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Renewable fuel
By Ralph Pokorny
Nevada Daily Mail
Monday afternoon Marvin Oerke, Prairie Pride Inc. chairman, announced that Vernon County has been selected as the site for a combination soybean oil extraction-biodiesel refining facility.
Prairie Pride is a "new generation" producer cooperative, which means producers must be a member of the cooperative to sell to the plant and the co-op members will share in the profit of the operation.
When in operation the plant is expected to have more than $250 million in gross income annually and will employ 35 to 40 people directly as well as generate an additional 1,300 independent jobs, John Nelson, site coordinator for the project, said.
Nelson said that the construction of the $80 million facility will create several hundred construction jobs and 1,000 construction related jobs. He indicated that the proposed plant will be located on 200 acres, about 9 miles west of Nevada on U.S. Highway 54, near the community of Eve. The plant will be located between the Kansas City Southern and Missouri & North Arkansas Railroad tracks. The actual plant will occupy about six acres.
Nelson said they hired the engineering firm Shafer, Kline & Warren to help evaluate potential sites and decide upon the best location; and three nearby highways. rail transportation and the availability of natural gas and electricity were important factors in the decision, he said.
"They deem this an excellent site," Nelson said.
Although the plant will be located in Vernon County, Oerke said that all of the surrounding counties would benefit as well. The plant will crush 21 million bushels of soybeans per year to get the soy oil, which is then refined into 30 million gallons of biodiesel fuel.
"It will take 1,100 to 1,200 producers to do this," he said. A site in Bates County had also been under consideration for the plant. This is good for agriculture, good for the county, good for the country," Oerke said.
Nelson said that the feasibility study conducted for the project said that farmers could expect the plant to increase the price for soybeans by 10 to 15-cents per bushel. According to the 2002 Census of Agriculture, Bates County farmers produced 2.28 million bushels of soybeans followed by Barton County, with 1.57 million; Vernon County, with 1.37 million; and Bourbon County, Kan., with 534,000 bushels. Oerke said the idea for this project started five years ago when a group of soybean producers got together to try to come up with a way to add value to their product
In January 2005, they started working in earnest on the project and now have their business plan finished and by the end of the year expect to have their prospectus done.
They are currently holding meetings around the areas to recruit members. Nelson said that they would probably start construction in about six months, with the facility finished 14 to 16 months later.
"All of the fossil fuel we use originally came from solar energy," Al Decker, Bates County extension agent, said.
"They have figured out a way to take 100 million years off the natural process of converting sunlight to fuel," Decker said.
He noted that one acre of soybeans during the 130-day growing season absorbs enough solar energy to be equivalent to $1,550 in electricity per acre per day.
In addition to the biodiesel and soy meal the plant will produce, the hulls from the beans will benefit the economy he said.
"In one year there will be enough hulls to produce 10 million pounds of additional weight gain in calves in this area," Decker said.
Nelson said that they appreciated all the help they received from the Vernon County Commission, the city governments of Nevada and Fort Scott, Kan., for their help.
"This is good for the nation because we need every source of fuel we can get," Oerke said.