Posted on 10/06/2008 11:24:10 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture's Biofuels Initiative is between five and 10 years away from reaching the farms of Greene County and Upper East Tennessee.
That was the word Saturday from Ken J. Goddard, of Knoxville, extension biofuels specialist at the University of Tennessee, during the 2008 Greene County Farm and Garden Expo at the Greene County Fairgrounds.
"This is an excellent thing and I'm more excited right now than I've been at any time in my extension career, which spans more than 30 years," Goddard said privately after his presentation at the conclusion of the expo.
"I don't want to raise any false hope among our people in Tennessee, especially our farmers, but I feel really, really good about the prospects of the biofuels initiative in our state," he said.
Goddard was an 11th-hour stand-in for Dr. Kelly Tiller, chairman of the biofuels initiative, who was scheduled to address the biofuels issue at the expo. But Tiller was called to Nashville by top state officials on Friday, Goddard said, and he came to Greeneville to address the issue for her.
"We are in the process of trying to build an economy from the ground up," Goddard said in explaining how the biofuels initiative is working to convert the biomass in switchgrass into "grassoline."
The expo ended its two-day run Saturday after more than two dozen programs had been presented for farmers, gardeners and homeowners.
"We had between 700 and 800 visitors to the expo on Saturday," said Jake Haun, chairman of the steering committee.
Friday's attendance was around 500, Haun said, which brings the two-day total to between 1,200 and 1,300 visitors.
"I'm getting rested up," Haun said when contacted by phone at his home late Sunday.
"We're glad it went as well as it did, but we are also glad that it is over," he said. "It really worked on us for a long time."
The expo was in the planning stages for more than two years, Haun said, and while the total attendance figures were not as high as had been expected, there was a very positive reaction registered by expo visitors.
"I jotted down every thing Neil Denton said about gardening," said Linda Kirk, of Greeneville, who visited the expo both Friday and Saturday.
Denton, of Knoxville, is an extension gardening specialist at the University of Tennessee who is widely known for his frequent appearances on Knoxville television.
"I love Neil's low-keyed approach," Kirk said. "Everything he says is the gospel of gardening for me.
"The other sessions I attended were also very good," she added. "This has all been very worthwhile for me."
Other reactions were just as positive during the course of the two days, with one man saying the sessions on lawns and gardening were the best he had ever attended.
But a woman who was giving her husband some good-natured ribbing on the way out of one of the sessions perhaps summed up the experiences of the expo in the most colorful fashion of all.
"I feel so energized about gardening that I want to go home and get started on next year's right now," she said, pulling the man by the arm toward the parking lot.
Dozens of local businesses and agricultural-related agencies participated in a trade show that filled the fairgrounds' Expo Building to overflowing.
"I have loved this event," said Ashleigh Ayers, of Greeneville, who helped staff the booth for the Future Farmers of America.
"It has been a lot of fun as well as very informative and entertaining," said Ayers, a senior at Chuckey-Doak High School.
Local Demonstrations
There were also homespun demonstrations that ranged from spinning to beekeeping to making corn meal with a mule and a mill from the 1800s.
Betty Love, of Chuckey, who was in charge of the event's "Kids' Corner," said late Saturday that her games and activities during the two days had been well attended and that "the kids didn't want to leave when their parents came and told them it was time to go home."
Biofuels Expert
For Ken Goddard, coming to work out of Knoxville represents a real change of pace. For most of his extension career, he served as an agent in West Tennessee where cotton and soybeans are the main crops.
"And now I'm here in East Tennessee to help farmers grow switchgrass, helping to lay the groundwork for an industry that I really believe will reduce our dependency on foreign oil," he said during his presentation.
"My job is to get farmers to grow the switchgrass that will be used in our pilot refinery at Vonore in Monroe County," he said.
Pilot Refinery At Vonore
Construction on the pilot refinery is scheduled to begin this year, he said, with groundbreaking set for Oct. 14.
"Hopefully, we will be able to build a plant in Greeneville someday," he said near the end of his presentation.
Some 2,000 acres of switchgrass will be planted next year on farms in counties in a 50-mile radius of the pilot refinery at Vonore. Greene and adjoining counties are outside the 50-mile circle.
"By late 2009 or early 2010," he said, "we hope to be making fuel at the facility."
After his listeners had dispersed and he began to prepare to hit the road for his next biofuels presentation, he paused long enough to reflect on a new level of excitement he is seeing in Tennessee agriculture.
"I've been involved in agricultural research for a very long time now," he said, "and I've never seen this many people this excited over a single project before.
"I've even talked to people in their 70s and 80s who have been involved in research all their lives, and they've never seen anything like this, either.
"I just feel very positive that we are going to make some inroads into reducing our dependency on foreign oil because some really good people are working very hard to make it happen just as soon as possible."
burning switchgrass for fuel?...thats’ okay with me, but I am totally against burning food sources for food....
Well, that’s the tricky part. You don’t want to subsidize this switchgrass business to the point where you have farmers converting fields of food crops into switchgrass fields.
ping
Scam. People who decry subsidies for corn-to-ethanol will be overwhelmed by the subsidies required for cellulosic ethanol.
the problem for me is the 'converting' of otherwise food producing acres [for human and stock feed] to any biofuel crops consequently reduces the food production on the altar of $$$ production...
2 years running now, in my area the ENTIRE corn crops have been hit with drought...
God gave use mountains of coal, oceans of oil and the knowledge to harness the atom...why in the world would we wanna burn [or divert acreage] our FOOD ???
But...But....the democrats said that a program that takes 5-10 years to produce fuels isn’t worthwhile!!
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