ready to meet five women influencing agriculture in nebraska?

jump over to this story map to see and read more about how these diverse women demonstrate resilience in a heavily male-dominated field. 

it’s a farm that has been maintained and thrived thanks to sustainable practices.

“i know that we (farmers) are an integral part of the ecosystem of the earth,” mcpheeters said. “we need to make it sustainable for everybody. we have to do it well and do it right.”

while major cities across america and the world grapple with ideas to make their cities more sustainable, farmers like mcpheeters seem to be ahead of the curve when it comes to sustainability. it’s not a fad or trendy thing for rural farmers; sustainability means protecting the environment they exist in and improving the life of the farm and crops.

“when you take things from the earth and don’t give anything back, that’s just taking,” mcpheeters said.

tech advances improve sustainability

it’s no surprise that farmers want what’s best for their land — better crops bring better incomes, making sustainable farming practices crucial to farmers. over the past few years, agricultural technology such as temperature and moisture sensors, aerial images, gps technologies and even robots have helped farmers produce better crop yields, limit overuse of water and pesticides — which help keep food prices low — and improve worker safety.

“we’ve made great strides thanks to technology,” mcpheeters said. “the monitoring of irrigation, we just know way more and it takes the guesswork out of things.”

controlling the irrigation of crops helps eliminate issues of overusing or wasting water. mcpheeters has heavily invested in implementing farming technologies to help track how much water the farm uses. agricultural tech firms have helped develop these tools for farmers, like the new lincoln, nebraska-based epicrop technologies, that use technology to improve plant yields and stress tolerances on crops like soybeans, corn, and wheat.

from farm to flex fuel

mcpheeters has heavily invested in growing corn. some of his corn goes to frito-lay, and some of the corn he produces has been used in ethanol fuel production. but as the business representative and vice chair for the nebraska ethanol board, mcpheeters has said ethanol is a “win for all parties. it’s good for farmers, livestock producers, consumers, and the environment,” according to a press release about his appointment.

nicknamed the “cornhusker state,” nebraska’s agricultural economy is largely dominated by corn. in 2014 alone, 8.95 million acres of nebraskan land were used to grow corn. outside of its use for cattle feed and livestock, corn is used to produce around 2 billion gallons of ethanol each year. the state’s mass production of the renewable fuel makes nebraska the second largest producer of ethanol in the u.s.

in other words, the relationship between the growth of corn and its use to produce ethanol is quite common in the state.

when i first met mcpheeters outside a flex-fuel gas station in gothenburg, nebraska, the rural farmer gushed about a brightly lit billboard that towered above the gas station; the colorful display was an ad for ethanol that he had helped create.

the nebraskan native has become a fierce advocate for ethanol due to how the fuel produces fewer emissions than fossil fuels, he said. he’s been sharing his beliefs of the positives of the alternative fuel from the small town of about 3,500 people to the halls of congress.

mcpheeters believes ethanol is cleaner in terms of air quality purposes — and growing corn for ethanol isn’t as environmentally costly either. but mcpheeters believes those opposed to ethanol gloss over the positives of using corn for fuel and said things that are propagated from ethanol opposition are not substantiated.

“i think that the people who are on the other side of the issue, i understand. they don’t want to lose market share and they have oil to sell and they need to sell it,” mcpheeters said.

those opposing ethanol believe ethanol hurts rather than helps the environment. c. ford runge, professor of applied economics and law at the university of minnesota, said in yale environment 360 that growing corn already has an environmental impact — and converting the corn to ethanol for fuel use only makes that impact worse.  

“higher-ethanol blends still produce significant levels of air pollution, reduce fuel efficiency, jack up corn and other food prices, and have been treated with skepticism by some car manufacturers for the damage they do to engines,” runge wrote. “e85 fuel in ‘flex-fuel’ vehicles may increase ozone-related mortality, asthma, and hospitalizations.”

but for scott, the fight to bring ethanol beyond his community is a fight he’s willing to continue with. after all, corn is his lifeline.

“i would love to have everyone have something to eat and have clean air,” mcpheeters said. “that’s what sustainability means to me.”

there’s been plenty of rumblings from washington to up the percentage of ethanol in unleaded gasoline from 10% up to 15%. this has many folks up in arms.

i recently to test flexfuel-capable 2011 buick regal turbo with conventional gasoline and e85. it got me thinking … rather than change the percentage of ethanol in everyone’s gas, why not do more to encourage the use of e85 ethanol?

corn-based ethanol is merely the first phase. it’s time for america to move to phase two, in force.

ethanol can be distilled from a wide range of sources, from switchgrass, to municipal waste, and even brewery wastewater … with no impact to food supplies.

find our more at www.advancedbiofuelsusa.org key words “engine development”

in the distant past, algae helped turn the earth’s then inhospitable atmosphere into one that could support modern life through photosynthesis, which plants use to turn carbon dioxide and sunlight into sugars and oxygen.

some of the algae sank to sea or lake beds and slowly became oil. “nature has done this many millions of years ago in producing the crude oil we’re burning today. so as far as nature is concerned this is nothing new,” says rigs eckelberry, ceo of originoil, inc. – a pure play technology company looking to license its algae-to-oil technologies.

the race is now on to find economic ways to turn algae, one of the planet’s oldest life forms, into vegetable oil that can be made into biodiesel, jet fuel, other fuels and plastic products.

“so we are harvesting sunshine directly using algae, then we are extracting that stored energy in the form of oil from the alga and then using that to make fuels and other non-petroleum based products,”

originoil, inc. (ooil.ob), the developer of breakthrough technology to transform algae, the most promising source of renewable oil, into a true competitor to petroleum, today announced it has received the first commercial order to deploy its algae oil extraction system in an industrial setting.

mbd energy (mbd) recently committed to purchase an initial originoil extraction unit for piloting at one of australia’s three largest coal-fired power plants.

the proof of concept phase on a one-hectare site, scheduled for later this year, will use concentrated co2 emissions to produce oil-rich algae in mbd’s proprietary growth membranes. originoil’s unique extraction technology will be used to harvest the algae oil and biomass.

“this first extraction system will support early testing at the tarong site,” said riggs eckelberry, ceo of originoil. “a much larger unit is intended to replace it later this year to process up to 300 gallons per minute (300 gpm) of algae culture for the one-hectare pilot site, at which point the first unit will be deployed at the next power station pilot site, and so on.”

today, our technology will produce “new oil” from algae, through a cost-effective, high-speed manufacturing process. this endless supply of new oil can be used for many products, such as diesel, gasoline, jet fuel, plastics and solvents, without the global warming effects of petroleum. other oil-producing feedstock, such as corn and sugarcane, often destroy vital farmlands and rainforests, disrupt global food supplies and create new environmental problems. their unique technology, based on algae, is targeted at fundamentally changing our source of oil without disrupting the environment or food supplies.

originoil researchers under the leadership of dr. brian goodall, just built a pared-down version of the company’s hydrogen harvester this is a breakthrough sine they learned while making algae they can tap it for producing hydrogen from the power of the sun without using additional energy to capture the hydrogen. the sun beams on the algae and at the same time taking that energy and percolating it out as hydrogen.
in 2010 originoil debuted max one, a mobile algae extraction laboratory, with the intention of educating consumers about the process of extracting oil from algae in a way that’s easy to understand – it was recently sent out with lab engineers to new mexico on their first field test.

in october 2010 originoil announced the company’s first official customer, mbd energy, one of the leading carbon capture and recycling (ccr) providers in australia.

in 2009 originoil secured several partnership agreements with industry powerhouses such as a global partnership agreement with desmet ballestra – the largest fats and oil producer in the world as their first partner

in 2009 originoil announced the completion of phase 1 of a cooperative research and development agreement (crada) with the u.s. department of energy (idaho national lab).

originoil worked on developing a way to “fool” algae into thinking that it is within its natural environment, when in fact it really is inside a “helix bioreactor”.

this bioreactor has different-colored light beams that emulate the sun. co2 and minerals are then added to the mixture, along with water (and yes, it can be dirty – the oil production process inherently purifies the water too, which opens up a whole new way to make drinkable water), and within minutes, the algae separates itself, thus creating oil.

why can’t i be able to buy my own windmill? why can’t i afford solar panels (even with the tax break)? why can’t i heat water, and charge my electric car with solar power? i don’t need exxon or archer daniels or solar energy, inc. to put solar panels on my roof, i can call a local company, install all of this 50+ year-old technology, and begin saving energy in a week. my tax subsidy has to assure a return of capital within 5 years. that would still cost less the current subsidies to the industrial complex.

and oh, by the way, since most of this work has to be done on site, it will have to employ us labor. these jobs cannot be shipped overseas they way big corporations now do it.

michal moore, senior fellow, school of public policy at the university of calgary and sarah m. jordaan at harvard university in the department of earth and planetary sciences, look at the basic question of whether these energy sources are ethical.

in addition to arguing that the greenhouse gas benefits of biofuel are overstated by many policymakers, the authors argue that there are four questions that need to be considered before encouraging and supporting the production of more biofuel. these questions are:

1. what is the effect of biofuel production on food costs, especially for poor populations?
2. should more land be used for biofuel when the return of energy per acre is low? are there better uses for that land?
3. in addition to worrying about the impact of global warming, should we not consider the impact on land of massively expanding biofuel production?
4. what are the other economic impacts of large scale production of biofuel?

“policymakers, especially in the us, have been in a rush to expand biofuel protection,” says michal moore. “but they need to start thinking outside of the box of climate change and the corn lobby.”

“if policy is designed to create better outcomes for everyone, then we need to subject policy to ethical tests. in many respects, current policy around biofuels fails those tests.”

the paper can be found at www.policyschool.ca then click on “latest papers”.

ethanol can be fermented from most fibrous plants, including trees and straw. the plant in boardman intends to harvest the surrounding area’s poplar population instead of the traditional and more well-known method of using corn.

according to a recent article in the seattle times, the development and production of cellulosic ethanol (ethanol from trees) has seen a sharp rise in popularity. most importantly, it allows for the production of ethanol without directly using what may otherwise be a food source (corn). the technology has seen support from both president’s bush and obama.

inside zeachem’s boardman, oregon plant

the boardman plant is not the first of it’s kind. a similar plant opened in wyoming last summer. the plant, which uses pine chips to ferment ethanol, capitalized on the $49 million dollars of stimulus dollars the obama administration allocated to the growing industry. a different plant opened even earlier in february of 2007 in louisiana.

though this new technology does avoid some of the issues that plague corn-based ethanol, it is still met with harsh criticism. first, it’s extremely expensive to construct the production plants as well as maintain their day-to-day operations. second, its production, in its current capacity, requires an enormous amount of fossil fuels – from transportation to machinery. third, though using trees to create ethanol does not directly waste a food source, it uses valuable farmland that could otherwise go towards the production of food. most importantly, an extremely large amount of ethanol would be required to make a significant dent in the current levels of fossil fuel consumption. this means building large amounts of plants, which takes even more money, uses even more farmland, and burns even more fossil fuel.

what do you think, is this new type of ethanol the way to go? does it solve most of the issues surrounding corn-based ethanol? is it worth the costs? is this going to be a key fuel for the future? share your thoughts below…