1/29/08 Camelina

The search is on for farmers who want to grow camelina for an Oregon oil-seed crushing plant. I'm Bill Scott. Line on Agriculture is next. Tim Parker doesn't like paying $3.50 a gallon for diesel. That's why he is on a mission to find farmers. His newly formed company, Willamette Biomass Processors hopes to find some eastern Oregon and Idaho farmers who would be willing to plant small plots of camelina. PARKER "Camelina represents a dry land farmer's paradise in that it can be grown quite will under dry conditions and if a grower wants to or desires to it can be grown under irrigation as well. But I think its strength for Oregon that it will much like what is happening in Montana is that it opens the dry land acres opportunity and alternative for him that maybe he's not had as a small grain rotation." Parker is breaking ground in Rickreall for an oil seed crushing plant and when he's fully operational later this year he'll have the potential to produce four million gallons of vegetable oil that can be converted into biodiesel at the SeQuential Pacific plant in Salem, Oregon. PARKER "Taking what has been an unused 30 year old agricultural asset and turned it into a much needed new ag asset for the Willamette Valley and I would argue the state or Oregon." Parker says about 40 percent of his profits come from the camelina seed that is crushed goes to oil, the other 60 percent comes from feed meal for livestock. PARKER "There's been a lot of strain on other feedstocks and I think camelina offers that opportunity for not only for specialty or high value feed but it can come in and be a meat and potatoes feed also so to speak for certainly dairy, beef cows and other livestock." That's why Parker and his company are now actively seeking Pacific Northwest growers. PARKER "We don't need five growers doing 50 thousand acres. What we need are 100 growers, 200 growers, 300 hundred growers doing 25, 50 acres. This is a small grain rotation. This is not a crop that you're going to send you kids to Ivy League colleges and universities. This is a bring value to your farm crop that helps in the health of the farm but also with the incentives that are in place there's money to be made here particularly under dry land conditions." Line on Agriculture Bill Scott