Marginal lands – those unsuited for food crops – can serve
as prime real estate for meeting the nation’s alternative energy production
goals.
In the current issue of Nature, a team of researchers led by
Michigan State University shows that marginal lands represent a huge untapped
resource to grow mixed species cellulosic biomass, plants grown specifically
for fuel production, which could annually produce up to 5.5 billion gallons of
ethanol in the Midwest alone.