gas output of a given amount of manure. Another simple but effective approach is to mix animal urine with the manure, using the urine to provide some or all of the moisture required to make the slurry. This approach has been shown to increase biogas yield by as much as 65% over the use of plain water.
Mixing tobacco in with the manure will change all conventional biogas yield calculations toward greater gas yieldat lower overall costs. My estimate is that adding 50% tobacco to the substrate mix with manure would increase the total biogas output by at least 25% - probably much more. This would mean, among other things, that the energy produced by the biogas - in most cases this will be electricity although it could be gas-to-liquid fuel as well - will be much cheaper and very likely will be very competitive in cost with energy generated by using conventional sources like natural gas, oil and coal.
Other simple, effective techniques for enhancing biogas production include the addition of high sugar agricultural wastes to the manure slurry, or the addition of 1% actual cane sugar by weight. Either of these approaches would be cheap and simple if the energy crop being used were biomass tobacco or alfalfa, both of which are high in natural sugars. However, biomass tobacco, as I discuss in detail throughout this paper, offers considerable advantages over all other co-substrates including alfalfa. I mention alfalfa here simply as a nod to the familiar.
One potential concern regarding use of biomass tobacco as a digester charging medium, or as feed for animals whose manure is used, is that tobacco takes up relatively large concentrations of certain heavy metals during its life cycle, and there is the possibility that sludge created from such material would be toxic to plants or soil microorganisms. However, a number of exhaustive studies on anaerobically digested municipal waste, with high concentrations of heavy metal contamination from human feces and industrial processes, has shown that even heavy applications of such waste to agricultural lands has not resulted in any such toxic buildup.
The principal output of either anaerobic digestion of manure, direct digestion of biomass, or fermentation of either biomass or manure to yield ethanol will be high grade gas and/or liquid fuel. This fuel will find a number of on-farm uses, including vehicle fuel, fuel for pumps etc, fuel for powering refrigeration units for meat processing etc, and process heat fuel. The CO2 output of either anaerobic digestion or ethanol fermentation will find a major usage in soil fumigation and plant growth enhancement through application via subsurface systems.
Animals fed on biomass or on its byproducts would in turn produce economic yields in terms of new animal production, including gains in existing animal live weight, output of eggs, milk, hides, animal fiber such as wool or mohair, production of fish, crayfish, shrimp, or other aquaculture products, and other site and plan-specific animal products.
A digester facility would generate natural, organic fertilizer worth approximately $30/Ton at the master distributor wholesale level, meaning an income potential of $54,000 per year per herd of 1500 animals. There is an almost unlimited market for high quality land treatment materials in many parts of the US, particularly if these materials are available at low cost to farmers and ranchers.
On the other hand, this sludge will also have considerable economic value for processing to obtain a wide range of materials with industrial applications, such as pigments, resins, free lignin, etc; an equally wide range of materials with agricultural value such as protein supplement feedstock for animals, colored poultry feed supplements, and fertilizer components; and a number of high-value applications in areas of pharmaceuticals & medical products, as well as human food-grade protein production.
All of the above applications will require more processing than simple use of the sludge as a soil-conditioning agent, but in a large farming operation, or one which operates on contract to a large processing operation off-farm, the richness and diversity of components of the biomass sludge creates a promising economic picture.
Ensilaged and pelletized tobacco biomass may provide poultry producers with the best, lowest cost feed they have ever used, and could be a factor in bringing ultra-low cost poultry protein production to even the least economically-developed areas of the world.
Egg production is an excellent method of conversion of plant feed to animal protein, with laying chickens requiring about 500 Btu's in plant protein energy to produce 25 Btu's of animal protein in the form of eggs. The plant protein is the result of twin energy inputs- solar energy and fuel energy, mostly fossil fuel energy in conventional farming. In addition to feed energy, with its solar and fossil fuel components, laying chickens require an input of their own energy to maintain their environment.
In fossil energy terms, laying chickens require 500 + 330 additional Btu's of fossil energy to produce 25 Btu's of animal protein. Clearly, anyone who can provide his own energy in replacement of fossil fuel costs in production of animal feed, either with methane for heat, electricity, and stationary engine operations, or with ethanol for vehicle fuel, and can also replace fossil fuel costs in the direct production of animal protein, in applications such as heating/cooling and lighting, will be able to produce egg protein very efficiently.
This doesn't mean that the market system is ready to absorb all this protein, so the individual farmer at one time or another may just have to feed eggs to the fish, and to the pigs, and send some to free food distribution centers in the cities. But with an integrated farm operating on principles of balance, if there is no market for eggs, use the eggs to feed other animals, and for other internal purposes until a market opens up for your eggs. If you feed eggs to the fish because there's no market for eggs, and then there's no market for your fish- sell what you can, feed some of the fish to your animals, give some away, make a few worm beds with some, and then plow the rest back into your land.
An important objection which many people raise upon first hearing of the idea of feeding biomass tobacco to animals is the fear that nicotine on the tobacco will poison or harm livestock in some way. Biomass tobacco is harvested when it is very young, well before significant concentrations of nicotine form. Also, many varieties are low nicotine, high carbohydrate plants well suited to biomass production. Finally there is plenty of evidence that small amounts of nicotine do no harm to cattle and pigs, nor probably to any other animals or creatures including man. This would not be the first instance of a potent natural toxin having little effect when consumed in small amounts. In fact, in a penned feeding situation where manure collection is the objective, a certain amount of mild nicotine addiction on the part of the animals is probably good, in that it will tend to keep them hanging around the feeding areas and the manure collection area.
One of the most important is that there is an inverse relationship between the richness of the soil and the production of carbohydrates by tobacco. In other words, the poorer the soil, the richer the tobacco for animal feed and energy production purposes. This happy circumstance means that those parts of the world which are typically the poorest, where the soils are poor, can benefit from the energy and animal forage potential of Biomass tobacco acreage.
As an example, current projections call for People's Republic of China to go on line with several hundred electric power plants in the next 20 years, most of them fueled by cheap, highly polluting soft brown coal from Western China. If PRC were to explore the tobacco biomass energy option successfully, in addition to providing its people with a new source of clean energy, it could provide employment for millions in producing the biomass for that energy, and could feed hundreds of millions of people with the animal protein produced as a sidestream to the energy being produced to power economic growth.
As another example, Turkey is a vital, high energy culture and economy with almost no energy reserves, and is therefore dependent upon uncertain relationships in a shifting world. However, Turkey also has one of the world's greatest breadbasket regions, and by my informal calculations could become energy self-sufficient by devoting approximately 3% of its current agricultural acreage to biomass tobacco energy crop production - a plant that already flourishes in Turkey in conventional forms.
My own curiosity about tobacco as a source of food and energy came about because of a combination of personal inquiries and activities around Native American tobaccos and New Mexico, where I was living in the early 1980's and this research and thinking got started.
I have many people to thank for what I've learned about tobacco over the years, but for what I know about tobacco biomass there is really only one person in the world - Dr. Ray Long, whose work on tobacco protein and whose efforts to grow tobacco biomass for the extraction of that protein led me to ask, after doing some calculating from what I was seeing in the tobacco research literature - what's happening with all that cellulose and sugar? That led to some long telephone conversations between Ray and me, and several visits since the early 1980's when this inquiry began.
For the only actual ethanol production runs so far I have to thank the folks at Floyd (Virginia) Agricultural Energy Cooperative, who so far have been the only group besides Dr. Long's NCSU team to take the idea of tobacco-based energy seriously. In 1983-84 the Floyd Coop ran a series of trials, using tobacco biomass materials from NCSU as well as conventional local tobacco scraps, which demonstrated that there is no inhibition to conventional ethanol processes and that there is a high rate of conversion of both sugars and cellulosic materials. While crunched due to economic forces generated by the federal government and especially the anti-alternative fuels DOE of the Reagan administration, the Floyd Coop experiments demonstrate that not only does tobacco not mess up ethanol production, it produces at the high conversion rates predicted.
To my knowledge nobody has yet produced a patch of biomass tobacco and fed it, before or after ensilaging it, to animals. I personally grew several plots of Native American tobacco measuring about 1/4 acre each in New Mexico in the early 1980's, and while this wasn't planted as biomass I can testify that it was extremely popular with the local animals and, of course, the insects. These patches of N. Rustica, the sacred tobacco of the Native Americans, were planted as part of the work founding a small company originally intended to work with Native American communities producing small amounts of sacred natural tobacco for sale to those who understood and cared about the difference. My interest in biomass tobacco came after I found myself without a company after some legal manuverings by some unwisely-chosen investors.
While growing this N. Rustica I thought it was interesting that this extremely high nicotine Native American tobacco didn't keep off the bugs, so I made a strong tincture of the gummiest leaves and tried spraying bugs all around the garden - on my veggies, etc. This tincture killed a few of those hardy New Mexico bugs, and staggered some others, but it left most of them unfazed.
Then, in a spirit of equality, I made a tincture using ten cigarettes in a quart of water. Voila! Dead bugs everywhere I sprayed. Just a small illustration of an interesting somewhat larger question and issue - if nicotine is such a deadly poison, why does the tobacco industry have to use all those pesticides to keep bugs from eating the plants? As you may be beginning to see, wherever you poke a stick at this subject some kind of interesting idea reveals itself.
The rest of this part of the site is devoted to an exploration of ideas, questions, possibilities, and a few probably unjustified but irresistible conclusions, usually in the form of "What if...?"
What if tobacco biomass permits the small-scale production of very clean high quality ethanol fuel at a true cost of +/- $0.50/gallon?
What if tobacco biomass means that farmers can supply the US energy needs 100% at competitive prices?
What if it turns out that the byproducts extracted from the discharge from ethanol production are themselves so valuable and easily marketed that the ethanol can be considered paid-for?
What if tobacco biomass permits small scale production of pipeline quality methane gas used to produce electricity at a fully capitalized cost of less than $0.05 per KwH?
What if tobacco biomass can be used to feed animals like goats so cost-effectively that it becomes economically feasible to give them limited range in certain kinds of terrain and to collect their droppings mechanically for energy conversion?
What if biomass tobacco energy production discharge can be used as a high quality, environmentally sound soil reclamation additive?
What if tobacco fraction 1 protein offers a cheap, high quality medical resource for millions of people?
What if it were possible for millions of small farms worldwide to supply 100% of the energy needs of the cities, and to produce 100% of a stable, moderate farm income from energy sales, which would take perhaps 50% of their time and resources leaving the rest free for diversified food production and quality of life?
What if it is possible for a village of 500 people to supply 100% of moderate food and energy needs, and to generate capital, by raising about approximately 20 acres of biomass tobacco, using it to maintain a herd of 1500 goats, and using appropriate technology to produce energy, goat meat, milk, hides, and kids?
(Adapted from Pimental et al)
The concept of integrated agriculture goes back many centuries, and examples of the practice are found in many parts of the world. The ancient Indian cultures of Mexico and central America practiced a form of integrated agriculture known as the "chinampa" system. In this form of agriculture, illustrated beautifully in several areas of the Valley of Mexico and in the Yucatan Peninsula, artificial islands, or floating gardens, were built up in shallow parts of natural lakes by piling layers of silt and aquatic plants until the surface of the island was slightly above the water level of the lake.
The islands were built in narrow strips, in order to allow continuous infiltration of fresh water. Seedlings of various crops were started in beds of organic waste and channel mud located on nearby dry land, and were transplanted onto the islands as soon as they sprouted.
As the plants grew, their "floating" beds were enriched with human and animal organic wastes and with waste from other sources, notably weeds pulled from nearby dryland fields being cleared for cultivation. Fish from the lake channels were consumed as human food, and the waste products of this consumption were returned to the soil of the "islands".
Silt from the lake bottom was continuously used to replace soil lost from the surfaces of the islands. Residues from the harvested crops were also returned to the surface of the growing beds. Cane produced on the islands was burned as a heat source, and the resulting ashes were used to enrich land on the borders of the lake used as prime agricultural territory. In this fashion, a continuous relatively closed cycle of water, soil, and organic materials were integrated with the natural energy of the sun to provide a continuously renewing energy-food cycle which supported an extremely dense population with all of the nutrients required for the development of a complex civilization.
A contemporary version of integrated farming is found in Panthum Thani province, Thailand, where a large Rice producer produces about 450 tons of Rice per day, obtaining its Rice from contract growers in the area. The by-products and co-products of rice processing are used in a closed system with multiple outputs. The Rice husks are burned to produce the energy required for parboiling, drying, and oil extraction of the Rice.
Part of the partially incinerated ash from these burned husks is used to mix with clay for a brick-making operation, and part is burned further to fire the brick-making kilns. The completely burned ash from the kiln fires is almost pure silica, and is sold for use in abrasives manufacturing. Waste heat in the flue gasses from the kiln is used for drying.
About 6000 chickens, 6000 pigs, and 7000 ducks are produced in an integrated animal production operation. About 1.4 million chicken eggs and 1.6 million duck eggs are produced and sold each year. The chicken coops are located above the feed bins for the pigs, so that wasted food and chicken droppings are consumed by the pigs. Rice crop wastes are also consumed by the pigs. Some of the pig manure is used to charge a biogas unit which generates heat for cooking that portion of the pig output which is sold as processed meat; the remainder is used to fertilize fish ponds where carp and other cash fish are raised.
The approximately 40 acres of fish and duck ponds produce 24 tons of marketable fish annually, and fish pond sludge is combined with Biogas generator sludge to produce marketable fertilizer. In addition to these major crops, significant amounts of maize, bananas, pineapples, and other food crops are produced and sold.
In the Philippines, a 60 acre integrated farm maintains approximately 15,000 pigs, and markets approximately 30,000 animals annually. Every day the 7.5 tons of manure generated by these pigs is fed into three 500 Cubic Meter Biogas Digesters which are operated on a continuous flow basis with a retention time of 25 days. The 400 Cubic Meters of gas generated daily is stored in a number of floating chamber tanks, and is used for powering deep well pumps, slurry pumps, a feed mill, and the refrigerating units of the on-farm meat packing plant.
At night, surplus gas is diverted to electricity production. The liquid effluent from the digesters is shunted into fish ponds, where it promotes heavy algae growth which in turn is prime feed for the carp population. Digester sludge is also used as 10% of the feed for the pigs, reducing costs and actually promoting faster growth.
Besides animal protein, one of the major outputs from any animal herd is manure, and with biomass ag/energy farming, manure is elevated to position of primary output. In a few feedlots across the country, and on many individual farms, manure is already being converted into methane gas by anaerobic digestion. The animals are being fed because of their production of animal protein, not because of their manure. Even though many farms replace expensive gas energy with on-site biogas, most such operations view the manure and the gas as a byproduct, rather than as a primary engine with which to drive the farm. This is because the cost of all conventional feed is too high for penned feeding of animals exclusively to produce methane energy, and of course you just don't collect the droppings of ranged animals.
Integrated energy agriculture is in concept a system in which every process feeds on the output of another process and in turn provides the energy or materials for other processes. In an ideal, well-functioning integrated system there is little or no waste, and each process feeds other processes in a loop that keeps on functioning as long as the proper balance of inputs is provided.
So in practice an integrated energy farm would consist of a series of processes, each one feeding off previous processes and then providing input for subsequent processes, with one or more energy streams - electricity, methane gas, or ethanol - as the primary outputs. In an ideal process the cost of the inputs to the system would be so low that the cost of the outputs would be competitive.
An integrated farm system begins with inputs of land, sunshine, water, labor, materials including chemicals, fuel, equipment, and other materials, and capital. In the initial cycle of operations, most or all of the materials components have to be imported into the system- specifically the irrigation and solar systems, the anaerobic digesters that break down and literally digest the plant materials, the biogas storage tanks, ethanol distillation units and storage, electricity generators, associated equipment and materials such as pipe, wiring etc, fuel, chemicals, and seed stock.
Once the system is operational, many consumable materials such as fuel and seed stock will be produced within the system, and thus these do not represent on-going imported costs of operation.
Once the farm is up and running and the right kinds of biomass material are produced and harvested, this biomass can either be used directly as charging material for anaerobic digester/ethanol distillation units, or can be utilized as livestock, poultry, or fish feed. The latter represents the most economic use of high quality biomass materials, since passing the materials through animals extracts considerable economic value from the biomass without degrading its subsequent usefulness as a charging material for anaerobic digestion or ethanol production. In other words, if you can feed biomass to animals and still extract as much or more energy from their manure as you could have from the original biomass, then you have all that animal protein as a bonus.
Existing technical and scientific literature offers plenty of guidance for anyone who wants to begin to calculate the energy balances of an integrated energy agriculture model. That doesn't make the task of constructing the model any simpler, nor does it offer any easy answers to questions about how to value different kinds of inputs and outputs, including items with confusing energy balance equations involving factors like money, and time, and other factors like environmental impact calculations.
The basic equations in farming are pretty well established. Agricultural scientists and working farmers all know pretty how many pounds of hay you need to feed a cow to produce a pound of beef, and they know that if you feed that same cow whole grains and a high protein diet, she will gain weight faster than if she grazes.
In other words, it is well established how many pounds of plant material a cow has to eat to make a pound of protein. We also know how many pounds of feed it takes to produce a dozen eggs, a pound of pork, a gallon of milk, a pound of mohair, a unit of work, and all the other products of animal consumption of plants which we grow or provide for them.
We also know how much of the solar energy which reaches the plant gets converted into the sugars, protein, starch, cellulose, and other plant materials which we feed to the animals. We know how much solar energy falls on each area of the world, and we can calculate how much of the available solar each plant receives by making physical calculations of the exposed leaf surfaces in each type of plant we want to study. All this has been exhaustively catalogued, calculated, and placed in standard reference and scientific literature, and it is readily available to anyone through A&M libraries, State University libraries, electronic data banks, and in other ways.
When we begin to calculate the energy input/output patterns, and their values in energy terms, we are dealing with well-established principles of science. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy can be transformed, but is neither created nor destroyed in the process.
A farmer puts direct forms of energy into the land to produce a crop of plants, whether he uses his own labor, or the labor of a draft animal, or a machine to produce that energy. The direct energy path from farmer to field to plant to harvested food, for instance, is a fundamentally simple set of transformations.
When the energy in sunlight is absorbed by a plant, a large amount of it is converted into biological energy allowing the plant to breathe, circulate its fluid components, and carry on cellular life. Much of the rest of the solar energy falling on a plant is converted by that plant directly into food energy, which the plant uses to build its own structure, systems, and fruiting parts. This same food energy is available to all other forms of life which feed upon the plants, directly or indirectly, and it is the basis for sustaining human life and the rest of organic life on Earth. The plant has taken starlight energy, plus energy from the earth, and from the hand of man, and has made the earth green, with every spot potentially a garden. The farmer is nearest of all people to this fundamental process, and it is the source of their universal love and respect for the earth. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in order to have transformation of energy from one form into another, energy must go from a concentrated form to a diluted form, and that in every transformation energy is lost into the environment, so no process is 100% efficient.
When the energy in gasoline is degraded by burning it in an engine, and that transformed energy is extracted as mechanical energy from the engine in order to propel a car, a huge proportion of the energy originally in the gasoline is lost to the environment. This loss takes many paths, from waste heat transferred to coolant water to energy absorbed by the resistance of each mechanical part of the engine. The energy running your car is only about 25% of the energy you paid for at the pump.
When wind flows past the blades of the windmill, only a portion of the energy absorbed by the sails arrives at ground level after passing through components which absorb energy in fulfilling their mechanical purposes. In electric power generation, only about 25% of the energy in the fuel which runs the engines is produced as electrical energy.
The basic elements of an integrated agricultural system depend upon a harmonious balancing of the energy flows within the system. The basic units for calculating such flows are the calorie, the Btu, and the watt.
The calorie is useful because with it we can calculate food energy, and compare it with any other kind of energy. Nutritional Calories are actually kilocalories, or 1000 "small" calories, which are the basic unit of nutritional energy value measurement. We'll be using the term KCal to designate this large calorie unit, which most of us know intimately as the calories in a fudge sundae or double deck burger.
The Btu is a familiar measure to Americans, and it has a value of approximately .252 KCal. Both Btu's and calories measure the amount of heat energy in foods, equating this measure with the food's potential for sustaining animal biological processes.
For instance, we can calculate the calories in the feed given to an animal, and the amount of weight the animal gains over time, and know the amount of feed it takes to produce a pound of animal protein. Equally, by calculating the caloric value of all the labor, fuels, chemicals and fertilizers, and other inputs to a field of grain, and by calculating the caloric values of the grain produced from the field, we can determine the relationship between inputs of different types of energy, and the output of food.
The watt is a measure of electrical energy, and is a measure of how much work a given amount of electricity will do in a given amount of time. The watt is equivalent to 14.3 KCal/minute, or 859 KCal/Hour as a measure of work done or energy expended by electricity. A Kilowatt/Hour of electric power is equivalent to the expenditure of 859,000 KCal in food energy. This useful conversion allows us to translate Kilowatts of electric power used in growing and processing a field of grain, vegetables or fruits, into KCalories of food energy ultimately produced by the field.
ANIMAL PROTEIN YIELD PER HECTARE IN THE US, WITH FEED & FOSSIL ENERGY INPUTS COMPARED WITH PROTEIN YIELD AND RESULTANT ENERGY RATIOS. (After Pimentel, et al, 1975)
| Type Of Protein | Protein Yield In Pounds | Feed Energy Input In KCALS | Fossil Energy Input In KCALS | Human Labor Input In Man/Hours | Ratio Feed Energy Input To Protein | Ratio Fossil Energy Input To Protein |
| Milk | 130 | 6,963,000 | 8,561,000 | 23 | 30.0 | 35.9 |
| EGGS | 400 | 14,406,000 | 9,560,000 | 174 | 20.0 | 13.1 |
| Broilers | 255 | 8,886,000 | 10,233,000 | 38 | 19.0 | 22.1 |
| Catfish | 112 | 5,007,000 | 7,068,000 | 55 | 25.0 | 34.6 |
| Pork | 143 | 17,021,000 | 9,212,000 | 28 | 65.0 | 35.4 |
| Feed Beef | 112 | 24,952,000 | 15,845,000 | 31 | 122.0 | 77.7 |
| Range Beef | 5 | 1,420,000 | 89,000 | 1 | 164 | 10.1 |
| Range Lamb | 0.17 | 128,000 | 9,000 | 0.2 | 188 | 16.2 |
This chart illustrates the vast differences in energy input/output which arise from different types of animal product production systems. It also shows you that, by and large, the more an animal has to move around for its food, the less usable protein it will make from a pound of its food, even though the protein it does make costs the farmer or rancher very little money in fossil fuels to produce the animal. On the other hand, penned animals produce much more protein per pound of feed input, and although they cost a lot more in terms of fossil fuel energy input, their output justifies the expense. Note that the figures above reflect only one aspect of the energy balance- feed and fossil energy in ... nutritional energy out.
Utilization of tobacco biomass material as animal feed presents many options to the farmer/rancher. The biomass may be fed directly to ruminant animals such as cattle, goats or sheep. It may be ensilaged and used as a feed for swine, or pelletized and used as a poultry feed. In turn, the poultry droppings may be partially recycled as feed for swine in particular, and may also be used as nutrient for fishponds.
The manure output of any type of animal being raised under penned or feedlot conditions will find its greatest economic use as a methane biogas resource material, as described in detail elsewhere. The manure also has a relatively rich potential for yielding ethanol, with a considerable advantage in that it is already processed into a form which is easy to slurry.
In a few feedlots across the country, and on many individual farms, manure is already being converted into Methane gas by anaerobic digestion. ( This simply means putting the manure and some water, usually urine into a closed tank where it can undergo chemical decomposition under limited-oxygen conditions, producing Methane gas as a byproduct of the breakdown of the manure.) However, in such operations the animals are being fed because of their production of animal protein, not because of their manure. Even though many farms replace expensive gas energy with on-site Biogas, most such operations view the Manure and the Gas as a byproduct, rather than as a primary engine with which to drive the farm. This is because the cost of all conventional feed is too high for penned feeding of animals exclusively to produce methane energy, and of course you just don't collect the droppings of ranged animals.
The key to economic success or failure of any integrated biomass operational concept lies in the original yield of the biomass materials. There are many examples of integrated biomass farm and industrial operations found throughout the world, most of them relying on conventional yields from conventional plant materials, with output enhanced as much as possible by optimizing the processing cycle.
The difference in the system I am proposing is that much greater than conventional yields per acre are realized for the original biomass materials, and that the original materials are a mix of the conventional (alfalfa, etc) and the novel (biomass tobacco). It is the extremely high yield per acre of biomass tobacco, coupled with its remarkable physical characteristics, which make the concept of integrated energy farming work at a level of economic return rarely realized in any previous situation.
Of course, along with biomass tobacco, it is important to consider the potential utility of other conventional forage crop plants in any integrated farm energy system.
You have to begin with hemp which, when combined with biomass tobacco production adds high quality plant fiber to the output stream of biomass acreage. Although I wrote the Cultivators Handbook of Marijuana back in the 1960s and have been a strong advocate of both legal marijuana and industrial hemp as cash crops for farmers I've never done a deep analysis - but fortunately many others have.
Alfalfa clearly deserves all the attention it gets as a high potential crop, and while alfalfa is nowhere as desirable as biomass tobacco, with tobacco's 40% holocellulose, 20% protein, 30% sugars & starches, and 1.5% Lignin, it is has a better profile than most conventional plant materials as a biomass resource.
Alfalfa tops are a well-balanced, high energy plant material, with the following basic constituents:
There are very real problems with feeding alfalfa as part of methane production, and the economics don't work out as a stand-alone ethanol resource, but as part of a biomass mix on an energy production farm alfalfa would be an important crop.
Other possible candidates include:
CORN
SOYBEAN TOPS
MATURE WHEATSTRAW
Perhaps the most important categories in the comparisons above are the absolute percentages, and the proportions of Hemicellulose and Holocellulose, and the % of Lignin in the plant material. The digestibility of any plant material, whether in an animal stomach or in an ethanol vat, is directly and primarily affected by these two factors, and the general rule is that the higher the proportion and percentage of Holocellulose, the more digestible and higher food-energy the plant material will be. Equally, the lower the percentage of Lignin, the greater the digestibility and food energy yield of any plant material.
It is readily seen in these comparisons that alfalfa is an excellent candidate for a high value feed, and that tobacco is an absolutely superior crop by any standard.
Another potentially very promising biomass material for part of an energy crop mix in arid and semi-arid region production is Kudzu vine. This plant has earned an extremely bad reputation across the south and south-central region where it was planted as a forage and erosion-control crop in the 1930's, because of its intense growth habit and propensity for escape. Kudzu has taken over and devastated large areas of the south, and has been classified as a severe plant pest in this area by USDA and other agencies.
The last thing which farmers in this area want to hear is a recommendation to plant more Kudzu. However, if Kudzu is planted using irrigation in arid and semi-arid regions such as Texas and the southwest , it will not be able to escape beyond field boundaries because of lack of ground moisture outside biomass production areas. In turn, within these boundaries the intense growth habit of Kudzu will assure a very high biomass yield per acre. Ordinarily nobody would consider using expensive irrigation water to produce Kudzu, but if it is investigated as a biomass energy crop in arid and semi-arid areas, it may reveal tremendous potential.
Kudzu is very rich in Sugars and particularly in starches, making it an ideal candidate for Anaerobic digestion, possibly for fermentation to Ethanol, and as an excellent, proven livestock feed. Yields of 250-300 Metric tons per acre are very feasible in Texas and the southwest, under conditions of appropriate irrigation, and subsequent energy and livestock feed yields, plus a rich digester sludge byproduct, will recommend Kudzu as an ideal biomass candidate in many growing regions.
While the primary focus of this site is to promote discussion of biomass tobacco as a new energy resource, it is important to keep in mind that in the real world there must always be a balance, and that the history of monocropping is a long and sad one. No matter how promising biomass tobacco may turn out to be it will always be important to include it in a diverse energy crop environment where the qualities of several different biomass materials are produced in balance with each other, and with the ecology of the environment in which they are goriwng
Early in my grandfather's life his neighbors in Slingerlands New York began noticing that he was different. People talked for a long time afterwards of the day in 1914 that Ralph Garrison went to the hardware store one Saturday morning, bought a garden hose and then went home, laid it across his vegetable garden, and poked dozens of holes in a perfectly good, brand new hose with an icepick. They say he left it there for years, leaking and spraying all over the place.
Needless to say, Ralph was closely watched by his Yankee neighbors from that time on, and from time to time he satisfied the neighbor's (largely friendly) curiosity by creating and installing some strange new garden appliance - those were his specialty. Ralph Garrison, in other words, was an inventor. And so was his daughter Laura, my mother, and so are hundreds of thousands of other Americans, and many millions more worldwide.
Inventiveness seems to be a basic expression of the human mind and soul, a fundamental creative category like art, music, and writing and, like each of these basic creative expressions, inventiveness seems to be inborn. It then either emerges or not, and flourishes or not, depending entirely upon the person who is the artist, the musician, the poet, or the inventor.
As an inventor I've managed to come up with a few ideas that I turned into little working models - gadgets really, born of the desire to reduce or eliminate some noxious task like cleaning paint brushes. Nothing on the order of zero, the fulcrum and lever, or fire, but amusing enough if not earthshaking, and like a lot of inventors the fun was in the inventing and the dreaming, and not really in commercializing. In spite of my few forays into gadgetry, I've always known that I wasn't born to invent things.
My mind didn't turn to machinery, or technology, or chemical processes - it created what I named Quirks. For me, Quirks are mental inventions, usually novel combinations of people, resources, and incentives or motivations which create new possibilities for living in a better, more harmonious community, society, and world - hence the name Quirk.
Since childhood I've dreamed these Quirks and written them down, but they were always different from my other mental creations and I never knew what to do with them. Occasionally I've sent off a Quirk to someone or some organization I've read about in the press, and very rarely I've gotten back a friendly letter, but none of my little Quirks seemed destined to do more than lie in my old journals and now my computer files.
Then, in the fall of 1989 I stumbled across an English publication, "The Journal Of Social Inventions", and was immediately curious. What's a social invention? I didn't know, so I started reading. The first few pages were a revelation. For the first time, and at once, I knew clearly who and what I was, and what I had been doing all these years, filling thousands of notebooks and then computer files with those schemes, sketches, and plans that I called "quirks" which it turns out not only have a name - they are "social inventions"- but they have a reality and a constituency.
In practical terms social inventions are a lot like mechanical inventions. To be worth a second glance, they have to work, to do what they are supposed to do, and to do it dependably and cost-effectively. They have to meet real needs or create and fill new ones, fit in with people's existing lives, and give perceived value.
There are lots of other possible criteria, but for a social invention there are only two that count - it has to work, and be relevant. And that's where the mechanical inventor and the social inventor take different paths. When you are building a machine you can get feedback. It works, or it doesn't. You can test the validity of your invention - it either works or it doesn't. If it works, you can set out to optimize it; if it doesn't work, you try to fix the problem and go on, or you can decide that your idea won't work and stop the bubble machine.
Social inventors rarely get a chance to see their inventions bench tested, let alone given a test run on a real track. It's hard to build a model, much less a working model, since social inventions involve people as the basic "mechanism", and only social inventors who happen to be kings or very rich are able to create actual working (or non-working) models of their social inventions.
But just as technical or mechanical inventors aren't stopped by the fact that the realistic prospect of a successful gadget or "million dollar" idea is very small, social inventors probably aren't stopped just because its extremely unlikely that their work will ever receive formal recognition, much less be put to the actual test.
Social inventions begin with hubris and, if they are any good at all, end with humility. I offer these inventions not in the hubris of creation, but after many years of reflection. I humbly believe in their potential to make this world a better place for all of us, and I want to share them with others. What follows are a few of my social inventions having to do with biomass tobacco. I offer them in the spirit of inquiry rather than assertion, and welcome your comments, ideas, and criticisms.
The nuclear power industry in the United States represents an enormous investment in generating capacity which may never be effectively utilized, due to the extreme problems associated with operational safety and waste materials. Many completed plants have never operated, and construction on many others is slowed or halted. This idle and partially completed generating capacity is a vast waste of resources and capital, but conversion of nuclear power plants to run on conventional energy sources like coal has not proved cost effective. But the fact is that almost all of the existing nuclear plants in the United States could run efficiently on natural gas, if natural (pipeline) gas were not so relatively expensive.
However, the economics and projections involving the inclusion of tobacco biomass in a renewable biomass energy project result in a completely different picture, and an impressive enough set of costs to merit serious consideration. It appears that an existing nuclear energy facility could provide employment for hundreds of farms in its region, growing biomass on contract for anaerobic digestion in gigantic continuous-flow digesters sited next to the (formerly) nuclear facility. Also on-site would be a facility for processing the digester waste into primary and secondary byproducts such as protein, carotene, carbon dioxide, trace metals, agriculturally valuable elements such as nitrogen and phosphorous, and other economically valuable products.
It may be useful to develop some estimates for the amount of biogas required to operate a typical nuclear reactor. The basic calculation is that it takes 3.9 Cubic Feet of 65% methane biogas to completely convert one liter of water to steam at sea level. This means that in a nuclear plant requiring 10,000,000 liters of water converted to steam per 24 hour cycle, there would be a requirement of 39 million cubic feet of biogas per 24 hours.
Since one pound of manure will produce between 2-3 cubic feet of biogas per pound of wet weight, it is clear that some 13,000,000 lbs of manure per day would be needed to operate such a plant.
At a manure output of 25 lbs/day with cattle, this means that the output of a herd of 520,000 cattle would be required to support the energy production of one nuclear reactor. At 1500 cattle per farm unit, a total of 346 such farms would be required within operating distance of each nuclear reactor, each collecting and shipping its manure quota to the central methane digesters.
However, if you change the substrate mixture to 50/50 manure and biomass tobacco, you decrease the number of animals required to support the process, and radically reduce the overall acreage required to support our hypothetical nuclear plant. Indeed, it is possible and even likely that we will be able to use tobacco as 75% of the substrate mix, further reducing costs and environmental impact and enhancing the proposition of converting nuclear plants to run on biogas fuel. Given the operating costs of typical nuclear reactors, this arrangement will appear very attractive once the energy balance calculations are made along with the economic benefits calculations.
Another approach to recycling nuclear facilities using biomass energy based partially on biomass tobacco takes advantage of one of tobacco's most remarkable characteristics, which is the plant's propensity for taking up heavy metals and radioactive isotopes from the soil. This property of tobacco has been examined as part of the investigations into smoking tobacco's health hazards, and it is well-established that tobacco is voracious in its uptake of this type of soil constituent. While nobody has ever proposed, or experimented with this trait with regard to using tobacco as a biological treatment for low level nuclear waste, I believe that the known characteristics of tobacco make such an experiment worthwhile.
It would be a relatively easy matter to determine whether or not such an approach would be workable. A small plot of biomass tobacco could be seeded in a secure area where it could be watered with low level liquid nuclear waste. The growing area would have to be contained so that excess liquid did not enter the groundwater. If the tobacco did not die because of the exposure, it would be a simple matter to assay the mature tobacco to determine how much, if any of the low level nuclear waste had been taken up and chelated by the plant.
If it is found, as I suspect it will be, that the biomass tobacco effectively absorbs most or all of the nuclear material contained in the water, then the implication is that by using biomass tobacco to treat such waste, we will have an effective way to remove radioactive elements from reactor cooling liquid & concentrate them in plant material, which can then be harvested, dried, and disposed of far more easily than the low level liquid waste. It may even be that it would be possible to economically recycle some or all of the radioactive materials found in such biomass.
To reinforce the idea that biogas is not an esoteric idea, let's look at how tobacco-based biogas production might affect an everyday set of farm and ranch operations - the drying of grain.
Texas Department of Agriculture estimates that such a farmer will use 30,000 cubic feet of gas per season, per acre of corn, with a yield in the range of 120 bushels. This gas is used primarily for drying the corn so that it is acceptable at the Co-op elevators without penalty due to excessive moisture.
A herd of only 150 animals, producing 1500 pounds of manure per day, will generate approximately 3,750 cubic feet of 65% Methane, pipeline quality gas per day. At a cost per 1000 cubic feet of approximately $4.50, the farmer will be realizing an economic yield of about $16.80 per day. If a farmer chooses to use this Biogas production for running gas-powered irrigation pumps and dryers, rather than producing electricity, he will have enough gas to dry nearly 40 acres of Corn without paying a cent for Natural Gas.
Of course, the likelihood is that a farmer with a 150 animal herd, and the necessary acreage for fodder and/or forage production, will in fact be utilizing the Biogas output in a mix of energy applications, rather than for all electricity or all dryer fuel. During those parts of the season when there is little demand for Biogas as fuel, it would make sense to use the gas for electricity production. What electricity the farmer does not use on-site to displace the cost of buying commercial electricity, he can sell into the utility grid at prices ranging from full value to approximately 1/2 value, depending upon state regulations. Then, during periods when there is a need for gas to run irrigation pumps, to run corn dryers, or for other applications, he can simply reduce or shut down electricity production and convert the Digester output to direct utilization of Biogas.
With this level of displaced energy costs, production of 40 acres of corn at 120 bushels per acre will mean that the farmer will be able to produce and market 4,800 bushels of corn at very competitive cost, thus realizing a significant increase in profits regardless of the state of the national and world market for corn. Of course, the same reasoning applies to production of other field crops as well.
The farmer will benefit greatly from being able to generate his own energy, and in addition, will enjoy the soil-conservation and soil-building advantages of having approximately .75 tons/Day of high value Digester sludge to use on his cropland, or to sell at $20/Ton or more. On top of these advantages, of course, the farmer will have a herd of 150 animals being fed essentially for free, and will gain economic benefit from the increase in herd live weight over the season, as well as from the birth of young livestock, and the meat, milk, or animal fiber output of the herd.
One of the principal equations governing almost all commodity-type farming in the US is "Shutdown Price" compared with "Breakeven Price". "Shutdown" is the price needed to cover direct operating expenses of producing the crop, before the farmer even begins paying for his fixed costs of owning the land, paying for the equipment, and paying for his hired help- much less paying himself and his family for their backbreaking work in producing the crop. "Breakeven" includes all those costs and expenses not included in direct production of the crop, but which are incurred anyway in the process of doing farming- the fixed costs just mentioned. Almost all small business owners, whether they are farmers, artists, manufacturers, or whatever, know what it is like to work seven days a week, pay all your suppliers, pay the utilities, pay the rent, pay the hired help, pay the taxes, pay the insurance, and pay the bank, without having anything left to pay yourself. But your own labor is a part of the fixed costs of production of whatever it is that you are making, and whether or not you pay yourself, your labor is part of the costs of production, and therefore part of the breakeven cost of your product.
If you go on making or producing your product long enough without paying yourself, you will go out of business, because your revenues do not meet or exceed breakeven cost, and in the short or the long run, depending on your stamina, you will be broken by breakeven unless you can exceed it. We all know we are fooling ourselves when we don't count our own labor, but it is the easiest of a group of difficult choices not to pay ourselves when there isn't enough to meet the bills.
However, anyone in business must meet breakeven costs with sales revenues, or the business will eventually die. We can only fool ourselves so long with the idea that we are willing to work for nothing. The bottom line is real whether or not we calculate it or even realize it, and it operates with an undeniable imperative. We ignore it at our absolute peril.
The concept of integrated agricultural agriculture recognizes the principle of breakeven, and seeks to address the problems of breakeven by creating a system within which each element not only pays for itself, but also creates enough resources and/or capital to generate the next element in the cycle of profitability. In short, integrated agriculture recognizes the need of the central character in the agricultural drama for a living income, and tries to provide as many alternatives as possible for this hardworking soul- you and me- to make ends meet. If you cant get your paycheck from the sale of the corn, how about from the animals. If not from the animals, how about from the manure energy.
If not from the energy, what about the sludge. And if not from the sludge, how about from the sale of improved acreage. Integrated agriculture is not the answer- it just expands the possible answers to the question "How do I make a living doing what I want to do most, which is working the land to make it productive".
Since over 50% of the small and medium-size farm acreage in America is currently being held by owners who do not farm the acreage, principally by urban-dwelling investors and people who want to have a country place but who do not intend to farm the acreage, it makes sense to look at possible applications of Integrated Farming concepts to this type of acreage.
The following model represents only one of an almost endless series of variations on the scenario created by the radical new bottom-line economics of integrated farming.
Assume that a Limited Partnership is created which is designed to lease irrigation systems to farmers. The following proposal is made to prospective participants.
We will lease your entire farm from you for a period of from 7-10 years, and install high efficiency irrigation systems on between ten and sixty acres of that land at no cost to you. You will work the acreage as a sharecropper/tenant farmer, producing a variety of green forage crops such as alfalfa, coastal, sudan, redtop cane, milo, oats, etc, as well as several experimental biomass crops, according to the crop management plan we will provide and the contract which we will sign with you.
We will provide all seed and fertilizer, and any other crop management materials required. We will provide you with a crop management plan, with the means to produce the crop, and with a share-crop agreement. The sharecrop agreement will call for you to perform certain tasks in agricultural production for us, and for you to receive your shares in Fertilizer, fuel, and animal feed. In addition, the partnership will provide you with living quarters, utilities, and other support necessary for you to complete your work.
Your current tools of trade as a farmer include machinery which you agree to use to work the contract sharecropped acreage, according to our specifications- for this you will principally need a sidebar mower, a 16 Hp tractor, and various wagons. (Most farmers will already have this equipment).
You will provide a well capable of pumping approximately 25 GPM on a continuous basis, and to dedicate that well's output to the irrigated acreage. (Any farm without such a well will not be considered for participation in this plan.)
You will also build a livestock pen area, to our specifications, or will convert your present facilities according to our specifications. These pens will be on land which you lease back from the Partnership. You will agree to provide, or to acquire, a herd of animals to our specifications, either goats, sheep, or cattle. You will agree to manage this herd of livestock, and to feed them as directed, with the produce of the irrigated acreage. If required, the Partnership will finance the construction of suitable animal-holding facilities for you, and will also finance acquisition of the herd.
There will be no charge to you for the forage feed, and all income from your management of the livestock, including meat, milk, fiber, and young animals, is yours to keep. In return, you agree to collect the animals' manure according to our specifications, and to deliver it to our anaerobic digester facility on a contracted schedule. We will provide you with the equipment to use to collect the manure, and to deliver it to our facility. You will receive credits for the manure you deliver toward fertilizer produced by the plant.
The economics of this program are advantageous to both parties. The partnership will spend approximately $4000 per acre installing the irrigation system. The partnership will spend additional amounts on seed, and on some fertilizers and soil conditioners for the initial season- since the output of the anaerobic digester will provide excellent fertilizer and soilbuilder materials once it is in operation.
Alfalfa is an excellent green forage crop from the standpoint of feed for goats, sheep, and to a lesser extent, for cattle. It currently costs a grower in the Valley of Texas about $300 an acre for fertilizer alone, to grow alfalfa with a market value of $100-150/ton, and a yield per acre which barely breaks even.
The cost of fuel to operate the vast acreage required to yield a livable net profit from farming, when added to the cost to fertilize alfalfa or any other plant with a high soil nutrient demand, almost guarantees that even extremely competent conventional farming methods of growing forage feed are coming up against an unyielding economic wall.
With the inclusion of the high-yield, intensively coppicing, sun-adapted tobacco plant in the mix, an average yield of 150-200 tons/acre is quite feasible, using conservative projections. At this rate of production, the feed requirements of 1500 animals at 5 pounds/ day per animal amount to 3.75 tons/day. This means that the output of less than 10 acres at 150 tons/ year would be needed to support such a herd.
The manure and biogas output of each 1500 animal unit will be sufficient to generate a conservatively estimated $52,000 in electricity per year. A ten-herd program would generate approximately $520,000 per year in electricity. A state-of-the-art 500kW capacity generator will cost less than $250,000 to purchase and install.
The cost of building a continuous charging Digester of sufficient capacity to handle the approximately 50 tons of manure per day generated by ten 1500 animal herds will be approximately $50,000, using the latest low-tech continuous flow digester technology described in the literature.
In addition to the electricity output realized from such a digester facility, the 50 tons of digester sludge produced each day has a value as natural, organic fertilizer of approximately $30/Ton at the master distributor wholesale level, meaning an income potential of $54,000 per year per herd of 1500 animals, or $540,000 a year for a 10 herd program. There is an almost unlimited market for high quality land treatment materials in many parts of the US, particularly if these materials are available at low cost to farmers and ranchers.
If the farmer were paying for the 5 tons of feed per day for his herd of 1500 animals, at a rate of between $100 and $300 per ton, he would be paying $500 to $1500 per day, or $182,500 to $547,500 per year. Since he is not paying any cash for his feed, and since his contract crop management tasks amount to very little cash outlay, his feed costs are practically nil, which means that income realized from his 1500 animal herd will be pure almost pure profit.
This income will vary, depending on whether the farmer sells off his herd at the end of the year for weight value, as with cattle, or harvests the herd for fiber value, such as with sheep & goats, plus gain from young animals. In either case, the large net profit realized from the herd will be enjoyed at almost no cash outlay, and with considerable cash and in-kind income to the sharecropper/farmer.
It is possible that, under conventional sharecropper/tenant farmer tax law, the manure output of the farmer's animals could be considered the "crop" being share-worked, and therefore all of the feed which the Partnership would provide the sharecropper might be treated as "materials" contributed by the owner to the tenant-farmer/sharecropper's operation, and then subject to deduction as an ordinary business expense at fair market value by the owner of the farm.
In addition to income from sale of electricity and sale of digester sludge as land treatment, the partnership will gain a number of immediate tax credits, including a number of business solar, and soil & water conservation credits still intact in 2007. With an outlay of $750,000 ($4000 x 100) + ($250,000) + ($100,000), the Partnership will experience a first year income potential of ($520,000 electricity sales) + ($540,000 organic fertilizer sales), plus the potential of 10,000+ gallons of ethanol fuel production, at a market value of $1.80/Gallon, produced with solar distillation from the digester sludge after biogas generation, but before treatment and sale as fertilizer and landfill. This means that an integrated operation of the type just described can potentially pay back almost 100% of total investment in Year #1, and will realize a profit of over $800,000 for every subsequent year.
The irrigation and solar season extension system investment in the biomass acreage will be eligible for depreciation over a period to be determined, probably the full period of the lease on the farm, after which the farmer may acquire the irrigation systems and acreage from the partnership, and take his own credits and depreciation, while the Partnership may install new irrigated acreage and put it under contract with the same farmer, with equivalent new tax benefits.
There are a number of potentially profitable approaches to utilization of the Biogas output of a combined 1500 and 15,000 animal herd scenarios, such as envisioned here. For instance, approximately 2% of the 20 trillion cubic feet of natural gas production each year in the US is used to make nitrogen fertilizer. This means that there is an annual consumption of 400 billion cubic feet of gas for N fertilizer production. With an annual production of (37,500 X 365) 13,687,500 cubic feet per 1500 animal herd, or 136,875,000 cubic feet per 10 herd (15,000 animal) unit, it would take slightly less than 3000 such 10-herd units to supply the biogas to totally replace natural gas as the source of N fertilizer, or approximately 56 such herd units per state.
This would imply that as the nation's supply of natural gas dwindles over the next 10-15 years, the production of biomass for animal feed for production of biogas for production of N fertilizer would take on economic significance. Naturally, the output of digester sludge from such an enormous national herd base would offset the demand for simple N fertilizer to a large degree, but there will still remain a considerable demand which could be profitably serviced on an area by area basis by entrepreneurs. In addition, while N fertilizer production takes only 2% of total national natural gas production, it takes approximately 1/6 of the interruptible natural gas supply- that is, the natural gas largely in pipelines destined for residential and commercial uses. If this substantial draw on residential and commercial resources could be displaced with cost-effective biogas production, our country would experience a significant decrease in vulnerability to energy disruptions of all kinds.
A typical urban electric utility in the southwest is currently paying about $3 per million Btu's. Assuming a conservative animal manure content of 650 Btu's per pound, it would take 1538 lbs of fresh, wet manure to generate a million Btu's. Assume an animal manure output of 1.5 lbs manure for every pound of green matter taken in, water adding the difference between green matter input and wet manure output. Then it would take approximately 1000 lbs of feed to produce the million Btu's of biogas.
An energy contractor such as a city utility might make the following offer to farmers located within the city's regional power grid: We will put an animal production facility, anaerobic digester facility, and electric power plant, and biomass membrane pipe production facility in place on land which we will lease from you. You will agree to operate the biomass production facility and the animal production facility to feed and maintain your animals, and to produce a contracted amount of manure on a daily basis. You agree to use this manure to produce biogas and then electricity in specified amounts. You may produce gas or electricity in excess of these amounts for your own use.If you offer excess production for resale, the city gets a percentage.
You have all rights to animal protein production used on-farm and sold at market, except that the city has the rights to 10% of the animal protein production for distribution to low income families. The city may choose not to exercise this right. You have all rights to the digester sludge output, and may use it in any way you wish to enhance soil values of land you own or lease. If you sell sludge, the city is owed a percentage of the money.
With biomass production costs at $5/ton for high protein tobacco, the biogas generated would have direct costs of $2.50 per 1000 lbs of feed. This would imply direct costs of $2.50 per MBtu for gas derived from the manure of these animals; however, energy is expended maintaining the animals on a daily basis, and energy is converted into animal protein by live weight gain and production of young animals.
A herd of 100 beef cattle will consume the wet or dry equivalent of 2500 pounds of green feed per day, and will give off about 3000 lbs of manure. At $5/ton, this green feed would cost $6.25 to produce. This manure will generate 7500 cubic feet of methane, with an energy content of 4,875,000 Btu's. At $3 per MBtu, this gas energy production is worth $14.63. Buying $14.63 worth of renewable energy for $6.25 is an excellent deal for the city utility.
With a 7% conversion rate of solid plant materials to animal protein, the herd of 100 beef cattle would gain about (2500 x .5 x .07) 87.5 pounds per day, or about 26 lbs/month per animal. This would imply an overall gain of 2600 lbs/month for the herd, or an increase in economic value of $1300 at $.50 /Lb for beef. Similar gains with very attractive bottom lines in marketable live weight would be realized by those raising dairy cattle, pigs, sheep, goats. or chickens for contract energy production. This $1300 is almost all net, since all major costs of production have been absorbed by the energy contractor.
The economics work out very well for the farmer who goes beyond producing energy for the city. Suppose that the farmer decides to go into the chicken business as well, and puts in additional biomass tobacco production. For instance, an input of 1000 pounds of high grade protein feed, such as a pelletized blend of young, green tobacco biomass with fresh alfalfa biomass, would yield a protein content of well over 20%. With 200 pounds per day of plant protein, laying chickens would produce about 54 lbs per day of animal protein in the form of eggs. At the end of their laying cycle, mature egg producing chickens are replaced with fresh egg producing birds, and are retired to chicken heaven in deep fry acres.
A flock of broiler chickens fed the same 200 lbs per day of plant protein would convert the feed energy and produce about 36 lbs per day of animal protein in the form of meat. In addition to being less efficient at protein conversion than egg laying chickens, Broilers require almost twice the non-food energy input of egg layers per pound of protein produced.
With a 27% conversion rate, a flock of chickens consuming 2500 lbs of green feed with a solids content of 50% would produce (2500 x .5 x .27) 338 pounds of egg protein per day. With pure egg protein valued at about $1.00/Lb, this implied a daily production of egg protein valued at $338. The manure production of this flock would be almost the same in weight, but would produce a somewhat higher gas & Btu yield, and would have an energy content of nearly 5 million Btu's, or $15 in $3/MBtu in natural gas equivalence.
Worm farming represents a highly profitable option in the integrated energy farming cycle. There is an excellent market for certain types of earthworms, and worms also represent an excellent food resource for poultry production, and aquaculture, two potentially valuable elements in an integrated farming cycle. Worms have been very successfully bred and harvested in a wide variety of composted material, ranging from household garbage, earth beds, food processing wastes, pulp and paper sludges, municipal sewage wastes, and agricultural wastes.
In the process of going through their life cycle, earthworms take in, digest, and excrete large volumes of manure which is called "castings". Earthworm castings are an excellent fertilizing material because they are completely composted organic material that cannot burn plants. The process of ingestion, digestion, and excretion of organic materials by earthworms enhances the nutrient content almost any waste material.
There are also indications that digestion by earthworms destroys a number of pathogenic organisms, such as Salmonella enteritidis. Evidently the worm gut contains powerful microflora which out-compete and destroy many important pathogens found in sewage, sludge, and soil. Earthworm feeding in soil, and in composted sludge has been shown to stimulate the integration between a wide range of sludge/soil organisms, enhancing many of the natural processes, and improving conditions for plant uptake of nutrients.
A number of universities in America, Japan, and Europe have investigated a range of methods of worm farming as part of waste management systems, and a great deal of technical literature is available in the area. In addition, there is lots of popular and commercial literature available from many sources on the subject.
Research shows that most anaerobically produced sludges are initially toxic to earthworms, but that after being placed on the land for a period of two months and exposed to weathering processes, these sludges make an excellent media for earthworms. This would indicate that with earthworm cultivation as part of an anaerobically based energy production system, worms might better be raised on a manure/water mixture separated before charging the digester.
An excellent example of medium-scale worm growing is a vermi-composting unit constructed by the City of Lufkin, Texas. This unit has been in continuous, successful operation since 1979, and represents an excellent model for anyone contemplating an integrated energy agriculture system of moderate scale.
In the Lufkin complex, the worms are raised in twelve cells, each 95' by 20', with two rows of six cells on each side of a central aisle. The total land area required is a bit over .5 acre. Each cell is built from a 6" base of aged hardwood sawdust, spread on a 6 mil poly film which covers the bottom of the bed.
The cells are constructed of arches of metallic tubing similar to electric conduit. The arches are covered by two layers of 6 mil poly film, the inner one a black plastic, and the outer one clear. The two layers are kept separated by air blown between them, and the passive solar effect achieved is utilized to maintain temperatures in the cell. For every square foot of surface area on the beds, or 22,800 Sqft, approximately 8 ounces of earthworms are initially seeded. The initial requirement is approximately 10,000 lbs of live earthworms, or one-half the annual earthworm production of the plant once it is operational. At a cost of $150/Ton, an operation the size of the City of Lufkin's vermiculture plant required approximately $750 worth of earthworms with which to start .
These beds are sprayed daily with a mixture of (one part) stabilized sludge from the primary treatment tank of the municipal sewage system, and (one part) activated sludge from the secondary treatment unit. The combined sludge mixture is 3.5 to 4% solids, and is sprayed on the beds at a rate of .05 Lb (Dry Weight Equivalent) per square foot per day, or approximately one pound of liquid sludge mixture per square foot per day.
The spraying takes place once a day in the late afternoon, and the beds are treated with additional water to produce the desired 70-95% moisture content, with 85% being optimal. The beds are also kept within the optimum temperature range of 60-75 degrees F, with nightcrawlers preferring about 60 degrees, and redworms preferring about 68. The pH is kept between 6.4 and 6.9, using lime as the buffering material. Maintenance of the beds is a matter of a surface tilling with a small, conventional rototiller once every month or so, to break up the surface crust which forms. The tilling is done in the early morning, when the worms are mostly at the bottom of the beds, to minimize loss of worms.
The cells are kept dark and well-ventilated, except during periods of rain or thunderstorms when worm activity is high, and the worms are likely to crawl out of the beds. During such periods, bright lights are turned on in the cells to inhibit this activity.
Since too great a concentration of castings is toxic to the worms, fresh bedding must be supplied regularly. About every six months, when the concentration of castings in the bed exceeds 50%, a number of 2 foot wide trenches are dug the length of each bed, and the material is removed. This material is sifted to remove the earthworms, which are then marketed, and the trenches are filled with fresh, aged bedding materials. Within about 2 more weeks, the remaining worms have migrated almost 100% to the areas of new bedding. At this time the remaining areas of old bedding are removed, sifted for any worms which may remain, and the trenches filled with new bedding.
The old bedding material which is 50-70% worm castings by volume is excellent soil conditioner material, and is highly enriched with nutrients in readily assimilable form. The Texas Health Dept will not allow commercial sale of this material as potting soil, so it is used by the City of Lufkin Parks Department; however, soil of this richness has a comparable economic value of $30-$50 a ton, and if produced in an integrated agricultural context and used on farm, it will be an excellent addition to any soil treatment program devised for recycling of digester sludge and other agricultural and residential waste onto the land.
The worms themselves have an economic value of $1.50-$1.75 per pound as bait, and the 12 Lufkin beds produce approximately 20,000 Pounds of worms a year. Alternatively, as a protein source for animal or fish feeding, the worms have a value of $130-$150 per ton. In an integrated agricultural plan, these worms could be utilized to feed poultry, hogs, and fish, and would provide excellent supplemental feeding for animals on a biomass feeding program. In terms of return on investment, such a 1/2 acre worm breeding facility could be built for the economic value of the first year's production as a supplemental animal feed.
In addition, there may be a future market for specially raised earthworms in the pharmaceutical industry. There are indications in research from Japan that dried worm tissues may be excellent sources for pharmaceutical compounds, such as riboflavin. Other research in Thailand shows that worms adapt to injuries of all kinds, including severed nerves, by manufacturing a wide array of mysterious molecules.
While the City of Lufkin project illustrates the application of worm farming in a municipal waste disposal program, it also demonstrates that with simple, low technology valuable products can be produced with little capital cost .When combined with an aquaculture system, a livestock feeding program, a byproduct marketing program, and other elements of an integrated energy agriculture plan, worm farming will prove to be a major low cost, high yield asset.
Worms are one of integrated agriculture's finest, most versatile low tech tools, a natural biological system which is available to everybody in agriculture, which is amazingly cost effective, which integrates beautifully with all other integrated agricultural cycles, and which is beneficial to all. Worms play a very important role in the internal conversion cycles of integrated agriculture, in which waste of many kinds is transformed into a range of usable resources. Not only do worms do extremely beneficial work in processing and recycling waste materials, they also enrich the soil through their castings, and aerate the soil as they move around. Worms are themselves a valuable protein crop, harvestable several times a year. An integrated grower can profit internally from having worm beds recycle waste materials, from worm protein harvests for poultry and fish feed, and through production of high nutrient soil conditioner in the worm beds.
Worms return enough non-cash benefits in an integrated system to be worthwhile even if they do not generate a cash income, but in fact worms do generate cash income in several ways. They increase crop and animal productivity through their beneficial activities in the soil, and they also convert to tangible cash returns in their role as harvestable protein. Cash paybacks can include money from sale of meat, eggs, and dairy from animals fed with worm protein, specialty bait worm and soil conditioner sales.
Worm farming represents a highly profitable option in the integrated energy farming cycle. There is an excellent market for certain types of earthworms, and worms also represent an excellent food resource for poultry production, and aquaculture, two potentially valuable elements in an integrated farming cycle. Worms have been very successfully bred and harvested in a wide variety of composted material, ranging from household garbage, earth beds, food processing wastes, pulp and paper sludges, municipal sewage wastes, and agricultural wastes.
PLEASE NOTE: the following information is provided for informational purposes only, and is not intended to be a recommendation that any reader take any specific action, and in no case should any action be taken on the following information without first consulting with an attorney and an accountant.
The "Farmer's Tax Guide", published by the IRS, is a truly remarkable document. For one thing, it is actually clear and readable, as though somebody with a lot of clout sat down with the boys at IRS and said, "Now look. You're writing this pamphlet for people who are accustomed to plain talk and straightforward information. These are hardworking people with no time for your usual dense language and tortured syntax. So make it clear, make it simple, and tell the people what they need to know in plain English."
I don't know if such a conversation actually took place, but if it did it was successful, because "Farmer's Tax Guide" is an excellent example of what government communications with the public can be if the bureaucrats make the effort. To browse the entire Guide online go to http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/forms_pubs/pubs/p225toc.htm
"Guide" is remarkable on other levels as well, but none so important as the quality of information it contains concerning special privileges available to the American farmer. Of course, much of this information requires interpretation from a new perspective if it is to be useful in the context of an integrated approach to Energy Agriculture, but there are nevertheless some absolutely stunning possibilities buried among the plain dry language.
Perhaps nothing in this guide is quite as exciting for the possibilities of a new approach to integrated energy agriculture as the provisions covering tenant farming and sharecropping.
Now, when most of us hear those words, the vision which appears in our minds is that of an exploited family living in a dilapidated shack in muddy, ugly poverty from which there is no escape. We see poor white and black families with large broods of dirty, starving children without hope for the future, ruined women who are old in their early twenties, and defeated men with bent backs and hollow eyes. We see the awful underside of American agriculture, a mockery of our songs about a land of plenty, a condemnation of our national myths about freedom and justice for all.
What is so exciting about the IRS Guide's description of Tenant and Sharecropping farming is the realization that the same tax breaks and considerations which have allowed this kind of terrible exploitation to exist for decades, also allow a whole new kind of economic and social structure for integrated farming, if only we take a look at the tax laws from a different perspective. This is because the same laws which have allowed and even promoted the cruel exploitation of poor people by farmers and landowners all across the south, and elsewhere, also allow enlightened farmers and landowners to pursue a new vision of sharing of wealth and economic and social advantage in the context of a rural life of plenty- plenty of food, plenty of energy, plenty of opportunity, plenty of everything America is supposed to be about. And all it will take is a shift in point of view, and a new approach to agriculture, which is what this book is all about. Let's take a look at the specifics of these Tenant/Sharecropping laws, and examine what they mean for the new American farm and the people who will be building the future on these farms.
Perhaps the most productive tax law relating to Tenant farming is the IRS provision that almost all expenses which you as the property owner incur to provide housing for your tenant farmers are deductible as ordinary business expenses by you, but are not counted as income by the tenant farmer.
To read the IRS wording on the treatment of business expenses incurred for tenant farmer housing go to http://www.irs.gov/publications/p225/ch04.html#d0e4624
or go to http://www.irs.gov/publications/p225/index.html and use your browser's finder to jump to 'Tenant House Expenses'.
Also as you'll see, just as there are no restrictions on who you engage as a farm employee http://www.irs.gov/publications/.p225/ch13.html#d0e18174 there are no restrictions on who can be your tenant farmer or sharecropper, other than that this person must have a legitimate sharecrop or tenant farmer agreement with you.
This means that if you choose to have a family member, including a son, daughter, mother or father, or any other relative, or any friend or acquaintance live on your land and engage in sharecropping or tenant farming, they receive any housing you provide for them without having to declare it as income, and you get a full business deduction for the fair market value of what you provide. The IRS specifically says that the normal tenant-farmer or sharecropper arrangement applies to any relative by blood or marriage as long as there is a legitimate tenant-sharecrop agreement. You are not excluded from making such an agreement with anyone you choose.
"You are a farm-related taxpayer if any of the following tests apply:
For this purpose, your family includes your brothers and sisters, half-brothers and half-sisters, spouse, parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, and aunts and uncles and their children."
As I said earlier, this has normally resulted in landowners providing minimal shelter to poverty-stricken sharecropping families, and deducting "fair market value" for housing for, say, ten people from their farm income as expenses. But there is nothing in the IRS law which says it has to be that way. In fact, the IRS says that "The value of a dwelling and its furnishings provided to a tenant farmer by the landowner under the usual tenant-farmer arrangement" is non-taxable as income to the tenant farmer.
So, nothing says that you cannot provide a very nice passive solar house with all sorts of amenities to your brother or mother, for instance, and if you have a legitimate sharecrop or tenant farming agreement with them, you get to deduct all the expenses of providing the house, the utilities, any repairs, the insurance on the house, and depreciation of the property as a farm business expense, and they don't have to declare one penny of this as income.
As for your Mom's or Sister's or Nephew's tenant farming activities, it doesn't have to be hoeing cotton in a bleak field under the hot sun - it can be punching in the controls on a hydroponic greenhouse that produces carnations, or any other activity that you, the landlord, can demonstrate is intended to make a profit. There is a lot of flexibility in the rules relating to profit, but in the end you do have to be able to demonstrate that you are not 'hobby-farming'. As long as you can do that, the expenses of the tenant housing you provide are legitimate farm expenses to you.
You have to be careful to set up a valid tenant farming agreement so that whoever is involved isn't considered by the IRS to be simply a self-employed farmer with a share-crop agreement. but as a legitimate tenant-farmer. For more on farm self-employment income take a look at
http://www.irs.gov/publications/p225/ch12.html#d0e17342
So the upshot is that with the proper legal agreements in place and actual tenant farming duries for them to perform, you can provide tenant housing for as many family members and others as you want, take an annual business expense deduction for all costs associated with providing the housing, and the folks enjoying this housing need not report one penny of income for tax purposes. They are going to be treated as self-employed farmers and will have to declare their share of income from the crop or livestock they produce, but their housing, tools, utilities and related costs of living are tax-free and not counted as income.
The IRS Tax Guide for Farmers doesn't anticipate this new kind of living and working together but that doesn't mean it isn't perfectly legitimate. All it takes is a new attitude toward farming, and a clear understanding of the tax laws, to benefit in this way from the provisions of the IRS.
PLEASE NOTE: the above information was provided for informational purposes only, and was not intended to be a recommendation that any reader take any specific action, and in no case should any action be taken on the above information without first consulting with an attorney and an accountant.
Most sugar manufacturers do not produce their own raw materials; rather, that they buy raw materials on contract from producers, and act as a processor, packager, and distributor of the finished product in a variety of forms. In the current world sugar market environment, with low prices for the finished product likely to last for some time, it may be that producers are seeking new ways to be in the market, without altering the basic style of business. I believe that the opportunities presented by biomass tobacco, and other biomass crops, may provide such a direction.
Tobacco biomass has an extremely high potential for commercial applications in the fields of human food, medicine and pharmaceuticals, livestock feed, poultry feed supplements, and in the production of economic co-products with a wide range of potential Industrial applications. While most of my research to date has focussed on production of biomass tobacco, and on biomass production of other forms of conventional forage crops such as alfalfa, for individual ranch & farm applications, when this data is examined from the perspective of a large processor company it yields some exciting possibilities.
I will assume that sugar producers are well aware of the use of sugar cane in Brazil for production of ethanol fuel, and the use of bagasse to produce methane which in turn provides process heat used in ethanol production.
The economics of ethanol production from cane have been well studied, and the conclusion has been that in the US, costs of production and the current market prices of liquid fuels, especially comparing ethanol with gasoline, do not make such production profitable for processors. My research demonstrates a way that U.S. producers could enhance their competitiveness in the basic sugar market, profitably enter the alternative fuels market even under the current conditions of low oil prices, and diversify its business into a variety of closely-related new profit centers which would compliment their current basic business.
In my basic research, I have shown that current field trials and experimental data demonstrate that biomass tobacco will yield at least 300% more sugar per acre than sugar cane, and that the composition of these sugars is excellent- largely sucrose and glucose, as well as very large amounts of starch, suitable for conversion to syrup. In addition, I demonstrate that tobacco holocellulose is approximately 40% of the dry weight of the plant, and has very minimal lignin encasement, making it an excellent candidate for hydrolysis to syrup.
Thus from the standpoint of sugar production alone, it would benefit sugar producers to investigate the potential of biomass tobacco, which has a much greater yield potential, and a much wider growing range than sugar cane. However, while sugar cane bagasse has certain very limited byproduct applications, including methane generation and low-value animal feed, biomass tobacco has a wide range of commercially valuable byproduct and co-product applications which imply opportunities for profitable diversification. I have included short descriptive papers on several such applications.
The primary benefit of my proposed program, if proven successful, will be that the agriculture and energy sectors, the traditional cornerstones of U.S. economy, will be mutually revitalized and given a broad new vitality which will enhance both sectors, as well as a range of related economic activities including banking and manufacturing. In addition, the socio-economic viability of rural communities will be radically enhanced, with hundreds of thousands of new jobs created primarily in these rural areas throughout the state. The country's revenue base, now seriously in jeopardy, will be stabilized and improved to the point where not only will no new taxes be needed, but the tax rates in many key areas will actually be able to decline while gross revenues will increase.
A comparison of yield figures between sugar cane and biomass tobacco will indicate the potential of biomass tobacco not only for Sugar production, but also as an energy crop.
SUGARCANE YIELDS - Average 5 Years
| STATE | Cane Yield Per Acre - Tons | Raw Sugar Per Ton Of Cane | Refined Sugar Per Ton of Cane | Refined Sugar Per Acre |
| Florida | 30.5 | 198 | 185 | 5,643 |
| Hawaii | 94 | 220 | 206 | 19,364 |
| Louisiana | 23.5 | 198 | 185 | 4,348 |
| Texas | 30.6 | 198 | 185 | 5,661 |
PROJECTED BIOMASS TOBACCO SUGAR YIELDS
| Biomass Tobacco Yield | Total Raw Sugars Per Acre ( Lbs) | Total Refined Sugars Per Acre ( Lbs) | |
| 100 Metric Tons | 3,000 - 6,000 | 2,803 - 5,607 | |
| 200 Metric Tons | 6,000 - 12,000 | 5,607 - 11,215 | |
| 300 Metric Tons | 9,000 - 18,000 | 8,409 - 16,818 |
It is clear that even at the high yield of 300MT/acre, biomass tobacco will not produce as much refined sugar per acre as Hawaiian sugar cane; however, it is also evident that at much lower yields of biomass tobacco per acre, it will out-produce the sugar cane fields of Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. It is significant to note that yields of 150-200 MT/acre have already been achieved in North Carolina, and that conservative projections using known tobacco varieties and crop management techniques call for yields in the 25--300 Metric tons per acre in Texas and Florida.
We have yet to see how far beyond these yield estimates we may go once actual field trials are undertaken, but with the solar assisted membrane pipe irrigation system contemplated elsewhere in this research it is likely that we will obtain some truly enormous yields, surpassing Total sugars/acre yield of even Hawaii.
In addition, we must keep in mind that the biomass tobacco yielding somewhat less than the top figures which Hawaiian cane has to offer, will yield additional high value protein, starch, and low-lignin cellulose. The starch and the cellulose in particular have economic value for hydrolysis into syrups, and given the total yields of these components, it is likely that total sugar and syrup output from an acre of Texas biomass tobacco would compare very favorably with the total refined sugar and molasses output of an acre of Hawaiian cane.
One of the most sanguine works in this area is the familiar "Small Is Beautiful". This chapter will discuss low technology integrated agriculture concepts to processes which lead to successful self sufficiency and economic development of the world's "Two Million Villages" a la Schumacher.
In many areas of the world a village is very much like a US Family farm insofar as the goals of integrated agriculture for the unit.
"The poor of the world cannot be helped by mass production, but only by production by the masses" (Gandhi)
"Production by the masses mobilizes those resources possessed by all human beings, their clever brains and skillful hands, and supports them with first class tools.(It) makes use of the best of modern knowledge and experience, is conducive to decentralization, compatible with the laws of ecology, gentle in its use of scarce resources, and designed to serve the human person rather than making him the servant of machines" (SIB)
Programs for production and marketing, for developing beyond self sufficiency, will be successful only if they are coherent with the existing levels of education/knowledge, organization, and discipline. Prosperous material self sufficiency at the village level involves work opportunities at all levels of production, with a viable workplace for every physically able person.
"Unless life in the hinterlands can be made tolerable, the problem of world poverty is insoluble and will inevitably get worse."(SIB)
Whenever economic development has occurred and remained stable, prosperous self sufficiency has preceded other development. Successful development proceeds from a base of the knowledge, wisdom, existing social and cultural structures, material culture, ideas and values which are already in place at the village level.
"If the nature of change is such that there is nothing left for the fathers to teach their sons, or for the sons to accept from their fathers, family life collapses. (SIB)
"Proposed change must stand in some organic relationship to what they are already doing, what they are already suspicious of and resistant to (which are) radical changes proposed by town-based and office bound innovators...." (SIB)
Tying economic development to government-regulated commodity markets is not doing the people any favors. With prosperous self-sufficiency as the primary goal, development is not automatically tied to regulated commodity markets but to a village-based economy which reflects the needs and values of the people rather than the abstract marketplace.
A nation of village markets will be far more viable than an economy of a bureaucratically regulated commodity market, or an even more highly regulated, currency-earning export market.
The cities of the Third World, just as the cities of America and the Soviet Union, are filled with people who have been forced off in land and in from the villages because villages are no longer even meagerly self sufficient
Village level agricultural development must create viable alternatives to migration to urban areas- they must provide stability, self respect, and prosperity.
Such development must be low in capital formation costs, it must rely exclusively on local labor, knowledge, and raw materials
This project could demonstrate that with the expenditure of small sums of money on an infrastructure of low technology capable of supporting prosperous levels of self sufficiency for villages of 300-1000 people, a herd of 1500 Goats or sheep, supported by between 10-20 acres of irrigated forage, can provide enough manure to provide every person in such a village with cost effective electricity and heat. This same acreage can produce poultry and poultry feed and support aquaculture.
An additional field of 10 acres capable of year round food production can supply a village of 500 people with a high level grain, vegetable & fruit diet to supplement animal protein and dairy. A field of 5 acres can provide large volume production of specialized food items such as honey, herbs, nuts & tree fruit, etc., sufficient for a 500 person village. Another field of 5 acres dedicated to waste processing can produce large volumes of environmentally sound processed waste using worm beds, fishponds, solar technologies, and biological filters for handling 500 people plus 1500 animals, and for producing soil amendments capable of expanding the village's base of high quality agricultural land by approximately 3 acres per year.
Most folks have dreamed about living on the land at one time or another, and many of us have actually made the commitment and tried hard to live the dream. People involved in living alternative lifestyles based on the land have done so because we have shared in a vision of independence and prosperity based on hard work and cooperation- in other words, the American dream. We have rejected the corporate ethic, the political and institutional hypocrisy of a society controlled by the exploiters.
Many people living this dream have either quit long ago, or are still on the land but find themselves more trapped by economics than committed to alternative lifestyles. Many of us are reaching middle age now, still holding to the values of our sixties youth but getting a little worn out by a continual low level of material existence. Somehow we never quite envisioned living on the land as being poor, but as we grow older that's how it is beginning to look to a lot of us.
There seem to be so few alternatives for making an independent living from a small, often remote piece of land. What can be produced which will yield excellent returns from human-scale amounts of cultivated land? What can be produced which can be easily disposed of for cash under almost any economic conditions? How can a person or family with limited resources move to the country and begin making a living early in the process?
Conventional agriculture offers no real answers to these very real questions. Besieged by low prices for their crops, declining land values, and farm income on a par with that of the great depression, American farmers and ranchers are going out of business at an exponentially increasing rate. The blight has infected the economic and social fiber of thousands of farm communities, and has devastated the integrity of whole regions of this country. Across America, farm communities are closing their schools, clinics, junior colleges, fire departments, police stations, banks, bus depots, and other essential services, as the tax base erodes and the private sector slides into bankruptcy.
Unprotected by incorporation, family farms which go under take not only the investment of generations with them, but destroy the last remaining personal assets of this generation of farmers and their families. Not only farms, farm communities, and their economic and social infrastructure are being destroyed, but much of the fabric of America is going with them, from agriculture-related farm machinery factories to land-based loan institutions, from food processors and distributors to land grant colleges.
Historically, in America and in all of the rest of the world, the first objective of a farm or ranch was survival, and only after that did the goal become achieving and sustaining a cash-based standard of living. In the old days agriculture depended first upon the adult husband/wife team, next upon the children and relatives, and next upon the community, for all earthly and spiritual needs. You raised the food you needed, or you traded for it. You produced from your land what you needed in the way of clothing, tools, energy, and other essential resources.
Only then, after all essential needs had been met did you go after cash money. Today all of these processes are reversed and involuted, to the eternal detriment of all who want to live the good life on the land. Today, the first priority of most farmers is to earn cash, and with this cash you are supposed to be able to buy all that you need. You earn the cash by doing all the things which are lumped together under the concept of agribusiness- you borrow capital, you invest in equipment, you utilize resources like land, labor, machinery, chemicals, and information, you qualify through education, you invite institutions like government and banking into your life, you tie yourself to a commodity market economy, you participate in programs, you sign documents, you have credit - and what you need, you buy with the money you make. If you need clothing for your family, you buy it with the money you make. If you need energy, you buy it with the money you make. If you want to survive, you had better make money, because there are no other resources available to you once you have made the commitment to modern methods.
Nobody seems to know exactly when we made the transition from productivity to cash as the basis for our agricultural economy, but whenever it was, that date would mark the absolute point at which the curve of American tradition and values began heading for the black hole. It is understandable that people who choose to live and work in the cities believe that food comes from the store, but when people who live and work on the land begin to rely on the store for basic foods, then the alarms ought to begin sounding.
A farm's first duty is not to produce enough to sell into a market to allow itself to operate by buying energy and materials; it is to be or become self-sufficient, and to produce enough of everything to sustain itself when markets for certain of its outputs are disrupted. A farm's next duty is to work together with its neighbors to form a community. Farm communities have been the primary victims of a runaway government bureaucracy, an unimaginative and inefficient marketplace, and a corrupt financial system fueled by self-interested corporate giants.
In return for producing commodities at a price supposedly guaranteed by a combination of market forces and government intervention, the farmer has given up the historically critical capability to be independent, self-supporting, and free and has been deprived of his community roots as well.
The frontier American farm existed, and many prospered, even in the absence of a market for their goods, because selling goods was only one of the purposes of those communities of farms. The first purpose was survival, the second a mild version of cashless prosperity - plenty on the table and in the barn, good weather and good friends, your health and your family. Cash income, while dearly desired, was a bit down the line of expectations and purposes in life.
It is acceptable that people who work in offices and live in apartments are dependant on municipal utilities for energy, water, and garbage collection, but when farmers form committees dedicated to maintaining government subsidies so that they can get enough cash to pay their light bill and keep their soil from washing away, the processes of social decay are far advanced.
It is important that people who live in cities be assured that they will have enough bread and milk to sustain life, since they have no means of producing these basics themselves; but when farmers with productive land come to depend upon the government to provide cash in return for producing many times more wheat and milk than the people in the cities could possibly use, while at the same time going to the stores to buy their own beef, bread and milk, we are all tempting some very harsh-minded fates with little compassion for a society of fools.
Back in the 1960's many people saw the beginnings of the decay processes just described, and decided to head back to the land to seek a simpler lifestyle based on the integrity of the individual, and the rejection of society's material values. I believe that this might still be the case, that most people would love to have a way for a piece of land to actually support them and their family, and allow them to be a part of a community of like-minded people. I suspect that even if there was no real cash income, but if all their needs could be met by working a piece of land, many would be there with tools in hand the next morning ready to start a new life.
The ideas and dreams in this site are my offering to those who share this dream in the hope that something I have written here may in some small way help to make life a little more enjoyable, or meaningful, or prosperous for someone else. Thank you for visiting and sharing this dream for a while with me.
In 1983 trials we moved to Austin, Texas and I began contacting ethanol production facilities around the USwith my notion that you could ferment tobacco easily and economically. Out of the many letters I sent out only one response came back - from Bill Kovarik and Luke Staengl at the Floyd Agricultural Energy Cooperative in Floyd, Virginia. Out of our correspondence and telephone conversations a friendship and working relationship developed, and the Floyd Coop decided to put together a proposal for funding a full-scale demonstration project on ethanol production from Biomass Tobacco.
I am putting the entire proposal up on this site for several reasons. First, the proposal demonstrates that a major ethanol producer, after doing in-depth literature research and bench trials, decided that the prospects for ethanol production were good. Second, the full proposal may be useful for others who may want to set up tobacco fermentation trials. And finally, this project proposal was never funded, primarily because the Reagan Administration's Department of Energy was fully committed to nuclear energy and actually hostile to alternative energy proposals. However, this proposal still represents a very well conceived plan for demonstrating the economic viability of ethanol production from biomass tobacco, and I offer it here in the hope that somewhere in the world there may be people who will find it useful.
Green tobacco contains a variety of potentially valuable components which can be processed for food, feed and fuel uses. Tobacco protein is potentially the most valuable component, as it can be crystallized into a pure powder which has no odor or taste. Other components of the tobacco plant include feedstocks for ethanol fuel and colorants used by the poultry industry.
A major proposed use for tobacco protein is for kidney dialysis patients who have severely restricted diets. Ordinary foods contain sodium, potassium and other contaminants which make their use problematic for kidney patients. The contaminants can be removed in the tobacco protein refining process. Also, tobacco protein has a higher protein efficiency ratio than soy or casein. However, use of tobacco for human food has not been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and a multi-million dollar research effort will be required prior to FDA approval.
Tobacco protein is also potentially valuable for emergency food relief shipments. With its high protein efficiency and low weight per unit of protein, the cost of transportation could be cut by 90 percent over corn. High miscibility and the absence of taste or odor make it a likely candidate for mixture with locally available foods in hungry nations.
Other constituents of tobacco include carotene and xanthophyll, where valuable markets for poultry feed already exist; and starches, sugars and cellulose, which have potentially valuable uses when converted to ethanol for the fuel industry. It may be possible to process tobacco for its feed and fuel value while also producing high-quality protein for experiments into human food uses or for donation to international relief efforts.
Researchers have found that an acre of tobacco can produce between 10,000 and 20,000 dry tons when high density cultivation techniques are employed. From this harvested green tobacco, it is possible to obtain between $2,500 and $5,000 worth of carotene and xanthophyll and between $750 and $1,400 worth of ethanol. These two products alone would more than cover agronomic costs, estimated between $1,500 and $3,000 per acre.
If human food uses for tobacco are approved by the FDA, additional values of between $1,600 and $3,200 per acre of tobacco are likely at a selling price of $1.50 per pound of Fraction 1 protein, which is half the current price of the nearest competitor (egg whites). Also, a pure protein source for kidney dialysis patients could sell for as much as $20 per pound, according to one estimate by Leaf Protein International.
The total processed value of tobacco protein, carotene and ethanol could range between $5,280 and $10,961 per acre, based on known tobacco plant components, existing technologies, conservative product price estimates and demonstrated per-acre yields.
The technology to extract tobacco protein was demonstrated by Leaf Protein International in its Wilson, N.C. pilot plant between 1981 and 1982. The technology was based on experiments by S.L. Wildman of U.C.L.A. A full discussion can be found here.
The Wilson pilot plant closed in 1982 due to research funding problems. The plant never attempted to make use of valuable coproducts from tobacco processing, such as feed and fuels, but instead concentrated on human protein and low-tar cigarettes. Neither market was strong enough to support a pilot plant. It may be possible for feed and fuel markets to support a pilot plant as it produces protein for experimental purposes and/or relief efforts.
Another major research program by Prof. R.C. Long and colleagues at N.C. State demonstrated in the early 1980s that densely planted tobacco could be cut (coppiced) four times per year and could yield from five to ten times the dry weight per acre as compared to traditional tobacco cultivating practices. Typical farm equipment, such as corn silage harvesters, can be used to cut green tobacco. In addition, coppiced tobacco could not be sold on existing tobacco markets where whole leaf is sold, and there would be little, if any, additional regulatory burden on USDA.
The technology to extract high-grade protein from tobacco has been amply demonstrated by Leaf Protein International and by researchers at N.C. State University and the University of California at Los Angeles. After several years of laboratory experiments, LPI set up a pilot plant in 1981. The plant successfully produced highly functional Fraction 1 protein from tobacco, but it was forced to close in 1982 due to research funding problems.
Commercialization of this new use for tobacco has been held back due to two major factors: the lack of research on coproduct utilization, which could improve process economics; and the lack of Food and Drug Administration approval for human use of tobacco protein, which will require more testing.
Researchers have suggested that one valuable coproduct from tobacco protein processing could be fermentation liquors. Starches and sugars from the tobacco plant, which make up over 30 percent of the dry weight in some varieties, could be turned into ethanol for fuel. The technology of starch and sugar fermentation is well known, but tobacco is a completely untested feedstock. Cellulose fractions of the tobacco, if not used for low-tar cigarettes, could also be a promising candidate for conversion to fermentable sugars through cellulose hydrolysis processes since tobacco cellulose is relatively lignin-free. Several cellulose hydrolysis technologies are approaching commercialization and have been demonstrated at the pilot scale.
Tobacco protein does hold promise for human food uses, and FDA approval is possible. Studies have shown that powdered Fraction 1 tobacco protein can be a valuable product for medical uses, such as a potassium and sodium-free protein supplement for kidney dialysis patients. At present, chronically uremic patients undergoing maintenance hemodialysis are often restricted to unpalatable and nutritionally deficient diets. (Ershoff, 1984).
Fraction 1 protein is tasteless, odorless and has good functional characteristics. It has been found to have higher Protein Efficiency Rating (PER) than soybeans or casein, and is superior in taste and functional quality to protein extracted from other plants, such as alfalfa. (Wildman, 1983).
Aside from protein, other potentially useful coproducts from tobacco include cellulose, starches, sugars and natural colorants for poultry feed (especially carotene and xanthophyll, but including a group of carotenoids). Previous attempts at commercializing tobacco protein have not investigated the recovery and processing of most of these coproducts, but instead focused on low-tar tobacco for cigarettes.
Tobacco has an important role in American agriculture as a cash crop. At the time of the 1982 farm census, 75 percent of the nation's 179,000 tobacco farmers made over half their income on the crop. Most of these farmers are located in the Carolinas and Virginia. One index of agriculture's dependence on tobacco receipts is seen in the fact that, although seven times as many acres of soybeans as tobacco are planted in Virginia, net farm profit from tobacco is twice that for soybeans. Similarly, 27% of North Carolina's agricultural economy involves tobacco.
The number of tobacco farmers and the profitability of growing tobacco is declining due to a number of factors, among them: increased health concerns which have resulted in lowered demand for tobacco; increasing foreign tobacco imports; and to some extent, warehousing fees under the 1982 No-Net-Cost program. Meanwhile, surpluses continue building up, and unsold loan stocks rose from about 500 million pounds in 1982 to nearly 1.2 billion pounds by 1984. The ASCS currently has under loan three to four years worth of tobacco usage. (Grise, 1984).
These factors, along with political questions about change or elimination of USDA's tobacco programs, have led to predictions that the tobacco stabilization program will not survive over the next three to four years.
Much of the response to calls for change in tobacco programs has involved diversification. For example, Clemson University, N.C. State and Georgia Polytechnic University are working together on a research program designed to replace tobacco crops with other horticultural crops that require similar intensive cultivation techniques. A similar program is underway at the University of Maryland. In addition, a number of agricultural research and advocacy groups have also called for diversification as a strategy for cushioning the shock of an end to the Stabilization program.
Initial work on the use of leaf protein extracts was performed in Britain 40 years ago. Since then, various researchers, including those from the U.S.D.A., N.C. State and U.C.L.A. have investigated the recovery of high grade protein from tobacco and other plants. N.C. State researchers have shown that biomass cropping techniques can produce yields far in excess of traditional tobacco farming.
Tobacco appears to be a promising source of protein for a number of reasons: the protein is relatively easy to extract and purify, it is of high quality, and high per-acre yields of tobacco can be obtained. Table 1 shows typical yields for corn and soybeans as compared to yields of tobacco.
Table 1
Biomass
Production From Agricultural Crops
| Crop | Yield/Acre - Lbs | Protein Yield - Lbs. | Ethanol Yield - Gal. |
| Corn | 5,600 (100 bushels) | 448 | 250 |
| Soybeans | 1,728 (31 Bushels) | 726 | --- |
| Tobacco (1) | 2,179 | 218 | 33 |
| Tobacco (2) | 10,773 | 1,984 | 227 |
| Tobacco (3) | 21,910 | 4,031 | 497 |
Additional Notes for Table 1:
Tobacco
protein yields projected by R.C. Long, N.C. State, 1984.
Tobacco
expressed in dry weight; corn and soybeans at about 15 percent moisture.
Ethanol yield projections for tobacco based on 20 percent starch and
10 percent sugar content.
Ethanol from corn based on typical industry
experience.
Traditional tobacco growing techniques, with an average yield of 2,179 lbs. per acre, are not designed for maximum yield and would not be suitable for protein and ethanol extraction. However, much higher per-acre yields noted in Table I have been obtained at N.C. State using a coppicing technique which involves four cuttings of fresh green tobacco per season. (Long, 1984).
One major problem associated with tobacco protein is its current lack of acceptance by the Food and Drug Administration for human uses.
The best initial markets for tobacco protein may be outside the retail food system. For example, in 1982 LPI estimated a $20 per pound value for Fraction 1 tobacco protein for medical uses after potassium and sodium have been removed. There have also been suggestions that both Fraction 1 and Fraction 2 protein can be used as a high-density, easily transported food for emergency relief efforts. This is a concept that deserves greater exploration. Because of the easily miscible characteristics of tobacco protein, and because of its lack of taste and odor, it would be possible to use the protein supplement to stretch locally available supplies of wheat, rice and corn in stricken areas.
Another initial market for tobacco protein and coproducts is for poultry feed. The high levels of carotene and xanthophyll in tobacco are valuable as natural colorants.
It would appear from the potential medical uses, emergency food aid and animal feed uses on the one hand, and the declining benefits of tobacco farming on the other, that continued research into tobacco as a multiple-use crop is an important long-range policy goal for the U.S. government.
The advantage of tobacco as a fuel ethanol feedstock is the potential for integration with an emerging protein processing industry. Economic use of coproducts in the processing of tobacco from protein is currently a major problem, and little research has been dedicated to its solution. Use of the abundant starches, sugars and lignin free cellulose found in tobacco may prove to be the margin of economic viability that tobacco protein processing plants need.
Despite the work of dozens of researchers in studying alternative markets for tobacco, including protein, no examination of the feasibility of using coproducts starches, sugars and cellulose for liquid fuel production has been undertaken. A search of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory's RECON data base undertaken by Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in August 2008, showed no entries under any of the relevant key words.
The economics of producing protein from tobacco have to date proven marginal. As noted above, a pilot scale test plant built in North Carolina by Leaf Protein International folded in 1982, and no other organization has attempted to use tobacco for protein or other alternative markets.
The cost of producing tobacco protein would have to decline from $5 to $3 per pound, according to a 1984 estimate by R.C. Long, to make tobacco protein competitive with other sources of protein. This estimate was based on farm costs of $3,600 per acre and processing costs of about $2 per pound. However, it is possible to lower farm costs to around $1,000 per acre and to lower processing costs to $.75 - $1 per pound, according to Long. These cost reductions, along with coproduct utilization, could result in an economically viable process.
Table II shows that the economics of a combined tobacco protein and ethanol process appear to be quite attractive. Even without any value assigned to tobacco protein, ethanol and carotenoid extractions alone could range in value from $3,260 to $6,853 per acre, which would be ample to pay tobacco growers.
Table 2a
Production
of Biomass Tobacco By-products
| Total Dry Weight - Pounds | 10,773# | 21,910# |
| Protein | ||
| Fraction 1 | 893# | 1,815# |
| Fraction 2 | 876# | 1,781# |
| Insoluable | 214# | 435# |
| Total Protein | 1984# | 4,031# |
| Starch & Sugar | 3,231# | 6,575# |
| ethanol yield | 227 gallons | 497 gallons |
| Cellulose | 4,309# | 8,764# |
| ethanol yield | 149 gallons | 265 gallons |
| Carotene | 10.7# | 21.9# |
| Other carotenoids | 12.0# | 26.3# |
Table 2b
Tobacco
Biomass By-Product Values - in 1985 US$
| Tobacco Product | @ 10,773#/Acre | @ 21,910#/Acre |
| Protein | ||
| Fraction 1 | $1,616 | $3,285 |
| Fraction 2 | $394 | $801 |
| Insoluable (Feed) | $10 | $22 |
| Ethanol | $718 | $1,455 |
| Carotenoids | $2,542 | $5,398 |
| Total | $5,280 | $10,961 |
NOTES ON TABLE II: Based on actual yields at N.C. State Oxford and Whiteville research stations (Long, 1984). Values based on current market prices for Carotene (25 cents/gram); Ethanol ($1.91/gallon); Protein feed (5 cents/lb.); Fraction 1 protein ($1.50/lb.); and Fraction 2 protein ($.45/lb.). Fraction 1, Fraction 2 and carotenoids value estimates based on S.L. Wildman, "An Alternative Use for Tobacco Agriculture," U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, 1983.
The specific objectives of the proposed research are listed under the headings used to present the work plan.
1 Characterization of Tobacco to Ethanol Fermentation
1.1 Microbial Culture and Tobacco Variety Screening Studies (250 ml shake flasks).
1.2 Optimization of Standard Fermentation System (14 liter fermentations)
1.3 Effects of Tobacco Harvesting Techniques on
Fermentation Productivity (250 ml shake flasks)
- To elucidate the
effects of the tobacco harvesting times (i.e. age of plant at harvest) on
ethanol production rates and yields.
1.4 Characterization of the Standard
Fermentation System at the Pilot Scale using 250 liter four vessel series.
- To characterize the standard fermentation system in a pilot scale,
continuous fermentation system and to generate sufficient data to allow
full scale designs to be projected.
1.5 Preliminary Poultry Feeding Trials
2.0 Impact of Tobacco Protein Recovery on Ethanol Production
2.1 Fermentation of Protein-Free Fractions from Leaf Protein International process (250 ml shake flasks).
2.2 Comparison of Various Protein Extraction Techniques
3.0 Preliminary Process Designs and Cost Analysis
Final Report Preparation
- To prepare a
final report which contains all of the technical, design and cost analysis
results of this study.
DeJong, D.W. and Lam, J.J. Jr., "Protein Content of Tobacco," Proc. of Amer. Chem. Soc. Symposium, 1977, pp. 78 - 103.
Drake, W., "Biomass Tobacco As Animal Feed & Energy Base", Cultivators Research Service, Tesuque, N.M., 1983.
Drake, W., "Tobacco-Based Ethanol Fuel & Protein", Austin, Tx.: Cultivators Research Service, 1984.
Edwards, R.H., et al., "Pilot Plant Production of Edible White Fraction Leaf Protein Concentrate from Alfalfa,: J. Agr. Food Chem., 23: 620-628, 1975.
Ershoff, B.H., et al., "Biological Evaluation of Crystalline Fraction 1 Protein from Tobacco," Proc. Soc. Expt. Biol. Med. 157: 626-630, 1978.
Grise, V.N. Tobacco: Outlook and Situation Report (Washington, D.C.: U.S.D.A. Economic Research Service, June 1984, Sept. 1984).
Long, R.C., Estimates of the Cost of Producing Tobacco for Protein, unpublished report, Raleigh, N.C., 1980.
Long, R.C. "Edible Tobacco Protein," Crops and Soils Magazine, Feb. 1984, pp. 13-15.
Long, R.C. "Physiological Investigations in Flue-Cured Tobacco," Proc. Tobacco Workers Conf., Lexington, KY, Jan. 1981.
Wallis, D.A., et al., "Dynamic Analysis of an Immobilized Cell Bioreactor," Proc. Am. Inst. Chem. Eng., March 1983.
Wildman, S.G., "Tobacco: A Potential Food Crop," Crops and Soils Magazine, Jan. 1980, pp. 7-10.
Wildman, S.G., "An Alternate Use for Tobacco Agriculture," Proc. Plants: The Potentials for Protein, Medicines, and Other Useful Chemicals, Washington, D.C.: Office of Technology Assessment, 1983.