Breakout Session III
Biomass, Feedstock Production, Harvest and Storage Systems Tour
New bioprocessing manufacturing businesses provide opportunities for growing new crops and/or using new cropping systems. In this session, participants learned about a number of new crops (switchgrass, miscanthus, kenaf, canola); and new cropping systems such as double cropping corn and grass. Research faculty described cultivation practices, yields, etc. for each crop or system.
Tour Guides: Matt Liebman, Ken Moore, Rob Anex and Stuart Birrell
Stuart Birrell
Stuart Birrell is a professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University. Dr. Birrell’s research focuses on the development of sensors and controls that can be applied in advanced machinery control and in precision agriculture. Present projects include developing a real-time soil nitrate sensor system for precision nitrogen applications, a corn population sensor that considers the effect of plant population variance on corn yields, real-time grain damage and hay forage moisture content sensors using dielectric measurements, and other projects sponsored by the agricultural machinery industry.
Matt Liebman
Matt Liebman is a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University. His research group focuses on cropping system diversification, soil amendments, and weed ecology and management. Included within the scope of his work are experiments involving crop rotations, cover crops, green manures, intercrops, animal manures, composts, and insects and rodents that consume weed seeds. He currently serves as chair of the interdepartmental Graduate Program in Sustainable Agriculture, and is a member of the graduate faculties in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, and Crop Production and Physiology.
Ken Moore
Ken Moore
is a professor of agronomy at Iowa State University. His research involves identifying factors which limit the nutritive value of and
development of systems for improved utilization of forages. His current research
efforts are concentrated on studying species diversity in pastures and its
relationship to spatial and temporal variation in available nutrients for
grazing livestock, development of complementary grazing systems, and the impact
of various legumes grown in mixtures with grasses on forage protein quality and
availability.
Rob Anex
Rob Anex is a professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University. He combines methods from a variety of disciplines, including engineering, industrial ecology, operations research, political science and economics to analyze coupled human-environmental systems. In broad terms, his research involves gaining an understanding of how trends in policy, production, consumption, and technology translate into environmental quality changes, and how we can guide such trends toward a sustainable future.