Energy crops to compete for U.S. Midwest acres

By Karl Plume

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The future expansion of cellulosic ethanol production in the U.S. Midwest could soon have farmers shifting some of their corn, soybean and wheat acres to dedicated energy crops such as switchgrass, a plant biotechnology expert said on Tuesday.

U.S. ethanol plants produced 5 billion gallons of ethanol in 2006, mostly from corn grain.

New technology will soon allow facilities in the Corn Belt to also convert the widely available agricultural wastes like corn stalks or wheat straw into the biofuel known as cellulosic ethanol.

"People will want to add a cellulosic ethanol stream to their existing starch ethanol facilities because there is this straw or stover resource available," said Anna Rath, director of business development at plant biotechnology company Ceres Inc.

"They will find that in order to make the economics of that facility work, they need a higher average density of feedstock than they are getting from the residues," she told Reuters reporters at the Reuters Global Biofuel Summit by telephone from Thousand Oaks, California.

That increased plant density lies in dedicated energy crops, she said.

While an acre of corn stover or wheat straw may only yield 2 tons of biomass that can be converted into ethanol, dedicated energy crops can produce 5 tons per acre or more, Rath said.

Future plant hybrids and bioengineered energy crops could ultimately produce yields of as much as 15 tons per acre, she said.

Farmers will continue to make their planting decisions based on yield per acre and the price local buyers are willing to pay for their crops, Rath said.

Corn prices near 10-year highs were expected to boost corn seedings by up to 8 million acres in 2007 over the previous season.