The Daily Times

There is no guarantee of how future markets will fare. Commodities, stocks, housing, bonds — the entire state of the economy is evidence of that.

There are two things for sure, though, when it comes to one very critical commodity, crude oil:

One, people are extracting oil from the ground at an increasing rate.

Two, the people sitting on top of most of that crude are not exactly our close friends.

If we are to maintain our way of life and our stature in the world, we’re going to have to become self-sufficient in fuel production. In this era of energy, power truly begets power.

We could wait on Washington to lead us in the right direction, to devise and legislate an effective energy policy. On the other hand, while we’re waiting, maybe the dinosaurs will re-evolve, die and decompose under heat and pressure into a gooey mass. (OK, we know that crude oil mostly originated from tiny decayed plants, algae and bacteria.)

Then there’s Vonore, site of a new processing plant and biorefinery designed to promote America’s energy independence. On Tuesday, Gov. Bill Haslam and U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander were at a farm in Monroe County near Vonore and standing in a field of grass growing above their heads.

Switchgrass the crop is called, and switch is what it’s designed to do. To switch from dependence on foreign oil. To switch from fueling our vehicles with plants we eat (corn for ethanol). To switch from trusting our future to strangers.

The visit by the senator and the governor was symbolic. But the Tennessee Biofuels Initiative is real and as serious as an oil cartel. It grew from a proposal by Gov. Phil Bredesen to the General Assembly in 2007 to commit $70.5 million to a five-year program to determine the cost-effectiveness of converting switchgrass to ethanol. Other partners are Genera Energy and Dupont.

To date, about 61 farms within 50 miles of Vonore in nine counties, including Blount, have contracted to produce about 5,100 acres of switchgrass.

During the Vonore visit, a University of Tennessee Agriculture Extension Service professional pointed to a major reason switchgrass shows promise as a feed product for the refinery process. Adjoining fields were planted in corn and switchgrass. The corn was brown, clearly stressed from lack of rain. The switchgrass was green and tall.

Is success guaranteed for the farm-to-fuel business plan developed by UT Institute of Agriculture researchers that models a biofuels industry capable of supplementing 30 percent of Tennessee’s petroleum consumption? Absolutely not.

Is it worth the effort? By all means available.

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