Sustainable Oils aims to be key player in development of camelina as a biofuels feedstock

Recently, Sustainable Oils has been in  the news for contributing camelina oil to the test flight of Japan Air Lines, and for banding together with growers and Great Plains-the Camelina Company to form a camelina trade association. Scott Johnson of Sustainable Oils spent some time recently with Biofuels Digest to provide some data on the state of camelina development and its promise as a biofuels feedstock.

If the average wheat farm is 2500 acres in size, typically 700 is fallow, and its the fallow acres that are of the most intest for camlina. Test data is showing that wheat-camelina-wheat crop rotations are providing higher yields and a more robust soil health than traditional wheat-fallow-wheat rotations.

The camelina is recharging the moisture profile of the soil, according to SO’s test data, and with 5-6 million acres of wheatland lying fallow to rest the soil, there’s an opportunity to plant the high-yield oilseed crop.. It’s an industrial crop, not a food crop, and in Montana alone, according to Johnson, there are 2 million acres available for cultivation.

The company is scaling up its seed production with a goal of providing large scale seed to farmers by 2012, based on growing three generations of crop per year. Interestingly, Sustainable Oil strongly insists that agriculture has to prove it can compete with $40 oil. Typically, biofuels developers begin such conversations with a wish list for government actions to protect a young industry from the predatory impact of low cost fossil fuels. Refreshing.

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