By Miranda Gilbert
Guymon Daily Herald
As printed in the Guymon Daily Herald, June 11, 2008.

Photo by Shawn Yorks/Guymon Daily Herald
Curt Raines, a farming engineer for Hitch Enterprises checks the planting of a revolutionary switchgrass seed which will be used for bio-fuel research. The 1,000 acres planted at Hitch Farms southeast of Guymon is the first crop of its size in the world made possible by state funding to curtail the rising cost of corn for ethanol, oil imports and instead put the money into home soil.

No Man's Land may one day be Every Man's Land now that the pioneering Hitch family earns yet another pioneer merit, this time for a 21st century venture into the revolutionary research of turning native grasses of Oklahoma into biofuel.

With the economy facing a recession, imported oil picking the pockets of Americans at the gas pump, and the increased threat of rising corn costs due to ethanol production, the project offers a vast opportunity.

Hitch is now planting Oklahoma's first-ever 1,000 acre switchgrass field – the world's largest – devoted to cellulosic ethanol production.

The research and development of this biorefinery crop has been designed to do two things: cut imported oil from the Middle East by 30 percent and cut the competition for corn against human and animal food sources.

"Rising food costs recently resulted in a pushback against renewable fuels. However, cellulosic ethanol from sources like switchgrass and sorghum are noncompetitive with food sources for animals and humans," Oklahoma Secretary of energy David Fleischaker said, who has led the drive for research on the project.

The well respected late Paul Hitch, son to pioneer Henry C. Hitch, was troubled last year by the rising cost of corn for feeding his massive operation of livestock. Hitch, a wise man educated by 119 years of family farming and ranching, was not alone in his thinking and Oklahoma's scientists are on the brink of solving that dilemma.

"I've been kinda against this ethanol taking a food product and making gasoline to run up and down the highways when we have thousands of people in the world starving to death," said Curtis Raines of Hitch Enterprises, who started planting the crop last Friday. "But this here is a different process altogether. They're going to use a roughage to make it, it's not a food product. I am excited. I want it to work."

"I'm all for farmers making money, but the high corn prices, wheat prices- it's helped the farmers out, but I don't think that's the way to go," Raines said. "If we don't have gas we can stay home, but we gotta have something to eat."

Not to mention the thousands of cattle and hogs Hitch has to feed every year.

Raines is so dedicated to making the crop a success, he even took a week to modify the drill settings on his John Deere to plant within a gram of what the researchers recommended. This is all part of the Hitch Pioneer Tradition.

"I'm a farmer engineer, I love challenges and that's one that I think I won," Raines said with a smile.

The crop will be cut and transported to a cellulosic biorefinery currently being constructed by Abengoa Bioenergy in Hugoton, Kan., less than 35 miles from Guymon. The biorefinery is expected to be operational in 2010.

In the meantime perfecting the switchgrass crop, which is already a drought resistant perennial that grows on marginal lands, will continue at Hitch, along with additional crops of a smaller scale to be planted near Chickasha and Maysville in central Oklahoma.

Adam Calaway with the Noble Foundation, which is funding the project with state money and the expertise of the Oklahoma Bioenergy Center, the University of Oklahoma (OU) and Oklahoma State University (OSU) explained the timeline and why it is necessary to start now, even on a perennial that is cut at least twice a year.

"The first year, you get about 30 percent of your crop. The second year you get about 70 and if it's good then you can get up higher to maybe 90 or even 100, but that third year crop is when you will get a full 100 percent of what you are looking for."

Hitch is planting both irrigated and dry land crops for more research and guaranteed growth.

"We did it irrigated to ensure that we get a crop and are able to study it," Calaway said. "You don't have any guarantees with the dry land. You're really dependent on mother nature."

"We really want to get production up and going by 2017," Calaway said. "The whole goal is to displace 30 percent of the oil we import. If you displace that much it helps us financially, so you think of the billions of dollars we'll save and be able to put back into agriculture. You can imagine how much that would revolutionize agriculture."

Calaway says the crop at Hitch will be a living laboratory or living classroom.

"This is an opportunity to actually grow it, see how it grows and see what it's requirements are, and generate all the knowledge we need from that," he said. "Agricultural producers, policy makers, the general public – they're all going to want to come and see this plant and see what it can do."

"That's part of what we're doing here, is we're going to test the different methods."

Homegrown State House Rep. and Speaker Pro Tempore Gus Blackwell praised the area's ag industry saying, "The agricultural producers in Oklahoma's Panhandle have a rich heritage of ingenuity and excellence in farming and ranching. Their experience will certainly provide great assistance to this project."

Research and discussion on the possibility of using switchgrass as an alternative fuel began during the Gulf War, and was later put to rest. However, recent issues with the cost of oil and a growing desire to be more independent as a country reignited the experiments on switchgrass and a large conference was held a year ago in Oklahoma City to heighten awareness.

The Noble Foundation later secured the Panhandle acreage in April of this year.

"We have an agreement with Hitch Enterprises which is one of the state's – if not the regions – most renowned family for agriculture for almost 120 years, so we're real proud to have their expertise and their knowledge of the land here," Calaway said. "It's a pioneering family, a pioneering venture with the Oklahoma Bioenergy Center and it's going to provide a lot of good information for not only our state but for the country and more."

This article appeared in the Guymon Daily Herald, www.guymondailyherald.com, on June 11, 2008.