JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced new subsidies to encourage Missouri farmers to grow bio-mass crops.
On Wednesday, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack unveiled two new Biomass Crop Assistance Programs for the areas near Columbia and Aurora. The plan would subsidize eligible farmers up to 75 percent of the cost for seeding giant miscanthus, a hybrid grass which is converted into energy for heat, power and liquid bio-fuels.
“Our hope is that they will convert this crop into energy and at the same time also produce needed jobs in the areas surrounding Columbia and Aurora,” Vilsack said.
The plan applies to a combined 820,000 acres around both cities. Both towns already host bio-mass conversion facilities. The USDA estimates that these projects and the related conversion plants would generate about $50 million per year and create nearly 4,000 jobs in Missouri by 2014.
The projects are part of a four-state, $20 million investment by the USDA for increasing biomass crop production, which Vilsack said was an integral part of the President’s plan to increase renewable energy by 15 percent by the start of the next decade.
Sen. Roy Blunt joined the agriculture secretary in making the announcement. He praised the new program, saying it would help encourage farmers to take advantage of land that would otherwise go unused.
Miscanthus is a sterile hybrid warm-season grass that is cultivated through planting of rhizomes in open fields and is cable of producing up to 12 tons of crop per acre. Blunt said the crop requires little maintenance after planting and would grow in lower quality soil that is not suitable for food crops.
“It will grow on land that is not necessarily the best farmland for anything else,” he said.
Vilsack said part of the reason for the bio-mass investment has been the growing movement among states like Missouri to place new restrictions on utility companies, requiring them to obtain a certain amount of their energy portfolio from renewable sources.
“We see this program as a way of partnering with the states and with utility companies to meet those portfolio standards,” the secretary said.
Source: http://missouri-news.org/featured/usda-makes-20-million-bio-mass-investment-in-missouri-other-states/6050