By ANN HINCH
Assistant Editor

DALLAS, Texas — Finding new markets for soybeans that go beyond food is part of what the national soybean checkoff is designed to do, according to a couple of presenters at the Commodity Classic in Dallas last week.

Of course, edible advancements are impressive in their own right. “Anytime anybody starts talking to me about heart-healthy bacon, I know things are improving,” Don Borgman quipped.

A Missouri farmer and John Deere tractor salesman, Borgman gave a brief presentation on behalf of the United Soybean Board (USB) about sheet molding compound (SMC), a polyester that uses 25 percent corn and soybean matter to displace that much petroleum in the final product. SMC is used to manufacture hoods and side panels for JD equipment.

Borgman said JD uses 4 million pounds of SMC annually, which is just a small percentage of the 600 million pounds used each year across many industries. He explained how SMC was developed, from its beginnings at the University of Delaware to manufacture by Ashley Industrial Molding, Inc.

“These things don’t just happen, and they just don’t happen overnight,” he said of the research and marketing process. He added JD and American auto manufacturers have been “very supportive of what we’ve put together in the agricultural industry.”
What makes bio-based non-food products even more challenging is they need to be as good or better than the product they are replacing – what Borgman called a “drop-in.” Also, he said soybean growers have plenty of competition for non-food products.

“We’re not a very big industry … we’re usually outmanned, outgunned and outdone by other industries,” he told growers at the USB session on Feb. 26.

Tom Verry, director of outreach and development for the National Biodiesel Board (NBB), encouraged growers to keep the soybeans coming. Even with economic downturns, he said biodiesel production has grown exponentially in the past decade. In 2007, the United States manufactured more than 400 million gallons; last year, it was more than 700 million.

He enumerated the direct economic impact of biodiesel so far: displacement of 36 million barrels of petroleum, of which 25 million would have been imported; support of 35,000 jobs; contribution of $25 billion to the U.S. economy by 2015; and in 2008, it was responsible for $6 billion of income to American soybean farmers, as 57 percent of American-made biodiesel was from soy oil. (In the futures market, he said biodiesel was responsible for adding $4 to the 2008 prices of soybeans.)

In addition, he said biodiesel usage has cut down on greenhouse gases and carbon dioxide emissions in the equivalent of taking one million cars off the road. The federal renewable fuels standard requires that in three years, at least 1 billion gallons per year of biofuel in this country be biodiesel – but Verry said he’s also seeing states interested in creating state-level mandates and low carbon fuel standards requiring biofuel.

By 2015, he said the NBB projects more than 1 billion gallons of biodiesel will be produced domestically each year and that California’s low carbon fuel standard will require another 300 million to be made. This is not even mentioning other potential state-level initiatives and Bioheat mandates (blending biodiesel with home heating oils).