“I have to grow 500 acres of 100 bu. per acre milo to net enough money to buy all the fuel I need for my farm. But it takes only 100 acres of sunflowers to grow all the fuel I need for my farm – about 11,000 gal. of oil.
“I paid a total of $6,000 for the press and engine. It doesn’t take many gallons of fuel to pay that back.”
According to McAmoil, growing your own biodiesel fuel is far more practical than using cooking or vegetable oil. “There isn’t enough restaurant oil within a 100-mile radius of my farm to operate my diesel-powered equipment for even two days. A lot of farmers in the High Plains are starting to buy presses so they can grow their own fuel. One farmer is looking at buying several presses so he can operate five different irrigation engines, using 50,000 to 60,000 gal. of biodiesel fuel per year. He’ll hire someone to operate them full-time all year long.
This almost sounds to good to be true. But it is common knowledge that you can run a diesel engine off of vegetable oil. So why not off of oil that you press at your farm?
If you read the full article, you will see that the guy adds some gasoline to the mixture so it is not 100% homegrown. Still, this could be the wave of the future.
Admittedly, it is still turning food into fuel, but it does so in a manner that is a lot more practical then ethanols. For one thing there is no fermenting. The oil is being pressed out of the crops and being used in the tractors will only a little gasoline being added. Moreover, the left over mash is being feed to cattle.
Most importantly, this process is not being driven by government mandates. The guy did a straight up cost comparison between how much acreage he would have to plant to pay for diesel fuel and much acreage he would have to plant to grow his own fuel. The amount he would have to plant to grow his own fuel was less the amount of acreage he would have to plant to buy it.