The first step in determining your feed stock(s) is to know about how much you are looking for producing. The feedstock options for northern climates are - sugar beets, cattails and Jerusalam Artichokes and each plant can produce up to 1,000 gallons of alcohol per acre where corn typically produces 300. The average farm can easily see 600 gallons pr acre and that is about what you need to calculate for production.

That said, you can do more intense production on some crops depending on your resources of land and money. Some crops listed below take more work than others in yearly planting and fertilizing. And, cattails are a wetland crop so an entire different set of equipment needs arise. Yet, cattails don't need re-planting, fertilizing but can be a pain to harvest. No doubt - farmers in Central Minnesota should form a co-op for equipment to manage what was once marginal swamp land.

There are 2 kinds of sugar beets - Red Mammoth and White. After growing both I can say - the white is sweeter tasting and will also work better for us if we wanted to make sugar. The impressive size of the Mammoth may appeal to some, but I have not been impressed with the taste. Things to consider when choosing either Red or white beets is how you are going to get them out of the ground when you are ready to make mash. A potato plow will not dig up a 20 inch beet without some damage. Shredders won't take a large beet and you will have to shred them before you process them into mash or decide to dry them to for later use. If the set up can be done - sugar beets are one of the highest yeilding plants for alcohol for fuel so we do them on a small scale with some expectations our production system will get the bugs worked out.

Blog about sugar beet ethanol production. Though we do not use propane to heat our system, you get the idea of how much you can produce and the process of chopping them for the mash, fermenting and distilling.

Cattails are our second feed stock crop. Since we have wet lands, they can grow un-attended and once planted - are harvestable indefinately. The planting (if you need to) is not easy since we're talking about a wet land plant. But once in - they spread systematically and feed wildlife in the process.

Jerusalem Artichiokes is a plant that grows wild around the U.S. and Canada. It has the benefit of being small enough to eliminate the cut-before-shredding process, will work with potato plows, stores well and has food qualities for special diets.