It takes nine pounds of butter to make a gallon of biodiesel and New York State Fair officials say they will turn a 900 pound butter sculpture into 96 gallons of biodiesel fuel when the fair is over.

The butter sculpture was a tribute to New York state dairy farmers and was set up as a centerpiece at the fair. SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry college scientists will make the butter into biodiesel at a facility on campus and use it to fuel their vehicle fleet.

SUNY College scientists will work in collaboration with the American Dairy Association and Dairy Council, Inc., and the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency to produce the biofuel after the fair ends its 12-day run on Labor Day.

But biodiesel is nothing new for them.

"Thirty-seven percent of the college's fleet runs on some form of renewable energy, including biodiesel," ESF President Cornelius B. Murphy, Jr. said in a statement. "Using the butter sculpture is a unique way to fuel the ESF fleet."

To get an idea of how much butter that is, according to the American Dairy Association and Dairy Dairy Council, Inc., if the 900 pounds of butter had been left in stick form it would be enough to cover more than six football fields.