SOYBEANS COULD BE A NEW CASH CROP

by Bethany M. Dunbar, courtesy of the Chronicle

 

HARDWICK — At between $450 to $1,000 an acre, soybeans could be a new cash crop for financially strapped dairy farmers. About 75 people — farmers and others — turned out to hear more about the possibilities during a forum hosted by Vermont Soy on Wednesday, April 26.

Andrew Meyer and Todd Pinkham expect to start making vanilla, chocolate and plain flavor soy milk at their brand new plant in Hardwick in July. The soy food line will be expanded to other products over time. Mr. Pinkham has ten years of experience making tempeh and other soy products. In the same building, they are also starting production of Natural Coatings, a paint product made of whey.

Mr. Meyer said they would love to buy soybeans from Vermont producers. But so far not a lot is known about which variety of bean might be best for soy milk that would work in Vermont’s climate.

Jack Lazor, the owner of Butterworks Farm yogurt, has been growing soybeans in Westfield for many years, and a pair of farmers from Highgate said they have recently started growing them as organic cattle feed and have had good luck so far.

Panelists at the forum included Les Morrison of Barnet, owner of Morrison’s Custom Feeds, who said there is a huge demand for soybeans in Vermont. Another panelist was Tom Stearns of High Mowing Seeds in Wolcott which is working on a test project to determine the best of ten varieties.

Also on the panel were Louis and Bernard Rainville, organic farmers from Highgate, Willie Gibson of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA), Chuck Mitchell of the United States Department of Agriculture, Steve Justis of the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets, and Heather Darby of the University of Vermont Extension. Participants and panelists were treated to a dinner of local and organic foods created by Workrow Farm in Westmore, the Mallarys.

Dessert choices included a chocolate mousse pie made of soy milk.
“Vermont has more of its land in certified organic ground than any
other state in the United States,” Mr. Stearns said. He said
Colorado is second place, but Colorado only has 8 percent certified,
where Vermont has three times that amount. “Soybeans are going to provide some challenges, no doubt about that.

That’s why we haven’t seen a lot of them around.” Mr. Stearns said he grew up in New England and lived in Arizona, then when he moved back he ran into a guy looking for directions to someplace in the Northeast Kingdom when he was in Plainfield. Mr. Stearns listened to the explanation from the Vermonter carefully. The man said take Route 14 to Hardwick, and “from there you can go anywhere.”

Mr. Stearns said he always liked that thought and added, “So here we are in the center of the universe.”

Les Morrison of Barnet grew up in Peacham. His family has a dairy farm that has been in the family for four or five generations. His family still runs it, and he decided to start a sideline business in 1983, a feed mill. He has grown triticale, lupine, oats, and other grains. Now he has two mills, one conventional and one organic. The conventional mill is 15 percent of his business, the organic one is 85 percent.

“I buy soybeans from China, Argentina, Brazil,” he said. In the last three years there have been no soybeans available in the U.S. for feed, he said, and the price has skyrocketed. He addressed Mr. Meyer and Mr. Pinkham directly and told them they were his competition, and he would be a vulture flying around them. Farmers who can’t grow beans of high enough quality for soy milk can sell them to him. He said he would also buy small grains that the
farmers would grow in rotation with soybeans. Crop rotation is recommended for soybeans. So Mr. Morrison will be looking to buy other small grains or wheat that the farmers might grow when the land is getting a break from the beans.

“I’ll pay a premium for Vermont grain,” he said. “If you make a good clean product.”
He added, “I’d like to see 1,000 acres.” Mr. Morrison uses 30 tons of whole beans a week. He said an acre might produce a ton, and the current price is $450 for a ton. In a telephone interview later, he said Vermont Soy will want 60 tons of beans for their whole year (at least at first), but the total demand for soybeans in Vermont is probably 50 times that, and the
market is growing.

“The really good news is that soybeans grow really really well in Vermont,” said Heather Darby of the UVM Extension. “Primarily all the pests haven’t reached us yet.” She added, “I have to say I didn’t know all that much about growing soybeans until I talked to farmers in Vermont.” There is an organic growers grain group of about 36 farmers who meet two or three times a year to share ideas. She said farmers have found they could grow a couple of tons to the acre.

Louis and Bernard Rainville agreed. “Soybeans are very basic to grow,” Louis Rainville said. If the soil is worked well, the beans’ canopy will get large fast enough to keep most of the weeds out. Their farm is 600 acres, organic, in Highgate. The family grew 100 acres of soybeans last year and got two tons per acre.

The Rainvilles’ most emphatic advice to potential growers is to put up some storage space. That way, the grower can hold on to the beans until he or she finds the best market.

Bernard Rainville said he still has some beans left after feeding his 90 cows for the winter and he will sell those. The beans seem to yield better on clay than on sand, they said. Their storage bins have a flat bottom bed with a perforated floor for drying.

“We’re looking for a larger tofu bean,” said Mr. Meyer. “We recognize that it’s going to take some time,” he said. He said the Vermont Soy will be making soy milk by July and he might be getting beans at first from southern Quebec, which has some of the best beans around.

Two people from Rhapsody Nature Foods in Montpelier, who make tempeh, said they would also love to buy Vermont grown soybeans. “I would love to have rice growing in Vermont,” added Elysha Welters of Rhapsody.

Bean growers will need storage and cleaning equipment, which is not drastically expensive. But a combine to harvest the beans is another matter. A used combine can cost between $20,000 and $30,000. Bernard Rainville said there is a man in St. Albans who wants to buy
a combine to harvest the beans for people if there is enough interest. His advice was, “Plant the beans and go from there.” Ms. Darby and others said soy beans must not be planted too early or they will freeze.

Mr. Stearns said custom harvesting makes sense. A group could be formed to buy a combine as well. To a question about what happens if the crop fails, Ms. Darby mentioned that farmers can get crop insurance very inexpensively.

Mr. Rainville said after the forum that switching to organic has kept his family farm in good shape financially. He has 90 cows, and at first they had to buy the organic grain which is twice as much as conventional grain. But now they are growing it all, and organic farmers get paid $28.42 for a hundred pounds, or $2.44 a gallon. The average farm price for conventional milk is dropping steadily, and it’s getting close to 1970s levels, in the range of $10 for a hundred pounds.

“We wouldn’t be here if we weren’t organic,” said Bernard Rainville. He mentioned that organic buyers are offering farmers incentives to make the transition.

“It seems nice to have options in agriculture,” he said. In an interview at the plant the following day, Mr. Meyer and Mr. Pinkham said they are thrilled there is so much interest in
soybeans. Mr. Meyer’s family has been in agriculture for many years. His father raised beef cattle and then started milking in the 70s, and the family farm is currently an award-winning organic farm at this point.

Mr. Meyer said he decided to go into soy because of market trends. He wants to bring food closer to home for local consumers as well. “We’re relying on food that comes from farther and farther away,” he said.

“We’re down to 1,100 dairy farms in Vermont,” added Mr. Meyer. “It’s not a good year for milk prices.” Mr. Meyer worked for U.S. Senator Jim Jeffords from 1994 to 2001. Mr. Pinkham’s wife’s family has been friends with the Meyers for years. Mr. Pinkham has worked as a carpenter and studied environmental science and natural resources at Johnson State
College. He was born in Dover, Massachusetts, and moved to Vermont when he was in junior high. He knew as soon as he got here that he wanted to stay, and his first acquisition was a Blue Seal farm hat. He worked on an organic dairy farm in Johnson in the early ‘90s.
“We were actually the first farm to ship to the Organic Cow,” he said. “That inspired me. It wasn’t necessarily rocket science but it hadn’t been done.”

The fact that the farmer he worked for was willing to take that risk and make it happen made Mr. Pinkham believe he could do something like that too.

Mr. Pinkham started Vermont Soy in Waterbury ten years ago. He went back to school, to the University of Vermont for more classes, and found that quite helpful for the business. At first the two businesses will probably employ five people each, but Mr. Meyer and Mr. Pinkham can imagine both businesses growing. On top of the challenges of getting two new businesses up and running, the two both have personal lives — wives and children — to think about as well.

“We’re both having babies in July,” Mr. Meyer explained. Mr. Meyer said the first batches of soy milk will be available at the Hardwick Farmers Market and the Buffalo Mountain Co-op in Hardwick this summer.

And as Mr. Stearns once heard, from Hardwick one can go anywhere.