There's a new partnership that involves the Ontario Federation of Agriculture and it's to examine a cornstalk supply chain.
The OFA and La Coop federee are looking at cornstalk supply chain to support new bioprocessing projects in Eastern Canada.
The groups are aming to have the joint initiative done by early 2018. It will involve the assessment and validation of several supply chain configurations and the development of the required management tools for efficiency.
“We now have the most updated information on supplying cornstalks for commercial purposes” says Don McCabe, OFA President. “The supply chain is no longer a bottleneck.”
“This report provides the first set of Ontario generated data on the cost of harvesting cornstalks using the most advanced equipment currently available on the market” says Patrick Girouard, Director, Renewable Energy & Bioproducts at La Coop fédérée. We now have the benchmarks that we needed in order to initiate work on the optimization of a cornstalk supply chain in Eastern Canada. We will also now concentrate on developing the management tools around the harvest for efficient delivery.”
A cost assessment study was released Wednesday and provides information on field harvesting costs, storage, transportation and potential economics for a hypothetical biorefinery.
The report is available through the OFA website at www.ofa.on.ca/issues/biomass/cost assessment.
This project is funded in part through Growing Forward 2, AgriInnovation Program, delivered through Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada.
