Boone County Extension will host the central Iowa corn stover harvest meeting Monday, Jan. 6, from 9:30 am to 4 pm in Ogden. The event will be held at the Leonard Good Community Center, 114 SW 8th Street. This meeting will be of value to crop producers, land owners, crop consultants, agronomists, service providers, and others with interest in stover harvest and its removal from farm fields. There is no fee to attend this meeting and lunch will be provided by DuPont. Registration is required to ensure materials and lunch is available for all participants. Registration is limited to 50 participants.
New opportunities exist for harvesting corn stover around the Nevada, IA region to support the biomass feedstock needs of a cellulosic ethanol plant. Stover harvesting can impact economic, agronomic, and water quality production factors. This meeting, funded in part with a grant from Iowa Energy Center, will address many of the positives and negatives of stover harvesting and discuss how stover harvesting can be managed within corn production in central Iowa. Participants will develop a better understating of the benefits and constraints related to stover harvest based on the research information available to date. Participants will also learn about the cellulosic ethanol program being implemented by Dupont.
Discussion with a panel composed of producers involved in stover removal from their farm fields will be moderated by ISU program specialists Kapil Arora, Mark Licht, and Kelvin Leibold. Other topics include industry perspective with Dr. David Ertl, technology commercialization manager with the Iowa Corn Growers Association; stover quality and harvest logistics with Arora; nutrient and soil quality considerations with Licht; stover removal contract and economics of stover harvest with Leibold; stover removal and soil health with Barb Stewart, state agronomist with USDA-NRCS; and the DuPont cellulosic ethanol program with Dennis Penland, business development manager and Andrew Heggenstaller, agronomy research manager, at DuPont.
For more information or to register for this event, contact Greene County Extension and Outreach at 515-386-2138 or email at xgreene@iastate.edu, or Boone County Extension and Outreach office at (515) 432-3882 or email at xboone@iastate.edu.
