Growing biofuels on idle land in Salt Lake City

City farming initiative at work providing biofuel for local governments

By John Daley
KLS news
March 15th, 2010

SALT LAKE CITY — An innovative collaboration in sustainability is gaining steam in Utah. The goal is to grow, on what was unused city land, a plant that can be used to make a biofuel, which in turn will be used in government fleets.

Near Salt Lake International Airport, KSL News watched Jason Heward steer a John Deere tractor around 20 acres of land that had been idle for years. The project site is located at approximately 500 South and 4500 West.

Heward is the church farm manager of the Urda Church Farm near Tooele. He was readying the land for seeds of safflower, which can be crushed to make oil — a biofuel.

“This would be an excellent use. There’s nothing else they can use it for except grazing, or something like that, for cattle. I think this puts it to better use to help our economy,” Heward said.

The project is a unique collaboration. Salt Lake County started the Urban Farming Initiative.

“Our Urban Farming Initiative is going to be valley-wide, and we’re going to be looking at idle land that local governments own that can be put to some type of beneficial use,” Salt Lake County Councilman Jim Bradley said.

“The pioneers were self-sustaining when they came here, and it’s our goal to create a more self-sustaining community,” Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon said.

Salt Lake City owns the land, which is the home of a future sewage treatment plant.

“This is the kind of thing, from my perspective, needs to be just an integral part of what we do in Salt Lake City going forward, to move to a sustainable community,” said Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is supplying farm equipment and labor. South Davis Sewer District is donating the bio-solids generated from wastewater treatment. Researchers come from Utah State University.

“This is a new agronomic frontier,” says USU researcher Dallas Hanks. “We don’t know how to farm these kinds of lands. We know how to do traditional farming on traditional lands, but when it comes to city farming, it’s a whole new ballgame.”

The hope is the crop thrives and helps fuel city and county vehicles. If all goes well, there’s another 3,000 to 5,000 acres of government-owned land in the valley — the new frontier for urban farming.

Project managers say this is a very inexpensive project. It’s dry-land agriculture, and safflower is a very drought-tolerant plant that doesn’t need much water or maintenance. Besides some staff time, the cost is about $5,000.

Watch video and read the story here.