Comments

Good article! Obviously, harvesting native plants (not just switch grass!) for use in production of cellulosic ethanol is the way to go. Native plants growing on nonagricultural land require no cultivation, no fertilizer, and no irrigation. We used to call them weeds; undesirable, pernicious plants. Turns out they can be quite valuable if we are clever enough to extract their energy. A undesirable weed was accidentally imported into the western US early on. It was the Russian thistle, commonly known as a tumbleweed. In thrived in the arid grasslands crowding out native plants and grasses. In the Fall, the main root breaks off and this great round ball of a plant rolls across the land spreading its seed. Then it piles up in dense masses against fences and other obstructions. When I was a kid, I burned a lot of those tumbleweed piles and was amazed at the burning oil that I could see dripping out of the seemingly dry plants in the fire. The fires produced an oily black smoke too. There is a lot of energy in these plants and it would be cheap and easy to harvest.

Remember when the latest craze was ostrich farming? We don't hear too much about that now so it's time to start promoting yak farming and selling yak cheese. Yak are, after all, are very much like hairy cattle. I think they would do very nicely in the western mountains of North America. The purpose of this exercise is so that we can enjoy the benefits of yak cheese and buy locally produced, environmentally friendly produce.