SALEM, Ohio — Switchgrass has a plethora of applications: preventing soil erosion, animal bedding and even shelters for hunters stalking their prey. And yet the crop is not widely grown and buyers are hard to find. But researchers and farmers in Pennsylvania are trying to change that.
Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education (SARE) and the Association of Warm Season Grass Producers have led a series of initiatives in recent years funded by state and local grants to expand markets for the crop and help farmers grow it.
The efforts include research on switchgrass uses and grants to help farmers grow it.
For example, “we’re developing various strains of switchgrass that grow a lot faster,” said Will Brandau, Chairman for the Association of Warm Season Grass Producers. He grows switchgrass on a farm near Wapwallopen, Pennsylvania, in Luzerne County.
“I plant a variety that takes about three years to reach its full potential,” Brandau said. “The first year it didn’t produce much more than a 3-inch plant. But the second year, the plant was about 2 to 3 feet tall. And last year it was 8 feet tall.”
However, farmers have a more difficult time finding a buyer for switchgrass compared with more common crops, experts say.
“It’s not like a commodity like corn or oats where there is always someone nearby you can sell it to,” said Daniel Ciolkosz, a researcher at Penn State University’s Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering.
Statistics on the number of farmers who grow switchgrass and the acreage dedicated to the crop are also difficult to find. The USDA agriculture census doesn’t track the switchgrass, Ciolkosz said.
What is it good for?
Fending off soil erosion and nutrient runoff are the most prominent uses of switchgrass, say agriculture experts and farmers who grow the crop.
“There are firms that will take the straw and make it into fillers for silt socks,” said Mark Fiely, a horticulturist for Ernst Conservation Seeds in Meadville, Pennsylvania, referring to tubular mesh that filters out harmful nutrients from soil runoff that seeps into waterways.
Farmers who grow switchgrass also say they’ve noticed a clear difference in the streams and creeks near their farms. Their water, they said, is clearer as the switchgrass effectively creates a nutrient barrier.
“It was cloudy water, but now the water is not cloudy at all,” said Frank McDonnell, who started growing switchgrass 15 years ago on his farm near East Greenville, Pennsylvania, in Montgomery County.
Why don’t more people grow it?
The crop doesn’t yield immediate benefits, experts said. Reaching maturity can take years for switchgrass, and once the crop can be harvested, buyers are a rare breed, said Neal Tilhou, who studied switchgrass as a Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin.
“There’s always been an issue getting farmers to plant switchgrass because we’re still learning how to produce it in an economically viable way,” he said. “Markets need to be established. You can’t just take it to the local mill.”
Switchgrass has multiple advantages over more traditional crops. It grows on rocky soil that is untillable through traditional means, rendering previously unusable fields as a new source of income for some farmers. And it requires less fertilizer than other crops.
“Part of what impresses the daylights out of me is the lifespan,” Fiely said. While the crop can take two or three years before it yields anything a farmer can sell, switchgrass can live for decades, he said.
“It’s more practical than corn or soybeans,” Brandau said. “It’s perennial. You plant it once and it continues to grow.”
What about the initiatives?
Northeast SARE and the grass producers association have spent the past several years developing equipment to process switchgrass into poultry bedding and building a network of farmers who grow the crop.
Their efforts have born some fruit. An after action report from projects that took place between 2016 and 2019 — which was published last year — found that most of the farmers who received grants to grow switchgrass saw improved income and productivity. But the report concluded that markets to sell switchgrass still need to mature.
Finding the right use for different varieties of switchgrass is one of the goals of researchers who study the crop, Tilhou said.
“Switchgrass is native to most of the eastern continental U.S., but varieties around the country look quite different,” he said.
Brandau acknowledged that not every avenue farmers pursue produces results. Efforts to use switchgrass for fuel have not panned out for the most part, but he found the product makes great bedding for horses.
“You can pick up the horse droppings a lot easier out of the grass pellets than you can out of straw,” he said.
Research on switchgrass, however, remains ongoing.
“I wish I could tell you there’s been a spectacular research breakthrough,” Tilhou said, but work still needs to be done.
