Biofuels Feedstock Development Program

The Biofuels Feedstock Development Program (BFDP) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is developing a county-level database on energy crops. This database, which encompasses all U.S. counties, will provide both the public and state and local agencies easy access to energy crop information specific to their state or county. The database will also be useful for assessing geographic variation in the potential for energy crop development.

The county-level database will be a compilation of current information on land availability and rents and energy crop yields and production costs. It will also include probable farmgate prices for energy crops as calculated from information within the database. The database, which will initially include data on switchgrass, hybrid poplar, and willow, will be searchable by either state and county name or the five digit Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) numeric code for the state and county. It will be available as an EXCEL © spreadsheet that can be downloaded from the Internet BFDP web site by the end of 1996. A WordPerfect © file and an ASCII text file documenting the database will also be available at the same internet site.