Miscanthus will see a giant leap in acreage in 2011, thanks to Soperton, Ga.-based Repreve Renewables LLC. The company currently has 500 acres planted in five locations in the Southeast, which Craig Patterson, manager of commercial operations, says is equal to the total of all other miscanthus plots being grown now in the U.S. and Canada.

In 2011, Repreve has committed to getting 10,000 acres in the ground. Repreve is hoping to attract growers at a field day planned for Jan. 13, at the main farm in Soperton. If there aren't enough farmers that commit, Patterson adds, "we'll plant it ourselves. There will be 10,000 acres in 2011."

The Freedom Field Day agenda includes field tours, presentations and exhibits by Mississippi State University, the University of Georgia and Appalachian State University, an explanation of the Biomass Crop Assistance Program and demonstrations of rhizome harvesting and planting as well as cutting and bailing of mature miscanthus.

The push to commercialize miscanthus got a boost in 2010 when Phillip Jennings, a turn grass grower and founder of Sunbelt Biofuels, attracted new investors and folded his company into Repreve Renewables. The word "repreve" is a service mark of Unifi Inc. being used under license. Unifi is a Greensboro, N.C.,-based global textile company, which announced the creation of the joint venture with Sunbelt Biofuels under the new name in mid-2010. A third, unidentified investor, brought the capitalization up to $10 million, according to Patterson.

Repreve is licensing the trademarked Freedom variety of miscanthus from Mississippi State University, which developed the variety and continues to work on crop development. Patterson says one-year-old stands in the Southeast are expected to yield between 4 and 6 tons per acre, two-year-old stands about 10 tons per acre and after four years, 25 tons per acre. "That's harvested with 10 to 15 percent moisture," Patterson adds. "Yields will range between 20 to 22 bone dry tons per acre."

Patterson believes Freedom miscanthus will be a good fit in the Southeast, where growing conditions and underutilized farm land will favor the long-lived perennial biomass crop. "All those that grew tobacco need something else," he points out. The high-yielding miscanthus will compete well with sub-par corn and sub-par soybeans, provide a crop for land that has become overgrown, and even yield as well or better than timber. Planting equipment used for tobacco has been modified for planting miscanthus rhizomes, although Patterson adds the new investments will allow for the engineering of larger, more efficient equipment.

Repreve expects the immediate market for using the biomass resource will be for power, by both large and small scale combined heat and power units as well as being co-fired with coal. "Another market down the road is biobased chemicals, plastics and wood fillers, which is a huge market," Patterson says. "We feel biofuels is a better use for cellulosic biomass than power," he adds.

The company is working out a supply agreement with Range Fuels Soperton Plant, an 11 MMgy cellulosic ethanol plant down the road a piece from Repreve's main farm. Certainly, for an emerging biomass crop that had, at most, 1,000 acres in research plots across the U.S. and Canada in 2010, the leap to 10,000 acres in 2011 is huge. "We are capitalized now, so we can plant the acres, invent our equipment," Patterson says. "Before this, nobody had committed the money to get this crop commercialized."