A University of Georgia study released this week shows that
Georgia
farmers who grow oilseeds (canola, soybeans, peanuts and cotton)
can make their crops more valuable.

By building a crushing/refining facility in the state and by
forming
a cooperative, the study says, farmers can control the raw
materials
they produce all the way to the grocery shelf.

The New Way to Look at
Farming

In the past, a farmer only grew and harvested crops. He sold the
crops in bulk to off-farm buyers at wholesale prices. Once they
left the farm, the farmer had little to do with the crops, which
were then manufactured into higher-valued consumer products.

But now, the move toward globalization is smothering wholesale
crop prices. So farmers should look beyond just growing and
harvesting
crops, said George Shumaker, an economist with the UGA Extension
Service and one of the authors of the study.

Farmers should look beyond how many bushels or pounds they can
produce per acre, he said. They need to envision how many
bottles
of oil, or how many shirts or candy bars they can make from
their
crops.

The New Generation Co-op

Randy Hudson, coordinator of the Emerging Crop and Technologies
Initiative of the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental
Sciences, agrees.

“We’re now looking at how the farmer can carry the product
beyond the realm of just production and move higher up that food
chain,” he said.

For the past several years, farmers across the country have
formed
co-ops in hopes of spreading risks and making consumer products
from their crops. These new-generation co-ops market their
products
to grocery or other retail outlets. This brings the farmer a
greater
dollar value, Hudson said.

The keys to forming such a co-op, he said, are an adequate
processing
facility and timely delivery of the products.

Georgia Could Support Oilseed
Facility

The UGA study said such a facility could be built and
economically
supported in Georgia. The crushing-refining facility would
primarily
convert seeds from canola and soybeans into oils. But it could
handle cotton and peanuts, too.

To get the facility up and running would cost about $56 million.
However, it would add about $172 million in economic activity
to the Georgia economy, the report said. Its impact would affect
more than 250,000 acres of farm land. Besides the 53 jobs the
facility would create directly, about 1,100 jobs would be
created
indirectly, mostly in rural Georgia.

Such facilities use a crushing process to extract oil from the
seed. The result is actually two products: oil and meal. The
meal
can be used to feed livestock and chickens.

“But this is something that will have to be done by the
Georgia
farmers,” Shumaker said.

“Agriculture is very weak, and we need a way to get more
profit into farming,” said Marty McLendon, a Calhoun County
farmer. “We fully believe value-added products, letting the
farmer put products on the grocery shelf … is the wave of the
future.”

McLendon said he believes the oilseed facility has potential if
growers are committed. “There is always risk,” he said.
“But I think we’ve got some direction.”