Trader’s Dispatch, November 2012 — Page B18
Symbol of the frog
Finding a frog brings good luck, and a wish made secretly upon seeing the first frog in spring will most certainly come true. Ancient cultures fashioned frog-shaped amulets to attract good luck, love and friends. Many cultures have relied on the frog as a weather forecaster. Frogs stay near water during rainy periods and will come out to wait for sunshine if the weather is going to improve.
PLOW TRUCK FOR SALE
1973 Chevrolet dump truck with snow plow and sander, 5+2 transmission Phone (406) 799-6923
FOR SALE OR TRADE 1973 GMC 4x4, 4-speed flatbed, new everything except paint, 58,000 original miles....................................................... $6000 Or will trade for a 3-horse slant gooseneck horse trailer, a gooseneck flatbed tandem dually trailer or a tractor with loader.
Call 903-806-0774 or Skip Ehret, Box 27, Wilsall, MT 59086
TRUCK, PICKUP & TRACTOR FOR SALE
1975 Chevrolet C65, single axle truck, 16-ft. box, hoist, 366 V8, 5 speed, 35,000 miles, plumbed for drill fill. Good condition. 2000 Chevrolet 3500 crew cab 4x4 pickup, loaded, gooseneck hitch, 103,000 miles, all power. Very good condition. 1984 Case 1896 2WD tractor, 105 hp, dual speed PTO, 3 remotes, 3-pt., 3600 original hours. Excellent condition.
Call (406) 378-3147
CUSTOM SWATHING •Newer MacDon machines •CRP, grain and hay •Canola •North Central Montana
Call 406-899-6736
WANTED TO BUY: Any type farm tractor 1970 or newer. Good shape, wrecked, rolled, burned, or with mechanical problems. Will pay top dollar.
Can e-mail photo to ronheath@hotmail.com Phone Ron Heath, (208) 681-4429, Blackfoot, Idaho
COMPLETE HERD DISPERSION 100 Black cows available Nov. 8, will start calving Feb. 15, 2013. 3 Registered Black Angus bulls (1 Heifer bull). Cattle have very calm demeanor.
Hay and Barley straw for sale. Feed is all 2 year old twine tied round bales in single tier stacks. Very good condition.
Dave Witt (406) 734-5405, Fort Benton, MT
TRACTOR FOR SALE
1982 White 2-155 2WD tractor, 6 cylinder Hercules engine, 2 hydraulic remotes, 1000 PTO, 20.8x38 tires, 7885 hours.......$8500 Delivery on first 300 miles included. Must sell! Contact Les at (406) 390-0022 or iblodegard@hotmail.com
Biofuel prospects with prairie perennials
By Ann Perry, Agricultural Research Service Information Staff find the best ways to integrate new perennial Around 66 million years ago, a grasslike bioenergy grasses into food-crop-production ancestor began to evolve into the plants landscapes. Their work will include research eventually used to breed food crops like on nitrogen cycling, carbon cycling, and rice, corn, sorghum, and sugar cane. Panigreenhouse gas emissions—a key project cum virgatum, or switchgrass, another plant component, since there is little information descended from this ancient group, might on greenhouse gas emissions for bioenergy someday become the energy equivalent of crops. This data will be needed to develop its food crop relatives—a biomass feedstock biofuels that produce lower total emissions used to produce heat, light, and transportathroughout the production-and-conversion tion fuels. cycle than the emissions associated with To further these prospects, the U.S. Depetroleum-based fuels. partment of Agriculture’s National InstiThe researchers will monitor water use by tute of Food and Agriculture has awarded these crops and develop ways to optimize a 5-year, $25 million grant to Iowa State water-use efficiency, because water availUniversity and its partners, including the ability could be the single most limiting Agricultural Research Service (ARS), to factor in U.S. biomass production. They will fund a project called “CenUSA.” This also compare the production inputs needed study will investigate agricultural systems for the experimental biomass crops to those in the central United States for producing needed for corn. advanced transportation fuels from peren“This will let us compare the production nial grasses grown on land that is either and economic benefits and costs of different unsuitable or only marginally suitable for bioenergy crops to those of other production row crop production. The project researchers systems,” Mitchell says. will also study approaches for improving the Mitchell’s team will assess the net ensustainability of existing cropping systems ergy balance for different biomass systems, by incorporating perennial grasses into proincluding yields, agricultural inputs, and duction systems as bioenergy crops, which other production factors. These results will reduce nutrient runoff from fields, will help producers optimize the sustaindecrease erosion, and increase soil carbon able production of perennial feedstocks on sequestration. less-productive cropland—not the prime Switchgrass, Big Bluestem, and More farmland needed for food and feed crops Geneticist Ken Vogel, who works at like corn and soybean. ARS’s Grain, Forage, and Bioenergy ReFind Genes, Tweak Production search Unit in Lincoln, Nebraska, will lead Back in the laboratory, chemical engineer CenUSA’s “Germplasm to Harvest” group. Bruce Dien will be looking for traits in the “We aim to develop crops that take only a single year to become established and can switchgrass cultivars that are associated with grow 50 percent of maximum yield in the how readily the plant’s sugars can be confirst year of production—and 100 percent verted into biofuels. Dien works at the ARS yield in the second,” says Vogel. “We’re also National Center for Agricultural Utilization looking at other native grass feedstocks, like Research in Peoria, Illinois. big bluestem and indiangrass. Part of our “We’ll use expensive wet chemistry work will be planting field-scale demonstramethods to identify the components linked tion plots of switchgrass and big bluestem to conversion efficiency and then use a to show farmers how to use these crops on near-infrared [NIR] instrument to record the their farms.” light-wave signatures of each component,” Geneticist Michael Casler, who works at Dien explains. “When we’re finished, we’ll ARS’s U.S. Dairy Forage Research Center be able to rapidly estimate the conversion in Madison, Wisconsin, will be partnering in yield of different perennial grass genetic CenUSA’s breeding and genetics research. lines using NIR instead of wet chemistry. “Right now, it takes 5 years to select This will be a much more cost-effective way candidates, grow them out, cross with other for us to process the thousands of samples genetic lines, develop and evaluate new we need to study.” types, and then get seed production,” Casler Another ARS chemical engineer, Akwasi says. “This generates around a 1-percent Boateng, will be looking for ways to streamyield increase every year, but we want to line production of fuel via pyrolysis, a veryaccelerate that rate of yield progression.” high-temperature conversion process where Casler and colleagues will use new DNA plant material is thermally decomposed in markers to develop predictive equations for the absence of oxygen. Pyrolysis produces identifying traits that enhance yield. They a dense bio-oil that can be readily converted will use these equations to breed and evaluinto renewable jet, diesel, and other biofuels. ate new experimental strains for yield and “We will collect pyrolysis data for 300 to biofuel-conversion potential. These strains 500 samples every year,” says Boateng, who will be evaluated in field trials prior to reworks in the Sustainable Biofuels and Colease as cultivars for commercial use by the products Research Unit at the ARS Eastern biofuels industry. Regional Research Center, in Wyndmoor, Casler is also helping to establish plots in Pennsylvania. “The samples will represent the north-central states for studying switchdifferent production backgrounds and gegrass, big bluegrass, indiangrass, and prairie netic materials. For instance, we’ll study cordgrass. “In some places, big bluegrass different varieties of feedstocks, but we will has higher yields than switchgrass,” Casler also look at how harvest and storage mansays. “It is also more tolerant of mismanagement affects bio-oil yields. Then we’ll agement and less susceptible to invasive use the information to develop equations plants.” for predicting bio-oil yields, eliminating the Agronomist Rob Mitchell, who works need to conduct chemical analyses.” with Vogel in Lincoln, will be coleading Vogel, who has been working on switchmanagement-systems studies of bioenergy grass for more than two decades is optimistic crops in a 14-field network across the centhat switchgrass and other North American tral part of the country. “We’re using field perennial natives will someday become trials to evaluate the switchgrass and other major components in U.S. agriculture for material that Vogel and Casler have already biofuel production. developed,” Mitchell says. “I’m glad that so many scientists are now ARS and university scientists in Illinois, working together on ways of establishing Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Neswitchgrass as a bioenergy crop that can help braska, and Wisconsin will also evaluate the United States develop its own renewable the latest improved genetic materials and energy sources,” Vogel says.