By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

ARGOS, Ind. — Botswana is known more for cattle than corn – and livestock doesn’t interest Glen Bode – but the Fulton County farmer learned a lot in more than two years there, even though he was the one teaching farm management at a local college.

“To me, it gives you a world perspective of the needs for various goods and services,” he said of his time in the Peace Corps, “and it certainly helps you understand how the United States fits in the global perspective.”

As president of a group of investors comprising the two-year-old Indiana Renewable Fuels, LLC (IRF) – purchased last May by Advanced BioEnergy, LLC of Minnesota – Bode is looking for a slice of corn-flavored pie. To that end, the investors are doing preliminary site work to build a $160 million ethanol plant in Argos, about 10 miles north of Rochester, Ind.

Much of Indiana’s and Ohio’s yellow corn is now shipped to the southeastern United States for poultry and hog feed, he explained.
That same golden corn can be processed at ethanol plants, which are becoming the boon to some Midwesterners that diamonds are to Botswana.

According to a 2006 IRF press release, the plant will add 45 full-time jobs to the area, once completed. Revis Stephenson, chairman and CEO of Advanced BioEnergy, said the company was formed in January 2005 and is only looking into corn-based ethanol for now.

Stephenson explained neither LLC can comment much at this point because they are in a “quiet period” during the registration process with the Securities and Exchange Commission, that will probably last until mid-summer. He did confirm the company has three other projects it is considering besides the Argos plant, none of which are in the Farm World coverage area.

Bode, 41, served in the Peace Corps upon graduation from Purdue University.

After returning from Africa and earning a master’s degree in Illinois, he moved back to Indiana to farm 2,000 acres of corn and soybeans with his father, Wayne, and uncle, Kenneth Bode, who’ve owned their land in nearby Kewanna for more than 30 years.