A meeting to discuss the results of a pilot study – conducted by Iowa State University Extension – was held Tuesday, Feb. 19 at the Greene county Extension building in Jefferson. The study examined the potential impact of the bioeconomy on Iowa’s landscape and the results are decidedly positive.
Monica Haddad, the lead researcher presented the findings. She was one of three ISU researchers and three graduate students who developed the study that used geographic information systems (GIS) technology to assess feedstocks potential and conduct a transportation infrastructure spatial analysis and a web-based survey.
The study, which was sponsored by Greene County Development Corporation, the Iowa Energy Center, and the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture, found that more than 72 percent of the 203 Greene county residents who responded to a web-based survey support increasing the number of biofuel manufacturing facilities in their area.
“The respondents were very excited about the future of the bioeconomy,” said Haddad, assistant professor of community and regional planning at Iowa State University, “despite the fact that the study confirmed the residents’ suspicious that they were essentially already at the saturation point with four operating ethanol plants, two operating biodiesel plants and four ethanol plants under construction in Greene county or surrounding counties.”
Haddad, who collaborated with ISU professor of landscape architecture and agronomy Paul Anderson and Greene county Extension education director Craig Hertel, said that in addition to welcoming new plants Greene county residents would also welcome more livestock. Statistics from the survey with regard to livestock expansion, crop selection, and water quality were presented at the meeting.
Haddad said that the idea of the study came from ISU Extension industrial (biobased products) specialist Jill Euken, who is also the deputy director of the Bioeconomy Institute. Euken contacted the researchers after speaking with some Greene county residents in January of 2007 regarding the potential positive and negative impacts of the bioeconomy on their county.
According to Haddad, “We were interested in learning more about ways to minimize the negative impacts in the territory, while maximizing the positive impacts.”
The meeting was sponsored by ISU Extension Greene county and Greene County Farm Bureau.
