Switchgrass: Hay With Better P.R.?

By David A. Fahrenthold
The Washington Post

ORANGE, Va. — When it grows high and thick in midsummer, the crop that might fill Virginia's gas tanks, revitalize its farm belt and keep its mud and manure out of the Chesapeake Bay looks like ... weeds. Like the world's most overgrown lawn.

At a Virginia Tech agricultural research center here, in this small town west of Fredericksburg, the switchgrass plot is an unruly, waving thicket of 7-foot-tall green stalks. But it only looks neglected: This is one of the center's most prized plants, a formerly obscure prairie grass now projected to be a major source of farm-grown fuel.

"That'd be some energy, right there," said Dave Starner, the center's superintendent, holding a freshly cut bundle of it.

Researchers across the country think that switchgrass could help supplant corn as a source for the fast-growing ethanol industry. In Virginia, some officials are trying to make the state the Iowa of the new cash crop. They're urging farmers to grow it and envision dozens of refineries that will turn the stalks into fuel.

"It's the future of the rural community and the world as you know it," said Ken Moss, an entrepreneur in south-central Virginia who is using some state funds for a factory that turns switchgrass into a substitute for heating oil.

But such efforts have hit a snag: Scientists haven't perfected the process that turns switchgrass into ethanol. So for today, the Crop That Could Change Virginia is just hay with better publicity.

he plant behind all the hoopla, Panicum virgatum, looks a bit like a corn plant without the cob. It has a thin, rigid stalk with a feathery tassel of seeds. Scientists say switchgrass probably grew wild across the eastern two-thirds of the United States for centuries before Europeans arrived.

But, except for plant biologists and some biofuel researchers, few Americans had heard of the plant before last year's State of the Union address. President Bush listed switchgrass among potential sources for ethanol, a gasoline substitute sought as a replacement for imported oil.

Virginia has relatively little switchgrass planted — fewer than 20 farmers are thought to be growing it on less than 1,000 acres. But Virginia Tech scientists say the grass could play a major role in creating a massive biofuel economy.

In a recent white paper, they suggested that switchgrass, along with woodchips, could provide a quarter of Virginia's gas, diesel fuel and heating oil needs and support 68 small fuel refineries in the state. Researchers estimated that the new fuel sources could create 10,500 jobs, including for farmers, truck drivers and refinery workers.

The Washington Post, September 7, 2007