On Friday, Rudi Roeslein, the founder of Roeslein, made a pitch to landowners living anywhere within 30 miles as the crow flies from the Ruckman Hog Farm, which is just south of the Worth/Gentry County Border – Lease us land, and we’ll pay you for $160/acre for four years for prairie strips we create. Mr. Roeslein gave a talk at the Hundley/Whaley Farm in Albany. In addition, landowners who deliver biomass to the farm will be paid $37/ton for four years. If the company comes and gets it, it will be $1/ton. After the four years is up, what the company pays will be dependent on market conditions. They are working on a third source of income, in the form of carbon credits; however, they are still working on figures. Landowners would be paid each January.
The company will provide the seed and plant, and they will mow. It will take three years for the seed to germinate into prairie grass needed to convert to biomass. On the third year, the harvest of prairie grass will start and farmers will be paid for the harvest. The Ruckman Farm, owned and operated by Smithfield Farms, is building a digester to convert hog waste to biomass. They say this will help address the odor issues that have plagued it, and many other operations like it, for years, and help it comply with consent decrees that it entered into two decades ago from lawsuits filed by the State of Missouri.
Roeslein is seeking to lease 6,000 acres from landowners. Areas include all of Worth County, most of Gentry County, southern Ringgold County, the southeast corner of Taylor County, eastern Nodaway County, including Ravenwood, Parnell, and Hopkins, and western Harrison County, including Eagleville, Hatfield, and Martinsville. They have already built methane traps at lagoons to prevent the release of methane at hog and dairy facilities, which they then convert into natural gas which can be sold on the grid. Their ultimate goal is to convert 30 million acres of highly erodible land into native prairie, which they say will reduce millions of tons of carbon emissions, produce billions of gallons of renewable fuel, and create trillions of gallons of clean water.
Land preferred is land in which soybeans (possibly corn) have been rowcropped during the 2024 season. They are seeking land that is of a more highly erodible nature along with hillside property. They are also interested in acquiring property for prairie strips along creek corridors or hill contours. Eligible land includes land that there is a land record for, such as the ones that producers file with the Farm Service Agency. Producers cannot be paid for CRP and Roeslein leases; CRP rules require that producers not be paid twice to take the same piece of land out of production. Landowners who break their CRP contract have to pay a hefty penalty; if the project falls through after the grant money runs out, producers will have to go through the CRP process all over again. Currently, the CRP program has an upper limit of 23 million acres.
There is no land that is too big or too small to be considered. Mr. Roeslein said the company was willing to work with all types of landowners.
The funds for this project are being paid for by a grant from the Climate Smart Program from the USDA. Objectives of the program include finding market-based opportunities to replace fossil fuels, collect data for policymakers and provide verified benefits, and outreach. There were multiple stakeholders for this particular grant, including Missouri and Iowa State Universities, Smithfield Farms, and the Nature Conservancy of both Iowa and Missouri.
Under grant rules, there will be no lagoons constructed as a result of this project. The digester that Smithfield is seeking to build is a continuous stir digester that will convert hog waste into energy, which will be hooked up to the Trans-Canada Pipeline that is in the area. If the project at the Ruckman farm is successful, the goal is to build digesters at all nine Smithfield facilities in Northern Missouri.
Plants will be picked based on whether they are native to the area, their value as a pollinator to attract bees and monarch butterflies, and the root content. The stated goal is to enrich the soil so that the producer will have more yield for their crops or someone who owns the land for hunting can attract more wildlife. Mr. Roeslein, who is an avid hunter, said one of the biggest deer he shot was in Kansas, which has much more prairie than here.
Mr. Roeslein came to the US in 1956 as an immigrant with his family. He moved to St. Louis, where he went to school. He travels all over the world to do business, and everywhere he goes, he asks people where they want to go. He also asks about the wildlife. He says he is passionate about finding ways to protect the environment, help farmers in the area, and feed the world. He currently lives on a farm in Putnam County, where he farms 1,000 acres, which he uses to test some of his ideas.
Landowners who are interested in leasing land can contact Stephen Mowry, Director of Land Development and Prairie Establishment, at smowry@roesleinae.
No comments:
Post a Comment