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Mid-South has 'bioeconomy' potential
By Toby Sells
August 27, 2009
A shift to a "bioeconomy" could bring 25,000 jobs in 10 years and $8 billion annually to the Mid-South, according to a new study commissioned by the Memphis Bioworks Foundation.
The study was conducted by Battelle Technology Partnership Practice, the same group that concluded in 2003 that Memphis could be a biomedical hub.
The economic development group now claims that Memphis and the 98-county region around it have the potential to be a leader in producing bio-based products, which are crop-based chemicals, fuels and natural alternatives to petroleum-based plastics.
The Battelle study is a snapshot of the current agricultural, transportation and industrial assets of the region that hugs both banks of the Mississippi River in Tennessee, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri and Kentucky. The assets include 36 million acres of crop production space and a diversity of crops from corn and cotton to rice and hardwood trees.
Also, the rich farmland of the Mississippi Delta gives the region a strategic advantage in a burgeoning bioeconomy, said Bioworks president Steve Bares.
"You just can't grow biomass in Arizona," Bares said. "You have to go to place where it's a natural asset and we do."
The study also concludes the region has the industrial, chemical and logistics infrastructure needed to convert crops to products and get them to the marketplace.
Carolyn Hardy, president and CEO of Memphis-based Hardy Bottling Co., said her beverage manufacturing plant has several hundred fermentation tanks that could be used in the process to produce biofuels.
"We have a very expensive asset that's not being utilized for its intended purpose," Hardy said.
The study claims the region could produce 4.7 billion gallons of ethanol per year from crops such as switchgrass. Ethanol sold for $1.65 per gallon in July, which would make ethanol production in the region alone worth $7.75 billion.
Thomas F. "Bud" Hughes, a partner in Verdant Partners LLC and chairman of Agricenter International, said agriculture is now in a state of flux as crop choices are impacted by new technology and the ongoing energy debate, which is affectedd by people's changing views on the environment. A bioeconomy would give farmers and those in industry a new alternative.
"There are a lot of unanswered questions about the bioeconomy plan, but there is a lot of potential and promise," Hughes said. "But a lot of it is in the formative stages."
The Commercial Appeal
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