Biomass Rules takes inventory of locally available, undervalued wastes, and finds higher valued markets through which move these once-upon-a-time liabilities back into the economy.  Sometimes straw may be a feedstock into feed, fertility or biofuel products.  Biomass Rules is the Rumpelstiltskin of leftover organics.

Rumpelstiltskin is the magic character of the Grimms Fairy Tail by the same name.  He turns straw into gold to the benefit of the miller’s daughter.  And when the daughter’s debt comes due, a new deal is made letting the miller’s daughter off the hook if she can guess his name.  And to Rumpelstiltskin’s despair, she does guess his name.  Curiously, this is remarkably like the biomass inventory work conducted by Biomass Rules.  Just as with Indiana’s BioTown, USA project, we take organic leftovers like straw and turn them into gold through revenue streams.

Recall that straw is the residual fiber in the stalks of plants that is left after harvesting a more valuable part of the crop, usually a grain.  Wheat straw is a common kind of farmed straw product in the Midwest.  It can be quite valuable if there is a demand for it.  There was a time when wheat growers generally made wheat straw because there was always a livestock producer that needed bedding.  Most of the livestock have now moved indoors.  Some wheat growers still always make straw, but in those cases, there is a good market for straw.  When straw is removed from the field for a market, the residual stalk nutrients that would break down when left in the field must be replaced if the straw is removed.  When straw value is greater than the cost of nutrient replacement, it makes sense to make straw.

While modeling bioenergy crop adoption at the University of California, Davis in 2011, the Biomass Management Zone Project was also unfolding.  The California Biomass Collaborative generated biomass data that was not historically available.  In the 3-year window I was connected to the Collaborative, we did some very cool projects.

The Biomass Management Zone (BMZ) was an effort to explore the use of markets to pull dead and dying fuel wood out of the forested areas of California.  Including agricultural residues and human residues made it more interesting.  The BMZ study area is the map on the left side of this post’s image.  This is a 1.3-million-acre region spanning several Californian Counties in north central California about an hour north of Sacramento.  This BMZ had a population 278,000 and was composed of 30 percent forest and shrub lands, 65 percent agricultural production, and 5 percent of the land area was urban.

My role at the Biomass Collaborative was modeling bioenergy crop adoption, but Stephen Kaffka’s multi-talented team routinely added unique expertise to multiple, integrated biomass projects.  The Biomass Management Zone analysis was conducted by an interdisciplinary team including foresters, food waste managers, engineers, agronomists and a biomass economist.

The right side of today’s graphic illustrates the biomass resources contained in the BMZ.  About 800,000 bone dry tons.  Bone dry tons have had the moisture mathematically removed.  Field dried, rice straw has 15 to 20 percent moisture in it, or about one fifth water.  Removing the moisture allows calculation of energy value as a feedstock.  Water has no fuel value.  All the agricultural materials have an as-is yield in the agricultural markets, and a different yield in the energy markets with the ambient moisture removed.

In 2011 and 2012 as we were evaluating this BMZ concept, we were excited to elevate economic opportunity as a policy driver for forest and agricultural wastes adding to environmental and economic challenges.  As news of the 2018 California wildfires spread across the country it took a while for me to recall that the town of Paradise, California that was destroyed, was in the BMZ study area.  The cost of 86 lives and loss of 11,000 homes lost in the fire, were not evaluated in our study.  Those sorts of losses were beyond the scope of our objectives.

Where are the boundaries in promoting the chance to turn straw (biomass leftovers) into gold (profit)?  As an economic forecaster, my role is to push the boundaries, but only when there is a documentable benefit.

The higher ground in the 2012 Biomass Management Zone project was to add value.  When the study was conducted, the objectives were to provide the most objective facts from which to make management decisions.  It is a community, ecosystem model for opportunities in biomass project development.  It was a privilege to quietly shape straw-to-gold biomass possibilities as part of that biomass inventory team.