The annual Student Product Innovation Competition sponsored by the Indiana Soybean Alliance and Indiana Corn Marketing Council announced the 2011 winners at a lavish banquet last week. The contest, the only one of its kind in the nation, challenges teams of students at Purdue to invent new products made from corn and from soybeans.

One of the early successes of this program was the development of crayons made from soybean oil. This concept moved quickly into the marketplace, and today soy crayons are quite common. The popular soybean candles were also a product of this competition. But the future of new product innovation is going to look quite different. As food and energy demands increase for basic commodities like corn and soybeans, industrial uses of these products will have to take on a new look.

When this competition began 17 years ago, supplies of corn and soybeans were plentiful. The checkoff programs invested in this student research in hope that any new products would lead to an increase in demand. In the beginning the products were practical or novelty items.

In recent years, the products have migrated to green products. Last year there was soy-based flooring, and this year corn Stover ceiling tiles were developed. In recent years, a variety of food, nutrition, and even liquor products have finished high in the competition. But, as commodity prices have moved higher and the food vs. fuel debate has raged, future innovative products may need to adapt.

Dr. Bernie Tao, Professor of Soybean Utilization at Purdue, said, as the price of raw commodities goes up, the products produced from them will have to have a very high value. He told me that he has been pushing students to consider products that have a high value or a mass market appeal to justify the use of the high priced raw materials.

“We now have students from chemical engineering, nuclear engineering and a variety of other disciplines coming into this competition because they can see ways to use agricultural products in some very sophisticated products and processes,” he explained.

Another area where Dr. Tao sees potential is developing new uses for agricultural waste products or byproducts of agricultural processes.
With world food demand on the rise, some outside of agriculture have asked is it good policy to use our renewable commodities for non-food uses. Dr. Tao said the trend in innovation is to use these commodities to improve life on Earth. Tao said he stresses to students that new products must have some social and or environmental benefit as well as just being a new use for corn and soybeans, “Just because something is biodegradable does not make it good for society or the environment.”

Tao noted that several of the top winners in this year’s contest were products that do not compete with food. They draw upon raw materials that are waste products or proteins that are not used directly in the food chain.
One of the long-term benefits of this competition is the exposure it gives to the future scientists in many other disciplines. These non-ag young people now see that agriculture can offer the raw material for a variety of processes, far from food and energy production. In the future, these scientists may turn back to agriculture to provide the resources for technologies not yet conceived.

Agricultural commodities have been considered high volume, low cost products. Yet the future may have a much different role for our renewable bio-based commodities. It has been estimated that only 2 percent of industrial materials are made from bio-based products. That means we have a long way to grow.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of Farm World. Readers with questions or comments for Gary Truitt may write to him in care of this publication.