Hi Folks, Brandon Rutter here-

Thought I'd post a little bit specifically about the relevance of Woody Ag to energy concerns.

• A woody agriculture cropping system should require significantly less energy input when compared to traditional row crops (no plowing, among other things).
• Coppice wood, nut shells, and entire nuts can be used as high-quality biomass fuel.
• Hottest topic these days: biodiesel from hazelnuts. Potential for much higher oil yeilds/acre than soy.

With respect to that last one, we're trying to put together the first-ever demo for this year's field day of a diesel engine running off of partial hazel fuel. We might even have a guy with a farm-scale oil press there to help us out with that; should be interesting at any rate.