Area ag producers courted by developers

Todd Hanson, director of development of the proposed 3,000-acre Madison Food Park to be located between Great Falls and Belt was in Havre Thursday to speak with area farm and ranch producers, and ag supporters, and to answer questions about the food processing plant and creating partnerships.

A preliminary application submitted for the agri-business entity calls for the facility to include a meat-packing and processing facility for beef, pork and poultry; a cheese-making and fresh milk processing facility; a distillery that sources barley grown by Golden Triangle farmers, and a large-scale packaging, transportation and distribution network, says a press release from North Central Montana Stockgrowers Association, which invited Hanson to speak.

Hanson said that Montana, especially the Golden Triangle area, is well-known for its farm and ranch exports, but the area and the state rarely reap the benefit of income from the final product created from their agricultural efforts. The intent, he said, is to make Montana-branded products that are grown, raised, produced, packaged and shipped from the state for sale domestically and as an export.

"We've always done a couple of these (components) really well – which is Montana bred and Montana fed. For the longest time, though, we haven't had a great opportunity at the other component of this - which is the Montana finished or the Montana-branded product which is actually a part of this whole process," he said.

Hanson said this vertically integrated, value-added model isn't new. Bear Paw Meats does it successfully by raising, finishing, processing and selling its own beef, but Madison Food Park plans to do it on a significantly larger, national scale.

The business model that Hanson and the Canada-based investors Friesen Foods LLC are working toward is to use Montana-raised dairy, grains, chicken, hogs, beef and feeds to be processed at the plant. The proposal intends for the facilities to be built on acreage purchased about 8 miles southeast of Great Falls toward Belt on the south side of U.S. Highway 87.

The 3,000-acre food park will house separate facilities for each of the production enterprises, but it won't have dairy cows and a milking barn, feedlots or chicken barns on site.

In order for this facility to work, Hanson said, Montana ag producers will have to step up their production of these elements, and business-minded investors will need to construct facilities to finish out the animals to butchering age and weight.

The meat processing - which he said are projected to be completed in two-and-a-half to three years, including the permitting process that is expected to take about a year - are intended to have a receiving area for unloading livestock and the processing area, along with other infrastructure like waste management facilities.

In Phase 1, he said, they intend to soft-open with the dairy and grain components and expand to processing 67,500 broiler chickens, 4,600 hogs and 900 beef cattle per day. They expect, he said, to have the chicken and hog processing up to these numbers before the beef because those animals mature quicker and are easier to raise indoors, allowing for multiple breeding cycles in a year.

At full capacity in Phase 2 the meat processing will expand to 135,000 chickens, 9,200 hogs and 1,800 beef per day 260, days a year, Hanson said, adding that the shift cycles would alternate with eight hours for processing followed by eight hours for cleaning.

To meet these needs, Hanson said, they will need to rely on the livestock and cereal grain, especially barley, producers to increase their yield by 80 percent.

Madison Food Park is willing to work with producers, who, Hanson said, are taking on increased risks to invest in production, in order to come up with sale and contract agreements.

The business model they are developing, he said, does not include producers having to use feed provided by the food park. They are, however, imagining a cooperative buying power and a symbiotic relationship with local feed producers and the plant itself to help lower feed costs for their producers.

For example, barley that doesn't meet malting standards would still have a ready market as feed for the livestock producers.

Though some people and organizations have balked at what they see as the negative impact of the food park on the area's infrastructure and resources, Hanson said, the facility will be using combinations of technology and production practices to reduce their footprint.

The facility is planning to use wind and solar generators, along with methane gas recovery to reduce electrical use. And the two waste-processing lagoons originally planned on 1,500 acres of the facility will be replaced by a biological and sustainable system from Missoula-based CLEARAS Water Recovery.

The system uses a series of clear pipes, algae and UV light to digest the waste and recover water to be reused in the facility. Hanson said the system will cut their originally projected water usage in half and reduce their waste recovery facility to a 4 1/2-acre greenhouse type building, and the algae will be reusable as a feed.