Welcome

Hello, welcome to the University of Minnesota Biomass Crop Enterprise and Environmental Budgeting Tool for biomass, forage, agroforestry, and annual crops. This tool was designed to calculate the breakeven price needed to cover the costs of producing biomass from conventional and alternative feedstocks. These include crop residues from corn and energy crops like switchgrass, mixed grasses, shrub willow, hybrid poplar, and agroforestry systems that combine both woody and herbaceous crops.

Get started!

To use the tool, you will need to create an account. Once registered, select your state, county, and nearest weather station and define your site(s) and field(s). Then you will need to define your current farm management practices as well as alternative energy cropping practices for economic and environmental comparison. This worksheet provides a convenient way to organize all the information you will need to complete the tool.

Feature

Specifically, this tool computes the costs and returns per acre to produce biomass crops or any of a variety of other competing annual and perennial feed and food crops in the north central U.S.. The tool guides you through describing your farm management practices including alternative future management scenarios. The tool also provides an environmental report, comparing changes in soil carbon storage and soil erosion between your current management practices and future scenarios.

Warranty

This tool is based on research conducted by Drs. William Lazarus, Gregg Johnson, and Dean Current. This calculator is provided 'as is' and without warranties as to performance. Because of the unique and varied circumstances of agricultural production, no warranty of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose is offered.

Supported

This research was supported by funding from the North Central Sun Grant Center at South Dakota State University through a grant provided by the US Department of Energy Office of Biomass Programs under award number DEFG36-08GO88073, and by CenUSA Bioenergy under Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2011-68005-30411 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.