Shenandoah Valley Farmer Constructs Area's First Biodiesel Production Facility

Andrew Jenner
Virginia Correspondent

PLEASANT VALLEY, Va. — The way Ian Heatwole sees it, the biodiesel refinery he hopes to build just south of Harrisonburg is better than a win-win. It’s a win-win-win-win, he says – for local farmers’ pocketbooks, for energy independence, for the environment and for the overall efficiency of the agricultural economy.

Consider soybeans, about 450,000 bushels of which have been grown, on average, in the Shenandoah Valley counties of Augusta, Rockingham, Shenandoah and Page over the past decade. While producers can roast their beans locally, (Heatwole now operates a roaster at the facility he hopes to convert to biofuels production), the oil that remains in roasted beans prevents livestock producers from using them as their only source of protein for their animals. Instead, they have to supplement with soybean meal, from which nearly all of the bean’s oil has been removed (and manufactured into other products, like biodiesel). The catch is, soybeans aren’t processed into meal and other byproducts on a commercial scale anywhere in the Shenandoah Valley. That being the case, the significant portion of the Valley’s soybean crop that isn’t roasted or otherwise used locally has to get transported far away for processing and then trucked back for end use.

“That’s really the rub. I’m selling my soybeans to a crushing plant in southern Virginia, and turning around and buying soybean meal from southern Virginia, and paying the freight [both ways],” said Anthony Beery, a farmer who raises custom heifers in Rockingham County and plants about 75 acres of soybeans each year.

In late February, after a lengthy approvals process, the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors approved a special use permit that will allow Heatwole, once he’s satisfied the permit’s conditions, to crush local soybeans into meal and refine the oil into biodiesel. While year and a half of delay – mostly over concern raised by county zoning officials about the propriety of commercial fuel production on land zoned for agriculture – was frustrating at times, Heatwole says he’s now “excited and eager to be proceeding as fast as [I] can” with bringing the refinery online. His special use permit caps production at 1,500 gallons per day, which translates to nearly 550,000 gallons per year, though the equipment he’ll start with will only allow him to produce about half that amount, he said.

Beery, who supported Heatwole in his effort to obtain a special use permit, owns the Pleasant Valley mill that Heatwole plans to use for biofuels production. They’ve signed a contract that Heatwole will buy the facility once all his special use permit conditions have been satisfied, Beery said.

Heatwole, who usually grows about 200 acres of soybeans on his own farm and rented land in Rockingham and Augusta counties, now buys 20-percent biodiesel fuel from Rockingham Petroleum for use in his farm equipment.

One of the reasons for doing so, he said, is his desire to invest his fuel dollars in domestic agriculture instead of foreign petroleum producers.

“If you can help the farmer instead of the non-farmer, I’ll put my money in the farmer’s pocket first,” he said.

Once biodiesel refined from soybeans became available for local purchase (in the relatively recent past), Heatwole said it didn’t take him long to connect the dots: Soybeans grow in the Valley; the manufacture of biodiesel from soybeans gives a farmer an ideal protein source for his livestock and a homegrown fuel for his tractor; and, the refining of biodiesel from soybeans and other crops isn’t terribly tricky. Thus, he approached Rockingham County zoning officials with his proposal.

“He’s talking about using products that are made from local materials and used locally … which is a great model,” said Chris Bachmann, director of the Alternative Fuel Vehicle Lab at James Madison University in Harrisonburg.

Bachmann, who met Heatwole several years ago at a JMU-sponsored conference on small-scale biodiesel production, said that biodiesel’s gentler environmental impact is another perk to Heatwole’s plans. Citing a 2002 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency study, Bachmann said that, gallon-to-gallon, burning biodiesel rather than conventional diesel results in significant reductions of particulate emissions, hydrocarbon emissions, emissions of carcinogens, and a complete reduction of sulfur emissions, which are major air pollutants. (This before one considers the environmental impact of shipping beans out of the Valley and biodiesel – or any other fuel – in; on the flip side, a true analysis of biodiesel’s impact would have to consider the environmental cost of growing soybeans, Bachmann pointed out.)

“Anything we can do to reduce the pollutants going into our atmosphere is a good thing,” said Bachmann, noting that air quality isn’t one of the Valley’s strong points (nearby Shenandoah National Park is a perennial contender for worst air pollution of any national park in the country). He called Heatwole’s idea “really wonderful from all perspectives.”

There’s one more personal part to this whole thing – Heatwole, 35, has two sons, one or both of whom he’d love to see join him working on the farm some day. That won’t be possible, he said, without building extra room into his operation, the extra hands. It’s just one more win to the situation, if all works out as planned.

It’s hard to tell, at this point, if or how any or all of this will indeed work out as planned, though Heatwole’s best-case scenario is relatively straightforward: all the Shenandoah Valley’s soybeans stay in the Shenandoah Valley, where they’ll feed local livestock and fuel local machinery.

“That would be wild success,” he said.