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Ag infrastructure: Kleinjan: Cooperatives may be a way to expand ■ Continued from page A1
Tying into other efforts
lous for a four-lane road through here. The amount of traffic is tremendous.”
Retired Blaine County rancher and former county commissioner Art Kleinjan said the expanded facilities have benefits but also create some problems and could be tied into other efforts. One way efforts could be tied together, Kleinjan said, was that, if people want to see expanded ag infrastructure, they could create it through cooperatives. Kleinjan, a board member of the Montana Cooperative Development Center, said the center could help people if they wanted to look into using that model to create a new business or infrastructure. Bear Paw Development also provides resources, including the Small Business Development Center it hosts and through hosting the Montana Food and Agriculture Development Center Network, which focuses on value-added agriculture. Kleinjan said that, while new elevators and other new facilities like fertilizer plants or storage help the ag producers, it creates a strain on the roads, with high traffic on the highways between Harlem and Havre, and farther west. “You’ve got ups and downs on both of them … ,” Kleinjan said. The need is fabu-
Economic boons Tuss said the new facilities are win-win for the region, creating new jobs, reducing costs for farmers and getting them better prices — by reducing the shipping costs — and giving new options on crops. The facilities themselves give new jobs to the region, with the initial estimates for the new shuttles in Chester at six jobs each, Tuss said, adding that “12 jobs for Chester is huge.” But, he said, “perhaps the biggest economic impact is, by strategically locating in areas, you are cutting down significantly the transportation jobs of getting to market, the cost of getting from farm to elevator. “I think, in total, you are talking about four or five additional add-ons to our regional economy that are all positive … ,” he said. “There’s not just investment, it’s significant investment, and it’s companies that are in for the long haul. “And it’s nothing but good and nothing but good for our agricultural producers,” he added.
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“It’s an undertow,” he said. “It’s not real flashy, and it’s not real visible, what is happening.”
Expanding and building facilities
Havre Daily News/Lindsay Brown Gavilon Grain elevators west of Chester are one of two new high-speed grain loaders in the town, with those facilities and the new EGT loaders built in the last three years.
On the other hand, some of the work is very visible. Starting in 2010, EGT and Agrilon announced construction of new high-speed shuttles in Chester, and plans, along with other companies that include Central Montana Cooperative, to build several other elevators including in Galata, Carter and Fort Benton. The high-speed shuttles give farmers a better rate on their grain, with the railroad company passing on the benefit of cars not sitting idle while being filled. Columbia Grain Vice President and General Manager Jeff VanPenage of Great Falls said his company has been building, and expanding, its facilities to handle pulse crops, such as lentils and chickpeas. That has included expanding and upgrading a facility in Chinook which already handled pulse crops. “We see a big future in pulse crops in Montana and in the world,” VanPenage said, adding that “we have lots of buyers all over the world looking for the product.” And the number of producers growing those crops is growing, he said. Montana already is the top-producing state in the nation for peas and lentils, and other crops are increasing. “We see more corn acres going in, more canola, flax, chickpeas,” VanPevanage said. He said that Hi-Line and Golden Triangle producers seem to be seeing benefits from the alternative to traditional crops like wheat, barley and durham. “It must be paying the bills or they wouldn’t be raising them,” he said. VanPevanage said along with the benefits of having an alternative cash crop, producers see benefits from rotating the crop such as increasing the nitrogen in the soil and reducing disease, and he expects the expansion to continue. “We see kind of untapped potential,” he said. In addition to the Chinook facility, he said, Columbia is handing pulse crops at
Havre Daily News/Lindsay Brown The EGT elevators on the east side of Chester stand ready for use. The EGT and the Gavilon shuttle, on the west side of Chester, offer grain loading to farmers in Liberty County and in that region of north-central Montana. A major expansion of facilities has given producers on the Hi-Line and throughout the Golden Triangle more options for hauling grain, with high-speed elevators closer to home cutting down time and cost of shipping while offering premium prices. Conrad, Meriweather, Tiber, Rudyard and some at Fort Benton and Wolf Point. The high-speed shuttles also are increasing, he said, including Columbia building a facility at Sweetgrass and a new shuttle going in for Conrad. “There’s more than enough capacity out there,” VanPevanage said.
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