The Kentucky State University Energy Farm project is just beginning its first field season. We grew vegetables through the winter in our solar-heated high tunnel; now we are beginning to move outdoors, where a thick winter cover crop of rye and hairy vetch has been building soil organic matter and nitrogen levels. Temperatures still sometimes dip below freezing at night (we had frost on Tuesday!), but the first of our cool-season vegetables -- like peas, lettuce, and kale -- have been braving the temperature swings outside for the past month.

Our project will incorporate both food and energy crops: The energy crops -- sweet sorghum, sweet potato, corn, and soybean -- are all warm-season crops that will be planted in late May. Each of these crops is high in carbohydrates, making them either high-calorie food for humans or a source of sugars, starches, or oils that could be used for biofuel production.

We will grow our energy crops at three different scales. The smallest scale will be a biointensive system, in which only hand tools are used. Our medium scale will be a market garden system, using a combination of hand tools and a walk-behind tractor with attachments. The largest scale system will be tractor-based. We will measure the land, labor and energy use efficiency of production at each of these scales.

Plots representing "Biointensive," "Market Garden" and "Small Farm" scales are replicated four times. Each plot will grow the same mix of multi-use crops. The smallest ("Biointensive") plots will be managed with hand tools; the largest ("Small Farm") will be managed with conventional tractors and attachments. (Image prepared by Tony Silvernail).

The data collected from this experiment will allow us to analyze effects of farm scale on resource use efficiency, and to answer questions about farmer motivation to dedicate multi-use crops to food or fuel production under a range of possible future scenarios for land, labor and energy pricing.