Kevin Shinners wants farmers to put less energy into harvesting and handling biofuel crops – less fuel, less time and less labor. As a field machinery specialist, Shinners has worked to improve the efficiency of harvesting forage for animals. Harvesting biomass crops poses similar challenges, he says.

“The biggest problem is there are way too many operations in the field,” says Shinners, a professor of biological systems engineering and mechanical engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Every time we handle this material, it costs real money.”

Now that some thought and money is being dedicated to alternative and renewable energy, cost reduction and efficiencies keep appearing. No surprise. Just overdue.

Much of Shinners’ research to date has focused on corn stover, the stalks and leaves left behind when grain is harvested. He has also embarked on a similar line of research on cost-effective harvesting of forage grasses, such as switchgrass, for both feed and fuel production.

Corn stover is usually left in the field or used as animal fodder, but it has tremendous potential as a cellulosic source of ethanol – if the shredding, drying, raking, bailing and transporting can be made less costly and less labor-intensive.

Shinners’ goal is to develop a one-pass system that would simultaneously harvest corn and stover, while leaving enough residue on the ground to curb erosion and maintain tilth.

One key to controlling costs is to make use of equipment that farmers already own. Shinners’ stover-harvesting system makes use of a standard grain combine with a modified header – the part at the front end that cuts and gathers the crop.

The wet corn stover in silos could provide a great opportunity for producers to add value at the farm level, Shinners says. “We’re trying to determine what pretreatments would work on a farm scale, something that a farmer could manage well. We see it as a good way to add value for the producer, and maybe make the biorefinery more efficient as well. We’ve got months to do these things, not 15 minutes like in a biorefinery.”

Of course, we’ve gone through this a couple times before. I was at the first Earth Day in Amherst in 1970. We thought people might keep their brains switched on, back then. Most of these improvements we’re setting forth to discover — could have been functioning for decades and the world just might be in better shape.

Maybe, like George Carlin says — next week, Fox will put on a reality show about suicide and it will be a lot more “fun”.  And renewable energy will just go away.