Maybe I’m clutching at straws here, but I’ve got a hunch that
humble hay might one day help the world solve its environmental and
energy problems. And the South Valley region
– particularly San Benito County – is in a great position to
benefit economically from what might one day soon be an important
cash crop.
Maybe I’m clutching at straws here, but I’ve got a hunch that humble hay might one day help the world solve its environmental and energy problems. And the South Valley region – particularly San Benito County – is in a great position to benefit economically from what might one day soon be an important cash crop.
Several years ago in a column about biofuels, I wrote about how Hollister became known as the “Hay Making Capitol of the World.” Back more than a century ago, the fields of San Benito County during the summer months were busy with farmers bailing hay. Hollister hay was considered the best in California and agricultural experts praised the regions dry climate and excellent soil conditions for creating its high quality.
In the 19th century between June and September, lines of wagons laden with hay rolled to the Southern Pacific station in downtown Hollister. Here the bales were unloaded onto railcars that would carry them to customers who used the hay to feed horses and other animals. Students of San Benito High School are known as the “Haybalers” because of this local hay history.
In the early decades of the 20th century, hay’s heyday came to an end. As Americans started using the combustion engines in horseless carriages instead of hay-fueled animal muscle to power their transportation, hay in Hollister began to wane as a commercial agricultural crop.
In the coming decades of the 21st century, however, hay might have a resurgence in popularity. There are two trends now emerging that might make this possible. One is hay’s potential use as a biofuel energy resource. The other is hay’s growing use as a construction material for energy efficient homes.
A recent 10-year study at the University of Minnesota demonstrated that prairie grasses – essentially hay – serves as a better source of biofuel than soybean biodiesel and corn ethanol. Scientists found that native perennial prairie grasses provide more usable energy per acre than soybeans or corn.
Grasses are also better for the environment because they draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and capture it in their roots, thus helping to alleviate global warming now changing the world’s climate. Prairie grass can be grown on infertile soils, thus leaving fertile soil for food crops.
One scientist estimated that prairie grass grown on all of the planet’s degraded land could yield enough bioenergy to supplant 19 percent of the world’s electricity consumption and 13 percent of the world’s petroleum consumption. Perhaps with enough incentives, farmers across the United States – including here in the South Valley region – will find themselves growing hay to power the nation.
Hay used as a house construction material might provide another lucrative market for this agricultural resource. Now forget what you learned about hay and homes from your childhood. The story of the Three Little Pigs facing the Big Bad Wolf unfairly casts hay in a bad light.
In experiments in developing “green” building materials, hay is now being increasingly used as an insulation material for energy efficient homes. Some experts say that the “R-value” (how resistant a material is to heat transfer) of straw is at least R-26 and can be as high as R-50. That means that homes using bales of hay as insulation stay warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer. They are quieter, too.
Hay is a renewable energy resource, is natural and non-toxic, and it doesn’t need much processing to turn it into a building material, thus saving energy in manufacturing it. It can also help save our forests. By replacing the “stick frame” walls with straw bales, a home developer can cut by more than 50 percent the quantity of lumber needed to construct a house.
The big concern people may have about hay houses is a fear that these dwellings are a greater fire hazard than standard houses. The truth is that hay is actually quite safe as a construction material. Lab tests show that foam insulation materials are actually more flammable and can ignite at low temperatures. These toxic materials also release poisonous fumes when they burn. On the other hand, straw bales that are compressed and sealed with plaster resist fires because they do not easily receive the oxygen required for combustion. Compressed straw bales simply smolder if they catch on fire, thus giving home inhabitants more time to escape if there is a house fire.
As the world increasingly needs to manage the challenges of climate change and also the depletion of its fossil fuels, the South Valley might find itself growing more and more hay to be used as an energy source as well as a building construction material. Maybe sometime in the coming decades, Hollister might find it’s once again the “Hay Making Capitol of the World.”
