03/28/08 Using Grant Money

Using Grant Money. I'm Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report. To get the benefits of renewable energy you need a good idea and some capital to get the project underway. There are many programs and grants available for these kinds of projects and many ag producers have been taking advantage of them including Kent Madison, owner of Madison Farms in Oregon. He says when applying for grant money, you should look to the future. MADISON: My advice to people is if you've got an idea that you are applying for a grant, look and see if that idea is something that society wants or some entity wants and are you on the cutting edge of that idea. Meaning that if you are applying for a grant on something that's already been done and is up and running and it's very common, there's not a lot of grant money for that. But if you are on the cutting edge of something, some new technology that somebody wants to see developed then you've got a pretty good chance. He says it's really important to be in front of the technology or the money just won't be there. MADISON: We applied for a biodiesel grant for example and we were just a little bit behind the  what I call the crest of the wave of that and the crest of that wave was sucking up all those grants out there and if you were behind it, you were no longer on that cutting edge  the up front side of it and those grants weren't as easy to get. Madison has a long history in the farming industry and is relatively new to developing biodiesel but when it became economically feasible several years ago, he made the move. MADISON: We did get a USDA Value Added Producers grant which allowed us to acquire inventory, to buy seed from the neighbors and things like that for our plant so that helped. We did apply for a regular 9006 Renewable Energy Grant from the USDA for the biodiesel plant itself, we did not get that. We did apply for the Oregon Business Energy Tax Credits for the biodiesel pant which we did get and those were excellent. I can't say enough about the Oregon Department of Energy and their process and how easy the process was to work through those business energy tax programs. Kent Madison is one of those producers that has found a way to use what has been made available. MADISON: The system is designed to encourage development, encourage new technologies and encourage renewable energy and I am taking advantage of all those things. For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network. www.harvestcleanenergy.org