Project Overview
Commodities
- Agronomic: corn, soybeans, wheat
Practices
- Crop Production: double cropping, no-till
- Education and Training: farmer to farmer, on-farm/ranch research, participatory research
- Farm Business Management: feasibility study, agricultural finance
- Production Systems: general crop production
Proposal abstract:
The producers of Holyoke, Colo., are interested in growing soybeans as a rotation crop with corn and wheat. This project will evaluate the viability of a business enterprise that will crush at least 300,000 bushels of soybeans into meal and oil and determine whether the resulting products can be sold at a profit. Because 75% of the soybeans will be converted to meal, the plan is to develop a meal-processing operation that can produce value-added products like bulk animal feed, meal pellets for feedlots and dairies, meal cake for range animals and bio-energy pellets for heating homes and other buildings. The remaining 25% that comes out of the crusher as oil will be sold to a processor to convert to cooking oil or bio-diesel. This project will develop a business plan for the producers to evaluate the economic viability of the strategy, including the costs of developing and operating a storage, crushing and meal processing facility.