Sugar beets will be your main feed stock if you have sandy soil and grow root crops well. Sandy loam soil is best and though sugar beets need little fertilizing other than the every-other-year working in of well composted manure, top dressing the land does well too.

Planting & weeding can be done with conventional store-bought equipment. Harvesting on the other hand may need something heavy duty (man-size!) to pull a 20 LB beet from the ground without damage. The size of the tractor pulling that modified potato plow should be oversized. Collecting the beet after it is dug up is a system worked out by Michigan Farmers and involves special conveyor systems to lift them to a truck. Note that this equipment was common before the mid-80s when sugar beets were a more common crop.

The sugar beets then get cleaned (or the batch can go sour). They can then be stored after drying in piles with hay mounded on top to keep them from freezing.

The next step to use them is to mash them and if you don't have equipment that can mash a 20LB beet - then add the steps of cutting, running through a shredder and then mashing.

That's it - the sugar beet is ready to ferment. The only variation we've injected here is that after shredding - they can be dried to store for later use. Do this for long term storage.

Cattail production equipment:

Planting involves taking plants from 1 place and putting them where you want them and letting them spread. It can take years for them to fully take over an area but once they have - you're set. Here's the complete guide USDA pdf for planting cattails.

To harvest, well, hope you do it on a warm sunny day because you are going to get wet. Here's a link about collecting cattails to eat. On a larger scale, you will need a boat-like sled. Jet sleds work well. Next you need to make a saw-cutting greens harvester saw-cutting greens harvester but go for rougher blades since cattails are very tough (verses salad greens). I envision one day a tool like this mounted in front of the sled dropping the cattails into the sled. A motor on the unit would be nice! . . . I think I just added to the "project list".

Cattails need to be shredded before making into a mash but generally don't need cleaning or additional processing.

Jerusalem Artichokes use standard farm equipment - basically the same for potatoes, carrots and other familiar equipment. Wash and shred to get ready to mash. These are small enough to go through a chipper/shredder.