John Williamson holds a flax seed flower on his 200-acre organic farm July 25, 2012 in North Bennington, Vermont. Grants from the US Department of Energy and the University of Vermont helped Williamson to purchase and construct the processing unit, most of which came from equipment used in milk production. Williamson's third-generation family run farm sold off their dairy cattle and now run the farm as a pilot project for oil seeds to produce biodiesel in a sustainable manner. Williamson has over 40-acres of his fields planted with sunflowers.
John Williamson checks the readiness for harvest August 7, 2012 of a flaxseed crop on his 200-acre organic farm in North Bennington, Vermont. Williamson's third-generation family run farm sold off their dairy cattle and now run the farm as a pilot project for oil seeds to produce biodiesel in a sustainable manner. Williamson has over 40-acres of his fields planted with sunflowers. He also experiments with sorghum, flaxseed, canola, mustard and saffron. He grows conventional crops like oats on a rotational basis for sale as animal feed. Williamson's project has received grants for machinery for distilling biodiesel from the University of Vermont which he offers to farmers and to those farms which have contributed seeds to his seed oil crusher. The by-product of the oil seed process also has value as animal feed stock. Williamson's farm is prioritizing not only total yield of the oil seed crops but the inputs necessary to grow, harvest and process the crops in a sustainable
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Photo credit: © Robert Nickelsberg / Alamy / Afripics
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Keywords: acreage, agriculture, bio, crops, environment, farm, farming, flaxseed, fuel, grain, growing, harvest, hay, nature, oats, oil, organic, pesticides, rotation, season, seed, vermont, yield
