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Maryland Soybean Board votes to help with biodiesel plant
12.20.05
By BRUCE HOTCHKISS
The Maryland Soybean Board has unanimously voted to help underwrite the cost of a feasibility study for a proposed new soybean crushing plant and biodiesel refinery near Frederick,
Meeting Wednesday, Dec. 14, at Easton’s Tidewater Inn in their regular winter meeting, the board, which administers the national soybean checkoff program in the state, agreed to advance $15,000 in checkoff revenues for the project.
Board representatives had attended a briefing on the proposed biodiesel facility on Nov. 29 and had informed Jeremy and Robert Butz, on whose farm the project would be sited, that their request for financial support would require board approval, which it promptly received at the Dec. 14 meeting.
As envisioned, the Frederick plant would process about 200 tons of soybeans a day. Jeremy Butz said that you can get about one gallon of oil out of a bushel of soybeans.
If constructed, the plant would be the only one of its kind in the area, bringing in raw soybeans from area farmers and churning out refined biodiesel.
It could offer a welcome market for growers in Central and Western Maryland and in nearby areas of Pennsylvania since the collapse of the ADM pier in Baltimore in 2001.
The pier had provided a major export and shipping facility not only for corn and soybean producers in the Northeast but in portions of the Midwest as well.
Maryland growers who used the Baltimore port said their basis slipped by 50 to 55 cents the day after a storm leveled the pier.