My name is Frank Hardimon.  I’m Director of Sales for Series Incorporated.  That is the bio-energy crop company from Thousand Oaks, California.  We market seed for dedicated energy crops across the US.  Specifically, we enjoy working here in Georgia.  We got several growers that we’ve been working with on our products.

Going to touch base, briefly, on our skyscraper variety of high biomass sorghums.  These varieties get extremely tall.  They are 16 feet tall.  They are able to produce 15 to 16 dry tons of biomass per acre.  They’re quite productive.  So farmers that are interested in growing in the alternative crop that has tremendous potential for yield and this is an annual crop, and like our switch grass which is perennial, this crop you’re not looked in to long term rotation.  You could plant it in the spring, harvest it in the fall, deliver biomass to a qualified facility right away.

Talk specifically about one grower that I worked with here in Georgia that he was from the Statesboro area.  He was looking for an alternative crop that would match his sandy soil conditions.  Has tried various crops over the years.  He’s got pine trees planted on a portion of that farm.  He was looking for something that he could put in between those rows of pines and really help define his farm and find new markets for a potential new crop.  Worked with him on our switch grass variety, EG1101.  He planted that up there.  On the sandy conditions, we learned a few things about how to prepare the soil there correctly.  You have to pack that sandy soil to really get good seed to soil contact on switch grass varieties, in which we were able to establish a very good first crop of switch grass for first year establishment.  We were quite pleased and so was he.