K-State Honoured with USDA Award for Bioenergy Initiatives

K-State won a Grand Challenge award for a vision paper, "Food, Feed, Energy and Ecosystem Services: A Role for American Agriculture." Co-authors are agronomy professors Charles W. Rice and Scott Staggenborg, and Richard Nelson, associate professor and head of the Kansas Industrial Extension Service. The Grand Challenge is the major award to be made during the event, and promotes the development of a vision that the winning universities will contribute in the emerging bio economy.

"Our vision for agriculture is to find the best match of the soil with production of food or fuel while maintaining soil and water quality," Rice said.

"Future production will need dedicated crops designed specifically for biofuel production," Nelson said.

Staggenborg, Nelson and Rice also coordinated an exhibit at the National Arboretum during the event. The display focused on sorghums for production to processing of bio energy feedstock crops, including life size crops plants with a model of harvest to production of ethanol.

"Forage sorghum may be an excellent biofuel crop for Kansas because of its drought tolerance and high biomass," Staggenborg said.

The Grand Challenge competition is sponsored by USDA and the 25x'25 Alliance, a group of agriculture, business, conservation, labor and other groups committed to bioenergy development.

The USDA's goal is to develop technology and plans that could help provide 25 percent of the country's energy from renewable resources by the year 2025.

The purpose of this event is to help increase awareness and knowledge related to the sustainable production of agriculture-based and natural resource-based renewable energy and the efficient use and conservation of energy for the benefit of rural communities and the nation. Rice served on the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change -- IPCC -- to author a report on Climate Change and was among scientists recognized when that work won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Staggenborg oversees a program that encompasses 22 counties and focuses on adoption of precision agriculture technology by producers, the improvement of water quality while maintaining production levels and increasing production efficiency of grain crops.

Nelson's interests include focuses on bioenergy, wind, photovoltaics, waste-to-energy, and economic feasibility analyses of renewable energy sources.

Also winning the USDA's Grand Challenge award were Colorado State University, University of Arizona, University of Hawaii, Cornell University, University of Illinois, Iowa State University, Ohio State University, Auburn University, Oklahoma State University, University of Georgia, University of Kentucky, West Virginia University, Tuskegee University, Alabama A&M University and California Polytechnic State University.

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