The State of Local Food with Dean Williamson
Montola Dries Up
By Dean Williamson, 5-08-09
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Some depressing news for those in northeastern Montana—and for all of us who support our growers and local food system. Montola, which made sunflower, safflower and canola oil from locally grown seeds, has closed up shop; the US Department of Agriculture has stepped in to sell the remaining stock of seeds.
Montola built its seed-crushing facility in 1956, and so had been a fixture in the Culbertson area. It employed up to 28 people, but beyond that, it had contracted with area farmers and was committed to them:
When you buy Montola, you are connected to the farmers that grow the oilseed crops from which we express our oils. Your connection to the farmer is very important! By the way, these are not just any farmers. They are family farmers that have been producing crops for generations. Let’s face it; farming is not an easy business. We will be the first to tell you that. What’s more, not only are you buying outstanding oil, you are getting this oil from seeds grown through a network of outstanding family farms. These family based farming operations are led by dynamic and thoughtful individuals.
In 2005, Montola was purchased by Sustainable Systems, LLC, of Missoula. Sustainable Systems produces biofuels in Missoula, but they have recently forfeited their commodities license to the state after failing to pay farmers for oilseeds grown in 2008, according to company financial records.
It seems that Montola is paying the price for Sustainable Systems’ business failures, as the Montola oilseed crushing plant in Culbertson sits idle for lack of capital from Sustainable Systems. The causes of the demise of Sustainable Systems remain speculative, since the company is not talking. The disappointment for Montola is that a promising, sustainable market for area growers is no longer.
Curiously, I can’t even get to the Sustainable Systems website; it’s password protected, which is a trick, since I cannot even access the site to try to arrange for an account.
For more on this story, see Tom Lutey of the Billings Gazette; he’s way out ahead on this story:
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Comments
Spreading the joy. The swinging dicks from Ecotown Missoula went to the Eastside to show the boys and girls of the soil how the new world will work. The farmers didn't need the lesson. They have had those kinds of lessons before. Ask anyone who sends lambs to the slaughter house, or beef, has the grain price set by Cargill. That "Sustainable" was in the title of the owner of record is the big ha-ha, chortle, snort of this deal, and shows that a name is not a business plan. It was sustainable as long as oil was $145 a barrel, and the taxing bodies were giving away Other People's Money to subsidize the effort. "Subsidized Sustainable Systems" would be a better fit for the name. And, laws to prevent oil from going below $145 a barrel would help, or enough gas and diesel taxes to keep the price above $4.00 a gallon. Socialism works it magic once again. Damn the markets, full speed ahead. It isn't our money. It is for the common good as we see it, and the commoners ought to be damned happy to have such concerned people as us doing the good work, the heavy lifting of sustaining the earth. NOT.
If I sound cynical, it is because in Oregon, we have the Portland area Metro Transit District buying $7.00 a gallon biofuels from a producer in Oregon's grain belt. It is a long term contract. Of course, a payroll tax supports the Transit District. Even if you don't ride the bus or light rail, you are paying the tax because you don't get the money the boss has to pay on your every working hour to the transit district to buy fuel $5 a gallon over market. Pissed away, that money, just thrown to the winds. Or spent well, if you are of the mind that we need a socialist way of life.
Add to that the state of Oregon invested $200,000,000 in a biofuels plants that lasted a grand total of 7 months before being shuttered and given up for bankruptcy. Yep. Seven whole months. Asked if they had thoughts about how to differently encourage biofuels use other than pouring $200 million down a rat hole, our ignoramus of a Governor's bright advisor said that the Governor would not have changed a thing. Would have done it no matter. That said, and Oregon lacking several billions of dollars to fund the State budget for the next biennium, a couple of hundred million would have kept schools open for the whole of at least another week across the State...maybe two. But nooooo. We will be featured in Trudeau's comic strip again.
The aura, the look of, the attention to, being "green, " is more important than education. But that is who the Governor, and the whole of Oregon urban majority, are. It is perfectly fine to piss away millions on subsidies that lead to some sort of ephemeral good, some will o' the wisp idea of "doing our part." It makes people feel good about themselves, at other's expense. Win-win deal.
So when informed that the most sure and fastest way to reduce green house gases in Oregon was to cut wildland fire by half, which would produce an annual green house gas reduction of at least 10%, and in higher fire years, as much as 25%, there was not a whisper of reply. Not a nod of the head to such an outlandish idea. Fire is GOOD! It makes the forests HEALTHY. And that from a Governor, and a Democrat urban majority in the State Legislature that is filibuster proof, having now rammed through an end to field burning by farmers because smoke is a HEALTH HAZARD!! Hell, carbon particles from burning vegetation land on ice and cause the glaciers to melt. So ending field burning, and having a robust fire season on the two thirds of Oregon that is not farm land or urban, but range and forests, is fine? Go figure. Two hundred million would pay for fire fighting costs for several years on State protected lands. Like a decade. Or it would keep an extra hundred state cops patrolling the highways for a decade. Lots of uses other than pissing it down the drain of Edenic dreams of cheap biofuels from corn and other grains. 7 months it ran! The plant never did pass the sulfur test and get the fuel below acceptable sulfur limits, and then closed down. Never did run at full capacity, make a legal and suitable product, and Oregon is out $200 million dollars, down 125 jobs, people won't get paid, and ..."we would do it exactly the same way again...no regrets""
Yep. Cynical. And very wary, now, of how the left will pour money into socialized global warming Ponzi deals. Even though algore made a billion dollars selling fart jars of carbon credits, and saved enough oil to slick back his hair, he is still the stupidest pile of adipose that ever pooped behind a pair of tasseled pumps. And if you don't believe me, he is a force in making sure that NO FEDERAL GROWN VEGETATIVE MATERIAL, (READ TREES, BIOMASS OF ANY KIND), CAN BE CLASSIFIED AS RENEWABLE FOR BIOFUEL ELECTRICITY OR HEATING PRODUCTION. Yep. And, he was an important part of the creation of the Northwest Forest Plan. Testified to that before a Congressional committee a week ago. Let's see. That was a sustainable 1.2 billion board feet of timber every year. Never hit 500 million for three years running. We are, then, to consider meeting the green house gas emissions goals never, but it will be considered a success is we hit maybe 30 or 40% of the goal? That is HIS measure of success. Making sure NO vegetative matter from Federal lands ever get used, and if it does, the tax credits to create the biomass burner, the biofuels extractor, is void and the credit money now due and payable. Doe that make sense? Genius Algore thinks so. And, he is the messiah of green house gases.
When Armand Hammer corrupted his father for Joe Stalin, and Al, Sr. got into the Arab horse business with Hammer and the politboro, with their own stud farm in Georgia (USSR--not north of Florida Georgia), and flew Hammer's jet to the farm at will, over the Iron Curtain, the very same air defense system that killed a very good friend of mine on KAL 007, I have a bone to pick with the Gore family. Their's is an ill gotten fortune. His father hanging out with and business partners with, Hammer, who turns out to be a huge Soviet asset, spy as it were, against these United States, was only found out after he died. Gore is the scion of sleaze, and is still at it in his own way. (Kennedyesque, in a way). Flim flam man. Oscar winner. Or was that Oscar Weiner? Bad science set to music, and the supplicants in State government can piss away hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars to follow the tom foolery of that windmill tilting. The last Oregon Sec. of State, Bradbury, spent two years tolling the bell for gore, et al, and did it on State time, while his salary was being paid by taxpayers. No conflict there. I come by my suspicions of government in the alternative energy business because I have observed how wrong it has gone to this point in time. And the builder of the Prius (Toyota)lost more money last quarter than did General Motors. We never get the whole picture, the whole story.
Nice to see that you have an active mind that can change!!
When socialist Democrats engage in commercial enterprise, they use your money to fill in the voids in income from poorly conceived ideas. No damaging or lasting economic pain for the Governor. He and his majority can spend it, piss it away, without pain. The entrepreneur has pain. And legal consequences. The biofuels bandwagon got overcrowded and many fell off, with pain as a result. If it is serving the Green Agenda, how can it fail? Easily. Very easily. Dollars vote. They go to where they are most appreciated. Reduction in fuel use at $145 a barrel took that last 2% of demand away that drives up the price. And then it fell to below $40 a barrel. It will stabilize at $70 in the near future. The biofuels folly is because of mandates and subsidies. If it saves money, there will be plants everywhere without government subsidy. If the price is too high, the market will retract. We are in a prolonged market retraction for a lot of things. But they will all rebound and shortages will be there in many areas if only because the retraction takes out more than the average need over time.
Al Gore Junior is the scion of sleaze in Congress. Not the first, either. Gore Senior was the legislative handmaiden for Occidental Petroleum, Armand Hammer, and Russian dictator Stalin through Hammer. Read the books.
Gore Junior testified to a congressional committee two weeks ago that it is right that Federal lands cannot produce sustainable wood fiber to be made into biofuels. The bill in Congress to create subsidies for biofuel production precludes fuel from Federal lands as raw material for these proposed production facilities. Taking a thinning of Federal brush or small trees to one of the those plants will be illegal. I guess that every stick produced, every minor limb, will have to be painted yellow before it can be removed from Federal lands. Gotta keep that stuff from illegal use in biofuels. I have been there. Log export prevention provisions. Broke my arm falling off a log truck trying to make sure a pecker pole had paint on both ends on a load of pulp so it would not slip into the export log deck. Like that would happen. Gore said in light of past practices, loggers can't be trusted. He should know, the scion sleaze and Soviet spying, the Arab horse business, and selling Angus bulls for tens times their worth to "special friends" who came to the Gore bull sales in Tennessee. He is the one you should not trust.
You see a legislator, a politician, raising breeding livestock of any kind or species,, and I will show you how they get paid under the table but above board. You can't stop two rich guys from bidding against each other for a piece of crap bull, and all the money goes to the seller----you guessed it----your congressman, governor, whoever. Senatorial pay didn't rent that Gore hotel suite for two decades. It was a deductible living expense against livestock sales. Just like breeding livestock gets special go fast depreciation from the IRS by way of the Congress. Taking care of their own.
So when your house burns from the "escaped" WFU or AMR governed fire this summer, fire out of the roadless area, send algorejr a thank you card. He wanted your house to burn because your house burning was a better outcome than, heaven forbid, trusting a logger.
I lived free in a line shack for two years while going to college. I just had to ride fence to get the free digs. Good unless the wind blew. Then you couldn't light the stove in the main room. Wind would blow out the match. The guy who owned the ranch the last year I was there was the Democrat Big Kahuna for Oregon. He raised registered Devon cattle. So did Senator Wayne Morse, future Governor Straub, and other lesser Democrat wannabes. My grad school education on political reality took place right there. When we branded, two bank presidents, the head of PUC, ODOT, several legislators, and of course, the usual known Devon breeders always were there. Gore Angus or Arabs, or Wayne Morse Devons. The Democrat Way to fund politicians. Morse's "ranch" was 25 acres inside Eugene city limits, a property he bought in his pre WWII days as Dean of the UofO law school. My Dad's advisor in law school.
The legal way to gain access and favors. I was never able to ask a Devon if they were against the war in Viet Nam. However, I did get to eat some of an asexual Devon bull, in the form of hamburger. Old Ferd we called him. Never mounted a cow. They even painted his chest like a ram to see if any paint stuck to a heifer or a cow. Good looking bull. I suppose we should have called him Rock due to his looks.
I did get to see a lot of embassy blue Buicks with whip antennas, smoke windows, a body guard or two, Stetson Open Road hats, Eddie Bauer coats, twill pants, fine boots, lots of understated saddles and rigging, and expensive horses. Shiny new gloves on every hand. There were local buckaroos to pick up the slack, as the Holmes' Red Arrow Hereford Ranch was just down the road. I read a biographical tale of AlGoreJr. and when it talked about his Dad's bull sale, and a neighbor commenting that Gore would get $10,000 for a bull not as good as any of his, and he never got two thousand for one of his. Crazy, the man said. Those celebrities are crazy. Sure. Like foxes.
Or crazy like government shoveling money into biofuels, ethanol, without due diligence, proper vetting, testimony and scientific inquiry. Fuel is a commodity. You either get extremely rich in commodities or extremely broke. The silk merchant does well forever, but never is the mogul a cotton merchant can be. Or deadbeat broke like a cotton merchant can be. We need silk merchant energy deals. Not cotton merchant deals. We cannot afford government playing in something as volatile as commodities. Fuel is a commodity.