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Agricultural and forest residues in addition to energy crops are major biomass feedstocks for biofuel production. Cutting of biomass feedstocks during harvesting and preprocessing is one of the challenges for sustainable biofuel production. The objective of this study was to investigate the effects of an ultrasonic cutting blade on shearing switchgrass. Finite element methodology was used to model the ultrasonic cutting blades and its interactions with switchgrass during cutting. Experimental investigations were performed using a cutting rig to validate the model. Compared to conventional cutting, ultrasonic cutting reduced the force and energy consumption for cutting switchgrass while the cutting speed did not affect the cutting performance of the ultrasonic blade. Details of the finite element modeling and the experimental results are presented in this paper.