Some New England residents are turning to soybeans for heat. It is called bio-heat, and growers say it has become a solid market.
“It’s caught on well, very, very popular. People love it, and there’s a whole industry developed around it now, about what modifications and so forth are done to the heating plants of furnaces, if you will, the boilers, and so it’s pretty neat, and it’s become a nice demand center for our soybean oil. It burns cleaner. It has fewer carbon deposits. It has a lot easier maintenance. It has natural lubricity, which of course, when we took sulfur out of our petroleum-based products, we lost a lot of lubricity, so there’s a lot of built-in advantages and that’s what they like about it,” said Andy Bensend, District One Director, Wisconsin Soybean Marketing Board.
Bensend says it has been a gradual process. First, homeowners turned to fuels like bio-diesel over traditional heating oil, and from there, bio-heat took off.
The phone call injected optimism into the soybean market, but actual Chinese buying and its timing will ultimately determine the extent of U.S. agricultural export benefits.
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Regulatory uncertainty could slow the growth of fiber and grain hemp unless implementation is delayed.
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Joined by her parents and sisters, we go beyond Kirbe’s job hosting FarmHER + RanchHER to discover the person and story behind the show.
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We caught up with John Deere’s Hay & Forage Got-To Market Manager Kaylene Ballesteros to learn how tech is evolving how producers make hay, from baling efficiency to operator confidence.
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U.S. Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas discusses expected changes to the 45Z tax credit and what they could mean for agriculture and rural America.
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Purdue University Professor of Agricultural Economics Dr. Jim Mintert shares a closer look at farmer sentiment and the key issues shaping the agricultural economy in January.
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