A machine compresses biomass and creates cattle feed, which is then sold to ranchers. Instead of spending $80 a ton to dispose of the clippings, The Club at 3 Creek in Jackson Hole, Wyo. is earning $65 a ton through sales. And Dan Tolson, the club’s Golf Course Superintendent, can see the value of what he’s now selling increasing significantly as the process “catches on.”

A Jackson Hole, Wyo. club is using a machine to turn grass clippings from its golf course into nutritious silage for an Idaho rancher’s cattle, the Jackson Hole News & Guide reported. The BioPac’r, as the machine is called, is the brainchild of Todd Graus of Yellowstone Compact and Commodities Corp. in Jackson. “We are taking a waste stream and monetizing it,” Graus said.

Dan Tolson, Golf Course Superintendent at The Club at 3 Creek in Jackson Hole, was an early customer, the News & Guide reported. Tolson remembers hearing Graus talk about the BioPac’r when it was still just a concept.

“I just thought it was brilliant, and I wanted to be part of it from the get-go,” Tolson said. The BioPac’r, he explained, “helps the environment and gives landscapers and golf courses another revenue stream.”

The Club at 3 Creek sells silage to the Crowfoot J Ranch in Victor, Wyo., according to the News & Guide’s report. Rancher Jesse Dewey said the feed is good for the cattle and good for his budget.

“It allowed us to have a cheaper way to put together rations for the cows, but still give them the nutrients,” Dewey said.

The Club at 3 Creek sold 16 tons of BioPac’r-made silage to the Crowfoot J in 2018, Tolson said, and he hopes to increase that to 25 tons in 2019.

The club continues to learn about what material can be used, the News & Guide reported. Last fall it found that some of the stems, organic matter and brown material that are churned up though vertical mowing can be turned into nutritious feed.

“As we get better at it, we can save more to be made into silage,” Tolson said.

Three Creek has been using material from greens, tees and approaches, Tolson added, and if it started harvesting from fairways, too, it could quadruple the amount of silage it produces, he believes.

The club has been selling its silage for $65 a ton, the News & Guide reported. “We were spending double that to haul it off,” Tolson said. “It’s a pretty big swing in the budget.”

And Tolson can see the price for BioPac’r silage increasing. “A ton of grass hay sells for about $150 a ton,” he said. “This tests out better for nutrients. If it catches on, I can see it being worth $150 to $200 a ton.”

The club’s other option for its clippings, the News & Guide reported, is to transport them to the local trash transfer station, so they can be composted and sold back to the community as mulch.

The fee for that is $80 a ton, according to the Teton County Integrated Solid Waste and Recycling Center’s webpage. But the cost to 3 Creek is higher, Tolson told the News & Guide, because there’s also time, manpower, fuel, and wear and tear on the truck to consider. “It’s just not a good way to do it,” he said.

Aside from costs, there’s an environmental benefit to the BioPac’r process, the News & Guide reported. Instead of using water and energy to grow hay, ranchers and farmers can buy a product made from things that are being harvested all the time.

“It’s a much more abundant commodity that requires a lot less environmental input to produce,” Tolson said. “That’s why I was so attracted to it early on.”

The BioPac’r is a self-contained machine that slides into the back of a pickup truck or can be mounted on a trailer, the News & Guide reported. It squishes biomass so tightly that it can hold five football fields’ worth of clippings, Graus said. The material is compressed into 1-ton cubes that measure 4 by 4 by 5 feet.

The machine compresses biomass and encases it in special plastic bags, the News & Guide reported, where it ferments into a product that has a shelf life, Graus says, of at least eight years. He calls the process “ensiling.”

“Ensiling happens in the absence of air,” he said. “It’s anaerobic. The machine compresses and packages the biomass. Its job is to eliminate oxygen and regulate how much water is in the biomass.”

Fertilizers and pesticides in the grass are broken down and degraded in the first eight hours that clippings are sealed in the bag, he told the News & Guide.

“Bacteria convert the juice of the grass plant into lactic acid,” he said. “Now it’s like pickling cucumbers. It ferments and pickles what’s there. And that’s the process that kills the pesticides that are residual in grass clippings.”

The Club at 3 Creek and the Crowfoot J Ranch found each other through Graus, the News & Guide reported. Beyond selling the machines (at $13,000 to $16,000 each, depending on options), Graus acts as a broker between producers and buyers of BioPac’r silage.

It’s important to have Graus serve as the matchmaker, Tolson said, because golf courses, landscapers and other potential BioPac’r users aren’t necessarily hooked into the farmer-rancher network.

“[Graus] negotiated the pricing [and] the contract,” Tolson said. “He’s been involved with fine-tuning how it works [and] what we need to do to make it suitable for the rancher.”

Soon more golf courses, ranchers and other businesses may be trying out the BioPac’r as producers or buyers of silage, the News & Guide reported. The business isn’t brand new, but it is newly poised for growth, thanks to a $50,000 grant the Wyoming Business Council awarded this spring to Yellowstone Compact and Commodities Corp.

The cash from the Kickstart: Wyoming program covers the cost for Schlegel Manufacturing in Torrington, Wyo. to retool so it can build BioPac’rs, according to the News & Guide’s report. Switching from the previous manufacturer in Nebraska to the Torrington shop also means Graus can turn out the machines faster and more cost-effectively.

“We’re moving from a manufacturing model of creating an inventory to [having] perpetual inventory,” Graus said. “We’re building [the machines] as people are placing orders, and in half the time as previously.”

Graus said he built and tested seven prototypes before the first production run of about a dozen BioPac’rs in 2015. He anticipates building 25 this year and ramping up next year, the News & Guide reported.

“By the end of 2020, we will have 175 machines in circulation,” he said.

Graus knows his stuff because he’s a forest pathologist by training, the News & Guide reported. And in addition to running his landscape company, he is a natural resource consultant in litigation cases involving water and tree issues. Legal firms hire him to be their expert witness.