The Economics of Harvesting Corn Cobs for Energy
2011
Erickson, Matthew J. | Dobbins, Craig | Tyner, Wallace E.
This research analyzes the payment per ton farmers need for it to be profitable to harvest cobs. To get information from the farmer's perspective, two focus groups and a questionnaire were mailed to seven Minnesota farmers harvesting cobs during the 2009 harvest. The data from these farmers was used to modify Purdue's Crop and Livestock Linear Programming Model (PCLP) and was applied to the data from 55 Midwestern farms taken from the 2009 Top Farmer Crop Workshop held at Purdue University. Results indicate that farmers generally must receive $100/ton in order to become serious about harvesting cobs. One reason for the high payment is the $28,000 lease for the cob wagon. This created a barrier to entry to smaller farms trying to harvest cobs. Farms larger than 2000 corn acres were better able to offset the necessary costs associated with harvesting cobs. Sensitivity analysis was done on key factors of harvest working rate, a reduced wagon cost of $14,000, and a decrease in the amount of cobs in stover. We found that a yield decrease increased cob costs $6 to $9/ton. The major conclusion of this research is that the cob price required to induce a significant amount of cob harvest is much higher than previously thought.
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