| aussiebagger - 11/14/2012 15:27
Maybe someone can tell me, if you grow your own canola or some other crop to make biofuel out of, to use to plant and harvest your crops, what percentage of the crop does it take? Is it around one third, like it was when my Grandfather grew feed for his horses to work the ground and harvest crops?
You should probably use soybeans, because you'll still have valuable soy meal (think textured soy protein products) after you remove the oil, whereas you have nothing left after you remove the oil from rapeseed, except some lower value feed.
The productivity rate for soybeans is about 1.4 gallons of biodiesel per bushel, or 63 gallons per acre.
Compare with the price of diesel, the price of soybeans and how much you need on the farm to evaluate your needs and if it makes sense financially, between what you keep for your own usage and what you can resell, either as soybeans or as biodiesel. I would actually be very interested to see the results of such a study.
You also get glycerine as a by-product, which sells at variable rates depending on its refining purity. Or you can make candles and scented oil lamps from it, for yourself or to sell to these green yippies! ^-^ |