The old saying warns, … “you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make her drink.” 

It is the same with ethanol - you can lead the mills to switchgrass, but you can’t make them process it, … at least if it is too expensive.

Corn is still king - even at the new high prices.  The Des Moines Register reported the following story this weeK:

If the experience of switchgrass growers in Iowa is a guide, ethanol plants are going to have to pay a lot more than that for switchgrass.

Farmers in four southern Iowa counties have been growing switchgrass as part of the Chariton Valley Biomass Project, which is testing the use of the crop as an alternative to coal in power generation.

What they have found is that it costs farmers about $60 a ton to grow, harvest and bale the grass, including the price of seed, fertilizer and herbicides, said John Sellers Jr., a project participant who farms near Corydon in Wayne County.

It costs another $25 for storage and transportation costs, and then farmers will need an additional $30 to $40 a ton in profit to make it worth their while, he said.

Mike Duffy, an Iowa State University economist who has analyzed the project, puts the production costs of switchgrass at $50 a ton.

“There’s no $35-a-ton switchgrass,” conceded Mark Downing, who analyzes bioenergy markets for the Energy Department.

Yields in the Iowa project have averaged about 3 tons per acre, way below what will be necessary to sustain an ethanol plant: 8 to 12 tons per acre, according to Downing.