Farmers usually look to the sky for sun or rain, but soon they could have another reason to look up.
Growers at a workshop in Regina last week heard that camelina has a promising future in biofuel for jets.
“Biojet is an astonishingly large market,” said Jim Thomson, president of Canadian Industrial Oilseed Corp. “It requires an equally astonishingly large supply.”
Last year, Bozeman, Montana-based Sustainable Oils contracted 5,000 acres of production in Montana, the Dakotas and Saskatchewan.
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Research manager Jack Kiser said the company last month contracted 378,000 litres of camelina oil to the United States Air force.
In September, it agreed to supply 151,000 litres to the Navy for its aviation program.
Both contracts include options for significant additional supply.
Thomson said airlines want to decrease their carbon footprint and while other sources of biofuels, such as algae and jatropha, are also being tested, camelina is available now.
Great Plains, the Camelina Company, which has significant Canadian production under contract, sold more than 946,000 litres of camelina oil to biodiesel production facilities last year plus 90,000 litres for jet fuel.
Chief operating officer Dave King said the company has ambitious plans, targeting 1.5 million acres of production by 2013.
Camelina can grow on marginal land or be used in a rotation maintaining good land for growing food.
