By Melissa Dunson

mdunson@joplinglobe.com

NEVADA, Mo. — Eight years in the making, the Prairie Pride plant near Nevada is now producing soybean-based biodiesel.

The latest biodiesel plant to come on line in Missouri will add 30 million gallons of alternative fuel a year to the country’s output. That’s important, said Kevin Fischer, vice chairman of Prairie Pride, because President Bush last month signed an energy bill calling for the country to produce 1 billion gallons of biofuels by 2012.

“It’s a mandate that ensures more renewable fuels will be blended into our fuels in the future,” Fischer said. “It was time for this product.”

The Prairie Pride plant sits on 210 acres in western Vernon County, between Nevada and Deerfield. It cost $90 million to build and will created an estimated 45 jobs.

Although the plant is now turning out a product, full production won’t begin until mid-March when a soybean-oil extractor next door is finished. Until then, Fischer said, Prairie Pride is buying soybean oil from extraction companies and going through the 10-hour procedure of transforming it from a cooking lubricant to something that powers vehicles.

The biodiesel coming out of Prairie Pride leaves the plant by railroad, Fischer said, and is distributed across the United States.

Fischer said the plant will use 21 million bushels of soybeans a year when it is fully operational. At least 2.1 million bushels will come from the 1,050 area farmers who invested in the project. Along with a one-time $20,000 pledge, farmers had to commit 2,000 bushels of soybeans each year to the plant. Fischer said Prairie Pride will work with the farm co-ops in the area for the rest of the crop that is needed.

It took Prairie Pride’s founders 100 equity-drive meetings to become fully producer-owned. The company says it is the first soybean-diesel plant in the nation with more than 1,000 investors. Fischer said 80 percent of those investors live in Missouri. The equity drive raised $36 million for the project, and Fischer said a $52 million Merrill Lynch loan and grant money paid the rest of the costs.

At full capacity, Fischer said, Prairie Pride also will produce 486,000 tons of soybean meal and 10,000 tons of glycerin a year. Both of those products are sold to Missouri and Arkansas producers of livestock feed.

Price per bushel

Fischer said he has seen firsthand the benefit a soybean-biodiesel plant can have for nearby farmers.

“We have seen the price of soybeans escalate over the last 60 days,” he said. “When we started this project, soybeans were $6 a bushel. Now, it’s $12 a bushel. It’s just a higher demand for the product.”

A U.S. Department of Energy study reported that the production and use of biodiesel resulted in a 78.5 percent reduction in carbon-dioxide emissions compared with petroleum-based diesel.