This just in!
 

Finished harvesting my canola test plots on Tuesday. WOW!

Plot #1. 25 acres, planted 18 Aug, 06. 9" of water from pre-irrigation, 6" of spring irrigation, total water= 15". Yield = 86,875 LBS = 3,475 LBS per acre.

Potential Oil yield: 4,826 gallons!


Plot #2. 25 acres, planted 18 Aug, 06. 9" of pre-irrigation, NO spring irrigation, total water = 9". Yield = 110,500 LBS = 4,420 LBS per acre.

Potential Oil Yield: 6,138 gallons!

Testing is now over! I will plant 200 acres in canola this fall...........

Just finishing up the plans for my new 100,000 gallon per year biodiesel plant.

Our Governor just signed new legislation that will make availible up to 40% grant $$$$ to build On-Farm bio plants, [Yes, I will apply :-D ]. The new legislation will also pay me $.10 per gallon for every gallon I sell, AND pay $.50 per gallon to off-road [ farm, or construction ] users that buy their bio from me!

I hope the "rag-heads" are quaking in their boots! American farmers will make a difference! NO MORE FORIGN OIL!!!! or at least not as much.....:-D


To Wheatina: Becky, How did your yield turn out? Wish I had your 300 acres :-D :-D :-D

Hey Don!!! Congrats!!! Great yields!!! Are those both the same varieties?? Same soil types, fert and such?? Amazing differences.

We haven't harvested ours yet...maybe next Monday.

Thanks Becky, I was happy with the Yields :-X03

All conditions were the same in both fields. I think the difference in yields is because of the extra water this spring. This is also the findings of the University of Idaho's research.

That is awesome. 6,000gallons/acre x 200 acres = 1.2 million gallons potential. I would be very interested in talking with you on possibly tapping a small portion of this for the SVO world, especially being we are both in Oregon.

I wish 6,000 gallons per acre!! If you check my figures again, you'll see that it's really just over 10,000 gallons out of 50 acres..............so I should see approx 40,000 gallons out of 200 acres. Still not bad...:-D

Fresh canola oil is availible now from a good friend of mine [ he has 4,000 acres of canola this year], 8,000 gallons at a time, $2.38 per gallon. With all the new bio plants going in in the Northwest, that is the going rate at this time. The demand for canola oil for biodiesel plants is growing, so the cost of the oil is rising also.

Everything I can produce will be used in my plant, and be sold to local area farms. In fact I have so many farms that want it here that I could grow it on half of my ground [ total crop land 2,000 acres ] and still turn people away!

Don,
How does it work from an economics standpoint? If a farmer can sell the diesel for $2.38/gallon and, from what I gather (haven't actually got a "rountuit" yet on my BD processing), it's roughly $1/gallon to produce with free restaurant oil, that comes to $3.38ish per gallon of BD. For the offroad users, that $.50/gallon state incentive drops it down to $2.88 which is still higher than off-road diesel is (now that the on-road price has dropped below $2.90 most places around Eugene). You also have to recoup the cost of your processing plant (even if you only have to recoup 60% of the cost if you get the 40% grant).

Are there other incentives that factor in? What am I missing? Is your cost to produce substantially less with the methanol recovery you do?

On a side note, have you done any processing with ethanol? Do you have plans in the works to plant any crops that you could roll your own ethanol and do the entire process on site?

If I used my truck as a daily driver instead of just a horse hauler when we need it, I'd go through roughly 50 gallons/month. That's only 600 gallons per year. I'd only need a 3 acre plot of canola to drive all year on! That would be awesome.

Great job on the yields and good luck on your grant proposal!

Mike

I'll try and "splane" it to you. :) The state is willing to give me a grant for 40% of the cost of the plant, the Fed's will kick in another 15-20 percent. The tax laws give me a 30% drop in state taxes. The State will pay me $.10 per gallon made, and the Fed's will give me another $1.10 per gallon.

My costs are very low because I buy my chemicals in bulk, and recover better than 40% of my methanol. My costs last month was $.62 per gallon.

I now grow my own canola. It cost me $12 per acre to produce the seed. My average was approximately 4,000 lbs per acre. The 4,000 lbs per acre will net me about 220 gallons per acre. My cost to produce this 220 gallons is $.0045 PER GALLON..........:-D

If you add the cost to produce [$.0045] plus the cost of making the bio [$.62] it comes out to $.6245 PER GALLON . The rebate from the Fed, and State = $1.30. I've already made a profit of $.675 per gallon, AND I STILL HAVE THE BIODIESEL!!

My business plan calls for the sale of the biodiesel @ $.50 LESS than the local cost of off-road fuel, and the state sends the customer a $.50 rebate. SO MY CUSTOMERS BUY THEIR FUEL AT A DOLLER OFF PER GALLON!!!

Farm fuel is selling for $2.82 per gallon here right now. If I sell the biodiesel to my farm accounts at $ 2.32 per gallon, my potential profit is $2.99 per gallon...............................:-D

Yes, I am looking into producing my own Ethanol "on site" and possibly switching over to an ethanol process. One problem is the price of wheat [ the main crop on my ranch] is over $6 a bushel, and it is worth more as wheat than ethanol....................

Thanks for the "splane" Fabmandelux!!!

I actually understood with your first post. but the splane to, Oregon-Mike makes it real clear.

As a the Goo fer for the family farm here in Central NY, I find that it cost us much more than $12 dollars an acre to plant any seed. just to prepare the ground cost many times more than that, would it be possible to get a little better breakdown of the cost of your harvested crop from bare soil to in the storage bin. I find it hard to believe that just the irrigation. didn't cost $12 per acre. not to mention a little fertilizer. I know your fuel cost are low. We have been thinking of planting some canola here, but have yet to research the conditions it needs.


Long Live the IDI
Ken H Central NY

Our farming systems are completely different for starters. We receive less than 10 inches of rain per year, so we use the "fallow" system of farming. Out of 3,000 acres I farm, less than 100 acres are irrigated. The "bottoms" that my test plots were on are irrigated, but only one was irrigated this spring.

I also use diesel pumps to irrigate with, and run them on biodiesel only.

On these test plots we used 0 pounds of fertilizer so we would have a base-line yield result with minimum irrigation, and fertilizer.

I will use these results to plan my fall planting of canola on fallow ground that just has natural moisture.

The cost of the seed was $8 per acre, and the $4 per acre reflects the cost of fuel and labor for planting and harvesting. The only work on the fields was discing the fields once last spring, then rod-weeding once in mid summer, then seeding in the fall. Fall canola, seeded early puts out a huge "blanket" of green canopy that makes it hard for weed seeds to grow, so herbicides are usually not necessary.

Canola is basically a desert plant. If you have lots of spring rains the yields will be a lot lower than mine are. Canola produces more seeds when stressed by lack of water in the spring and summer. If you look at my original post you will see that the plot that was irrigated this spring had a smaller yield than the plot with no spring irrigation. My neighbor just harvested a 100 acre pivot of irrigated spring canola and barely made 2,500 lbs per acre...........

Canola is not for every farm, but for our area, and rainfall it is a very viable crop.

Thanks Fabmandelux,


Wow, you are correct, our needs at planting are the extremes. Yes I saw that the spring water cut your yeilds. Our Average rain fall is several times yours. I even located your area as being on or near the Columbia river. There are Springs here that have enough rain to delay planting because we can't get on the Ground to work it.

The only crop we fall plant here is Winter Wheat, Will Canola survive the winter freezing of the ground?

Our research will continue,

Ken H

Morning Ken, Yes I'm on the Columbia River. Canola will take freezing just fine, but does not like much water. Lots of water promotes vegetative growth, but little seed production.

Now is that 4,826 gallons for the whole 25 acres as I dont see getting
4,826 gallons of oil out of 3,475 lbs of canola harvested in one acre.

So that's about 219 gallons per acre average in all 50 acres.

So that's 219 gallons per acre X 200 acres is only 43,856 gallons for the 200 acres.

Am I missing something in the math?
It should take 457 acres to get 100,000 gallons at the rate of 219 gallons per acre.

For gallons of oil per acre I refer to this chart below, and canola, as a variation of rapeseed, is averaged at 127 gallons per acre, so it sounds like you are getting the most out of you harvest.

But at only 127 gallons per acre it would take 788 acres

http://journeytoforever.org/biodiesel_yield.html

The word "canola" is derived from "Canadian oil, low acid" first used in 1978.
In agriculture, canola is a trademarked quality description of a group of cultivars of rapeseed variants from which low erucic acid rapeseed oil and low glucosinolate meal are obtained. Also known as "LEAR" oil (for Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed), Canola was initially bred in Canada by Keith Downey and Baldur Stefansson in the 1970s[citation needed].

Yes, the 4,826 gallon figure was for the whole 25 acre test plot. The "potential" oil recovery was based on a 40% recovery, but the "Actual" recovery will be slightly less, about 37%.


I designed the plant to handle 100,000 gallon per year [up-gradeable to 200,000 gallons per year] because we have another source of WVO that will supply approx 50,000 gallons per year. I am also working with other farmers in my area to supply there farms with biodiesel made from seed that they will grow themselves.