TV engineer turned energy farmer, Andy Bater, has an interesting blog I've bookmarked to visit occasionally. (<a href="http://www.biomassconnections.com/blog.asp">http://www.biomassconnections.com/blog.asp</a>) He's reporting on his progress in growing switchgrass on the steep slopes of his picturesque farm in Pennsylvania. He also posts articles on energy crops and other topics of interest on the bulletin board he maintains on the site.
 
 In a recent blog, Bater talks about the soil samples he took to see if he could learn why some areas had poor stands in his fields. He also talks about a few things he learned at a recent switchgrass conference of critical importance to potential energy crop farmers. Switchgrass can get so dry that baler fires are a real hazard. And, if cut too short, the switchgrass stubble does a number on implement tires. (My husband told me that when sunflowers were new in North Dakota, they quickly learned to cut the stalks higher so the tires would bend them over rather than get holes punched into them.)
 
 The fire issue will be a real concern for people baling and storing biomass crops like switchgrass. I remember vividly a big bale fire that had people talking in my home town.
 
 We grow flax in our region. The grain goes to the health food or industrial oil markets, and the straw gets baled up to extract the fibers primarily for paper manufacturing, cigarette paper in particular.(Linen comes from a special variety of long-stemmed flax grown for fiber. None of that is grown in North Dakota that I'm aware of. North Dakota, by the way, accounts for over 90 percent of the U.S. flax crop.)
 
 Flax straw doesn't break down easily in the field after harvest, and rather than burn it, a sideline industry has grown up around baling and transporting the bales for centralized processing. (Sound like a logistical issue you've heard talked about recently?) 
 
 Those big square bales get stacked up into barn-sized stacks, placed neatly in rows and spaced far enough apart for machinery to move around. A few years back, somebody set one of those stacks on fire on a windy day. Remember, a windy day on the northern plains means 30 to 40 mph, anything less is just a breezy day. The fire spread to nearby stacks and soon created its own firestorm. I remember hearing the story of a couple of guys driving by too closely in a pickup, and the fire-driven winds sucking up the pickup and tossing it aside like a toy truck. The fire smoldered for days. 
 
 Pyromaniacs won't be the only fire starters. Spontaneous combustion in hay harvested with the wrong moisture content has burned down more than one barn. If I remember right, that happens with hay that's too wet when brought in. 
 
 I fear that in the push to move bioenergy solutions forward, there's not enough attention being paid to the farmer side of the equation. The technology and science certainly requires sufficient research dollars, but all the high technology in the world isn't going to be commercialized without the farm community's expertise supporting it with tons of biomass.

 
 Andy Bater's blog is aimed at the farmers who will be growing those tons of biomass. He's hoping it becomes a forum for sharing ideas and experiences.

A switchgrass farmer learns about the fire hazard from switchgrass which leads to reminiscing about other fires.

On Blogs and Biomass Fires

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Upcoming Events

2026 International Biomass Conference & Expo

Carbon Capture & Storage Summit

International Fuel Ethanol Workshop & Expo

Sustainable Fuels Summit: SAF, Renewable Diesel and Biodiesel

On Blogs and Biomass Fires