Missouri river bottom south of Sioux City, IA | Sounds familiar for this area too. About 10 years ago two ethanol plants were looking at building in this area. We have the ideal setup with rail transportation, interstate 29 and HWY 30, 175 and 141 plus water and electrical power. Both of the plants were never built. I don’t believe the investors had enough incentives from the local area and were afraid of competing with the Cargill plant in Blair NE. Probably was for the good anyway as the government CRP program has taken 40,000 acres out of production in Woodbury, Monona and Harrison counties since 2014. There are about 60,000 acres total in CRP in those three counties. CRP payment rates of $345 or higher will do that pretty fast. Just a note here - Monona county had the highest average CRP payment rate for 2015 in the corn belt. It was # 9 in the US for counties that received CRP payments that year. CRP has affected the crop input suppliers and machinery dealers and that trickles down to the main streets in small rural towns. Would any farm related business (that includes E-Plants) expand or come into an area were crop acres are being taken out of production for 10 to 15 years?
Tom N.
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E plant cancelled ?
