Awake at the Wheel

 From High Plains Journal...

Luke Jaeger was fed up with high fuel prices.

Jaeger and his wife Darcy farm with his family in the Clark County area, raising a variety of row crops, including wheat and sorghum. When Jaeger found just how little of their acreage could be devoted to an oil crop production and still meet his farm’s energy needs, he knew that it was time for action.

“Dryland farmers, in western Kansas, if they would just put 1 to 2 percent of their farm acres to winter canola or sunflowers, they would have enough acreage to get diesel fuel to run their farm for the whole year,” Jaeger said. He planted 60 acres of winter canola because it holds moisture in the soil, similar to sorghum, and because it can protect soil from erosion at even the early stages in its growth cycle. Also, canola seeds have higher oil content, about 40 percent, than other oil crops like sunflowers or soybeans, Jaeger said.