May 30

When we visited the BioCentury Farms I was nearly convinced we were at Poet or DuPont ethanol plants rather than a research facility with Iowa State. One of the first questions that research manager Andy Suby asked was rhetorical: whether or not we would run out of fossil fuels. Several of us answered immediately, “Yes!” But his response was “not anytime soon.” Suby explained that the goal of the research farm was to find ways to use renewable materials to drive the energy market when prices of fossil fuels are high. Throughout his tour he repeated that the research and development is useless unless it makes money.

            Although I can’t argue against the important role of economic efficiency to our global society, this emphasis was very different from the traditional goals voiced by academic researchers. Even during our visit with Ben and his cooworkers at Iowa state after our tour at BioCentury, the research team joked about the low-pay, public service that characterized their careers. Suby isn’t necessarily profiting directly from the use of biomass to produce energy, but it was shocking how much his lecture focused on the monetary value of their products rather than the environmental value of reducing fossil fuel use and replacing them with renewables. He spoke not about the emissions of fossil fuels vs. switchgrass or corn stover, but of the variety of products the renewable material can be converted into, like butanol, hemoglobin, milk enhanced with omega-3s, and DDGs for cattle feed. His limited attention to the ecological implications of renewables was reasserted with his stated inability to accept climate change as human-exacerbated.

            It does seem the only way to keep academic research funded is through appealing to the market, but researchers have to look beyond answers to present problems and look for sustainable solutions over a much longer timeline. Producing energy from the byproducts of crops that aren’t used up sounds like a great solution for the moment, but what do we do when corn is no longer a viable crop for the state of Iowa? Won’t the demand for stover continue to increase corn production (much like corn syrup) and speed up soil depletion and water nitrification? Before we look for ways to close the gaps in the system (e.g. turning stover to energy), we need to look further into the causes of the gaps (e.g. overproduction of corn) and treat them.