It’s a fact of life.
Whenever you try something new or different, skeptics will line up to offer opinions on why it’ll never work.
But Virginia producer Korey Snead isn’t listening to the skeptics.
“I’m the first one in the county to grow any type of rapeseed,” said Snead, who will seed 20 acres of canola in the third week of September on his farm near the North Carolina border.
The idea to try canola came from an article in an agricultural magazine about Red Birch Energy, a company that intends to produce biodiesel from canola.
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The plan, according to the company’s website, is to build small bio-diesel plants next to a truck stop and add that biofuel to the gas station’s underground tanks.
“We’re a startup company … three guys and the bank,” said Sam Brake of Red Birch Energy, who noted the company wants to produce biodiesel from canola because of its high oil content and because it can be grown over the winter in the U.S. southeast.
“The canola we’re growing is a winter type canola,” said Brake, noting that he recommends the Virginia variety, developed at Virginia State University in Petersburg.
“If we target acres that are not growing anything in the wintertime, then we’re adding to the fuel stream and feed supply, rather than the conception that biofuels are taking away from human food.”
The short-term goal for Red Birch Energy, Brake said, is to produce a supply of biodiesel that will satisfy a 20 percent blend for the annual sales volume of one gas station. He estimated that would require 5,000 to 6,000 acres of canola.
Long term, Red Birch has much bigger plans.
“We’re thinking to take this concept out to what I call the biodiesel highway … in more farming areas along interstate highways,” Brake said.
The company is installing oilseed-crushing equipment beside one of Red Birch’s gas stations near Martinsville, Virginia. The next step, of convincing area farmers to grow canola, may be more challenging.
“Lots of people have never heard of it (canola). Or they’ve heard of it and want to know if it’s a legume like soybeans,” said Brake, who is travelling southern Virginia, promoting canola to the region’s producers.
Snead, the first farmer on the canola bandwagon in Halifax County, said the crop makes sense because he’s seeking new sources of revenue from his farm.
Many producers in the area, including Snead, used to grow tobacco as their principal crop. But since the U.S. federal government eliminated subsidies and bought out tobacco production quotas in 2004, southern Virginia farmers have turned to other crops.
“We have smaller farms in this area. I’m sure y’all are used to several thousand acres. Down here, a 400 acre farm is a pretty large one. We used to grow cash crops instead of grain,” he said.
Although many farmers in the region are now planting the typical American crops of corn and soybeans, the more daring are trying canola.
According to the U.S. Canola website, the association has a goal of 20,000 acres for the southeastern region of the country in 2008. Most of the canola in the U.S. are in North Dakota, a state with 900,000 acres in 2007.
This winter’s canola crop will be an experiment, Snead said, so he’s limiting his crop to 20 acres. Since canola is essentially an unknown commodity in his region, Snead does have concerns about disease.
“We’re worried about something coming up, maybe a disease that affects cotton or tobacco, that could possibly jump across (to canola),” he said.
Harvesting the tiny oilseed is also a worry.
“We don’t produce anything comparable to canola seed’s size in this area. So we hope our machinery will be able to cut and combine it.”
Asked how his neighbours are reacting to his plans to plant canola, Snead said the skeptics are abundant.
“There are a lot of people who say, ‘we’ll just hang back a year’ … They want to see this stuff grow, before they’re going to grow it,” Snead said.
“My crop is going to be a test.”
