Harvesting watermelons is never quick or easy. Workers move through, cutting vines and filling trucks with ripe melons. Some melons aren't ripe enough yet, so the workers come back later to get those. Still more melons might need to be cut even later. After awhile, it's no longer cost-effective.

"Historically, our industry will abandon 20-25 percent of the crop that they grow every year," said Bob Morrissey, executive director of the National Watermelon Association. "After they go through the field three to five times and pick the ripe watermelons that are ready, they'll have a bunch of melons left, but they'll be spread all over in every direction. It's not economically feasible to send any labor in there to walk 10 yards in this direction and get a watermelon, walk 15 yards in that direction for another two or three - then drag the truck up the dirt road and get a few more," said Morrissey.

The watermelon industry has been forced by economics to abandon 20-25 percent of the crop each year.

Besides those left in the field, watermelons that aren't visually perfect are rejected. That adds up to a lot of melons that never make it to the Fourth of July picnic.

Several months ago, Morrissey was discussing new marketing possibilities with a watermelon researcher, when an idea hit them like a ton of bricks. Why not create a new revenue stream for those 800 million pounds of watermelons abandoned every year? Why not turn the melons into fuel?

Morrissey met with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns and five of his department heads to gather advice. "I told them that we have all this fruit that's loaded with natural sugar and there's really not much opportunity to process it into juice. What if we could show you that it's economically feasible to go out into the fields with a small crew and some sort of vehicle to harvest all the leftover melons, and create a new market that will deliver a little more profit to the growers than what they get from those melons now - which is zero?"

Watermelons are about 10-14 percent sugar, which is used in making alcohol. You could make watermelon wine or you turn that sugar into ethanol. Morrissey sees a bright future. "If it works for watermelons, peaches might be next - even potatoes - in fact, all kinds of fruits and vegetables that are grown throughout the U.S. that have either a high sugar or starch content. It could go into ethanol, biodiesel, whatever, and it'll help out country's energy needs as well as creating revenue streams for growers across multiple fruit and vegetable varieties," he said.

GEORGIA CONFERENCE SPURS IDEAS

More waste - watermelons that are not visually perfect are discarded because they're not marketable.

Morrissey attended the Georgia Bioenergy Conference at the beginning of August. He came away with some good ideas, although presenters mainly focused on other crops like pine trees and catfish, and emphasized the business aspect of investing in distribution and the building of plants. He did say, though, that by partnering with Georgia plants, the watermelon industry could conduct tests to determine how much ethanol could be produced from an average acre of watermelons. "At the Georgia conference, they told us switchgrass can produce X number of gallons of bioenergy fuel, peanuts could produce X amount, corn, etc. We need to investigate what melons can do so we have the data to present its potential in a knowledgeable way," said Morrissey.

Morrissey isn't the only one excited about Florida crops being turned into fuel. Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson is all for it. In early September, he was appointed to the Steering Committee of 25x'25, a bipartisan national organization committed to seeing that the nation's agriculture industry produces 25 percent of the country's energy needs by the year 2025.

Florida Agriculture Commissioner Charles Bronson hosted the Florida Farm to Fuel Summit, where representives of the agriculture and biofuels industries, as well as university researchers, presented the case for Florida to become more involved in ethanol and biodiesel production.

"Florida's 44,000 farms produce 280 different crops from strawberries to oranges, and it's getting tougher for them to survive," Bronson told reporters in August. "The threats to farming's future include everything from invasive species and pests that enter at the borders to the federal estate tax and land availability," he said.

FARM TO FUEL SUMMIT BRINGS BIOFUEL INDUSTRY TO FLORIDA

Bronson's department hosted the "Farm to Fuel Summit" in early September, in which representatives of the biodiesel and ethanol industries explained the nuts and bolts of producing alternative fuels, academics from the University of Florida talked about the economic and policy issues of bioenergy including federal regulations and incentives, and representatives from USDA and the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services outlined the hurdles and opportunities of financing and incentives.

Attendees represented a broad spectrum of interests including farmers; state lawmakers; EPA; representatives of the fuel refining, ethanol and biodiesel industries, county economic development leaders and others.

FFVA's Director of Marketing Danny Raulerson attended the Farm to Fuel Summit and came away with the feeling that producers were enthusiastic about the possibilities of alternative fuels. "There was definitely a lot of interest," he said. "The meeting was particularly interesting because it brought a lot of industries together that aren't used to sitting in the same room."

Raulerson pointed out, however, that growing crops to be used for biofuel would have to be profitable and there's a difference between using waste crops versus growing something to be used strictly for energy purposes. "It's great to think that Florida can be a player, but in the Midwest, where the major suppliers are, they use waste crops," he said, adding that cover crops like sorghum or grain corn might represent another opportunity.

At any rate, the interest in pursuing biofuel as an opportunity for Florida agricultural producers is growing. One of the most enthusiastic players is definitely Morrissey. "With all the varieties of fruits and vegetables we grow in Florida, we should be able to convert each and every one of them into ethanol or biodiesel somehow, some way," he said. "It's just a matter of doing that initial research and finding out how many gallons per acre that each crop can produce." The next step, Morrissey says, would be to develop test further to determine if various combinations of products work better than others.

GM representatives display an example of a "FlexFuel vehicle" that can run on either E85 ethanol or gasoline. E85 is a fuel that blends ethanol (85%) with gasoline (15%).

Most importantly, Morrissey points out, is that even if watermelons can only provide a small fraction of the biofuel that's eventually produced in this country, growers would still have a new market for their products that now, simply rot in the field. "Every little bit helps. And if watermelon can be a catalyst, maybe we could help the peach growers, maybe even the citrus people, if their processing contracts fall short. And there's strawberries and tomatoes and gosh knows what else. It's sort of like Katie bar the door!"