Offer HN: Free Use of Agricultural Land 30 miles Northwest of Chicago
I've always had the idea of growing sugarbeet on a conveyor belt. It would take 100-120 days to get from one end to another. You plant a seed with dirt at the start and a sugarbeet rolls off the end after the grow time. You filter out the sugarbeet from the dirt when it falls off (sieve).<p>The conveyor would be fully solar powered and it's power requirements would not be very much due to the slow progression.<p>Once you have the sugarbeet, you turn it in to ethanol, hopefully with another automated process.<p>Economics of sugarbeet to ethanol: <a href="http://www.isosugar.org/Egypt/GL2.2.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.isosugar.org/Egypt/GL2.2.pdf</a>