Originally published February 12 2006
Washington biodiesel industry struggling as proponents balk at obstacles
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Washington farmer Fred Fleming managed to produce 400 gallons of vegetable oil after three straight days of work back in July, a result he does not consider worth the effort, and experts suggest he is typical of Washington biodiesel proponents who are daunted by the supposedly increasing cost and decreasing practicality of the practice.
On a blazing day last July at his farm west of Spokane, Fred Fleming placed a machine that looks like a meat grinder the size of a truck engine on a concrete slab and started dumping tiny canola seeds into the top.
After all that, he had managed to produce about 400 gallons of vegetable oil, which eventually was sold to become some of the first homegrown biodiesel ever made in Washington.
The fuel --- a mix of vegetable oil and methanol used in place of diesel to fuel engines --- has been pushed as a way to help both struggling farmers and the environment, with talk of Washington farm fields producing 100 million gallons of clean-burning fuel a year and pumping millions of dollars into the state's faltering farm economy.
According to the National Biodiesel Board, about 25 million gallons of biodiesel were sold in the U.S. in 2004.
But Washington state alone burns about 1 billion gallons of regular diesel fuel a year.
Skeptics point out that recent history has seen plenty of hype around crops like sugar beets that were supposed to be the salvation of Washington farmers but flopped.
Though getting fuel from plants isn't new, the industry has been mostly confined to the Midwest, where corn is turned into ethanol and soybean oil is made into biodiesel.
On a recent November day, Roecks, 51, stood in his brightly lit machine shop and listened impassively as David Ostheller, a farmer who serves on the board of Cooperative Agricultural Producers, talked about the co-op's plans to build a biodiesel plant to be fed with local crops.
"We need the capital for a crusher and a refinery, that's what it boils down to," said Mike Conklin, president of Palouse Biodiesel, an alliance of four Eastern Washington farm cooperatives, including Cooperative Agricultural Producers.
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