California grows oats along one of its rural highways, and in the Midwest roadside grass is being harvested into hay. Utah State University doctoral student Dallas Hanks, who used to teach biology at Utah Valley State College, has been thinking about farming Utah’s freeways for years.

“I thought about vegetable crops, and orchards with cherry and peach trees,” says Hanks, who grew up on a farm in Burley, Idaho. “But the tree idea would create a real problem when people run off the road.” Then gasoline prices went through the roof, and Hanks came up with a winning idea that convinced the Utah Department of Transportation to award him a $50,000 grant to test the economic viability of roadside biodiesel production plants.

If experimental plots along I-15 prove sufficiently productive, 2,500 miles of state highway rights-of-way could be reseeded with safflower, camelina, canola and flaxseed and harvested for oil.

The project was spurred by Gov. Jon Huntsman’s 2015 objective to reduce fossil fuel energy consumption in state agencies by 20 percent. According to Hanks, the conversion of weedy roadsides to colorful biofeedstock could yield half a million gallons of biodiesel fuel per year for state trucks and snowplows. UDOT would not only be able to manufacture its own fuel but save $1.6 million annually in herbicide and mowing costs. The genetically modified, drought-resistant biofeedstock can be controlled with Round-Up.

“We hope it will be prettier to look at than noxious weeds,” says Hanks. Test plots in Kaysville, Mona and Tremonton have already blossomed into yellow, red and blue flowers.

The experiment will be repeated several times—until UDOT has enough data to decide which plants and locations to use. If the agency doesn’t want to mess with the oil production part of the project, it will consider leasing the roadside plots to farmers.  —Jane Koerner ’07Att