BRYAN (KBTX), Texas – America’s agricultural system is a result of science, technology and hard work. The hard work has not stopped in the new decade. This week, From the Ground up, you will hear how a crop that is well-suited for Texas may also be able to help a planet in need.
All these companies are mentioned in the media [say]We will be carbon-neutral at this date. Bill Rooney from Texas A&M’s Department of Soil and Crop Sciences says that this doesn’t mean that they wont be flying or driving anymore. They will go to a farmer to purchase a carbon offset. This will account for the carbon they are releasing by doing these things.
Rooney said that sorghum is currently used primarily for animal feed. However, he believes it could play an important role in future environmental practices, including fuel.
They are known as dedicated bio-energy crops. They aren’t for food, but they can be used to produce material for a processing plant to make ethanol.
Dedicated bio-energy crops will be used in the same way as oil flows into a refinery to be processed into various components that we use in our systems.
Grain sorghum could one day be used to fuel our cars. A newer way to combat climate change might be to pair sorghum with sorghum, which is low-input and drought-resistant.
Rooney suggests that you capture C02 from air and put it into biological development.
That root system is gone when you harvest the crop. If the ground is properly managed, and we don’t till it too much, carbon is sequestered in the soil profile.
Rooney believes this could be a huge opportunity for Texas and the plains farmers in Texas over the next decades.
They can be either the farmer managing his cropland or the rancher managing his pasture land or the production forester. If this happens, they will be the key to the process.
This is still a relatively new concept and Rooney believes it needs to gain some traction.
I believe all the ingredients are present, but the question is: Does the chain have all the supply and process? They won’t be able to make it economically viable at all levels.
We could soon see a sorghum boom in Texas, which is already the country’s number two producer.
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