Burrton ? Rising natural gas prices and a farm economy that needs a boost have Larry Matlack and Kansas farmers turning to an innovative idea they hope will add value to their own operations. Farmers’ leftover wheat straw, milo stalks and other biomass products could soon be sold to produce steam energy.

“The bottom line today is where our energy prices are going to be,” said Matlack, a Burrton area farmer. “There is no doubt that biomass of ag products can play a big part of the energy needs and could help the economy.”

It is an idea talked about widely — adding value to farm production and finding niche markets during an era of slumping commodity prices and the disappearing family farm.

Matlack attended several conferences on value-added agriculture, including one on turning crop residue to energy.

The idea sparked Matlack and 10 other investors to form Agriculture Industrial Renewable Energy. The group is working to get its first project off the ground — a renewable energy plant that would provide steam energy to a South Hutchinson company by summer 2004, said Gene Pflughoft, the group’s spokesman.

AIRE is working with Earth Care Products to design and equip its energy plants, Pflughoft said.

Reno County’s plant would use crop residues, animal waste, grass clippings and tree trimmings. Residues are burned, or gasified, to produce steam. Steam is piped from a boiler to industrial plants about a half-mile away.

The $8 million project would use more than 180,000 bales a year, and Pflughoft projected the biomass purchased would give farmers between $2 million to $4 million in returns.

“Farmers are looking for added value for their crops and land,” Pflughoft said. “It could put millions of dollars back into the community and money right back to the farmers.”

Other plants are being researched, he said. A possible central Kansas project would use 25,000 tons of biomass.

“What we have found is a large market for steam,” Pflughoft said. “There are a lot of manufacturing companies in Kansas and the states that still use steam. And natural gas prices are rising. Companies are looking for something to give them a fixed cost for energy. … There is a lot of potential for that.”