Thursday, March 28, 2024
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Extra dollars from the harvest

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This stack of boards made from farm products will be turned into children's furniture at the Jonti-Craft plant in Wabasso. (MPR Photo/Mark Steil)
Farmers are searching for ways to make money from what has long been considered waste: the stalks, stems and leaves of harvested plants. One approach is to turn the plant matter into boards. The boards are strong and durable, but so far the idea has seen little success in the marketplace. A more lucrative use of the harvest leftovers though may be coming in sight.

Wabasso, Minn. — Boards made from field residue like wheat and sunflowers can make first class furniture. One thing workers at the Jonti-Craft plant do is make child-sized tables, bookcases and other items from recycled plant material. Piled high in one corner of the company's Wabasso plant are sheets of what look like pressed wood. Jonti-Craft vice-president Tom Franta calls it his environmental product.

"Wheatstraw, the Environ and also the Dakota Burl, which is a sunflower board," says Franta.

The Dakota Burl is especially handsome. It's surface is a random mosaic of thousands of individual sunflower seed hulls. The hulls are mixed with resin then pressed to form the boards. Franta says the farm-based furniture represents less than 5 percent of the plant's output, but he believes the figure will grow.

"When we introduced this product line in 2003, it's slightly more expensive and so we didn't necessarily see the market acceptance that we were hoping for initially," says Franta. "We are starting to receive some major contracts, which are going to help promote the sales of this product."

Among the buyers is the Los Angeles Community College District. Franta says the contract could be worth as much as $10 million. That sort of success demonstrates the potential of the farm based furniture. It's the sort of promise that has many companies interested, though few have actually entered the field.

One reason is because of uncertainties in the industry. The biggest may be finding a dependable manufacturer of the farm based boards. Right now Jonti-Craft has only two companies to buy from and it's likely one of them will stop making the boards in the near future. The University of Minnesota's Jim Bowyer says it's the type of stumble which has plagued the industry for years.

"In the 1990's there was quite a bit of excitement over the possibility of producing panels from agricultural residues and there began to be quite a bit of activity that was in Minnesota, North Dakota, on up into Canada," says Bowyer. "But for a number of reasons that entire enterprise has largely failed."

Bowyer says the biggest hindrance has been getting raw materials at an affordable price. Although it may seem crop residue is free, it's actually more costly than it's competitor, wood. The crop material has to be gathered and shipped. The wood industry has huge quantities of easily accessible lumber shavings and sawdust on hand. Often the pressed wood plant is right next to the lumber mill. Bowyer says the drive to find profits in crop leftovers is more likely to find success in the energy field.

"Up to this point in time ethanol has been based on corn-starch," says Bowyer. "But in the very near future ethanol will be made via a cellulose pathway. Meaning that it will be possible to make ethanol from wood, from corn stalks, from wheat straw."

Bowyer says there's a lot of interest in this new type of ethanol production. He expects to see an operating plant in a couple of years.

Officials at Jonti-Craft in Wabasso believe their line of farm based furniture can survive and prosper. Tom Franta says working in the company's favor is the growing trend of "buying green" emphasizing renewable products.

"We're not harvesting anything from the forest," Franta says. "This is coming from what they consider a rapidly renewable resource. Which takes four months to grow, either sunflower seeds or wheat."

Franta says several states and parts of the federal government are mandating that new buildings be environmentally friendly, with good indoor air quality. Franta says the company does not use formaldehyde based glues. He says that makes the company's furniture a good match for the new buildings. Franta says the environmental link could be the sales pitch which propels the farm based product into wider acceptance.

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