- [Announcer] "Montana Ag Live" is made possible by the Montana Department of Agriculture, MSU Extension.

(bright music) The MSU Ag Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture.

(bright music) The Montana Wheat and Barley Committee.

Cashman Nursery and Landscaping.

The Gallatin Gardeners Club.

And the Montana Federation of Garden Clubs.

(bright music) (bright music continues) - You are watching "Montana Ag Live" originating today from the studios of KUSM, on the very exciting campus of Montana State University, and coming to you, over your Montana public television system.

I'm Jack Riesselman, long retired professor of plant pathology.

Happy to be your host this evening.

I guarantee you, I'm gonna learn a lot tonight.

And if you stay with us, you're gonna learn a lot about renewable energy because what I found out just a few weeks ago is that one of the largest renewable energy plants in the United States is located right here in Great Falls, and we're gonna learn a lot about that tonight.

Before we do that, before we get into it, let me introduce tonight's panel.

Way on my left is Andrew Swanson.

First time here.

Andrew is a new Ag economist here in Montana State University.

He's a corn husker by trade.

But I'm not gonna hold that against him, because that's where I came from a long time ago too.

Andrew, welcome to the program.

And my special guest tonight is Matt Upmeyer.

Matt is the Feedstock Director, and he'll tell you what feedstock is in a minute, for Montana Renewables that's based in Great Falls.

And it's a big company that's grown pretty rapidly in the sustainable fuel industry.

You all recognize Frank Etzler.

Frank is our entomologist.

If you have any questions about entomology tonight, Frank was here to answer 'em.

We always have a lot of bugs, although it's been pretty chilly for the bugs.

- Yeah.

- To be very active, but we'll get to 'em later on.

And of course, Abi Saeed.

Abi is a horticulturalist.

She's kinda the bones of this program.

So if you have any questions about horticulture or growing things tonight, Abi will answer 'em.

Answering the phone, Judge Bruce Lobel.

Used to be Chief Water Court judge, we've recruited him.

We can't get rid of him.

He likes coming here.

And Vicki Young, so.

The phone number will be up there shortly.

Get your questions in, and before we start answering those questions, Matt, tell us a little bit about what you do for Montana Renewables, and especially a little about your company.

- You bet, yeah.

Well, thanks for having me tonight.

I'm looking forward to the discussion.

Yeah, so my responsibility for the company is to source and trade all the feedstock that we use.

And I can tell you it's a lot of it, right?

We use about 7,400 rail cars of feedstock just to supply the plant on an annual basis.

So Montana Renewables is the renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel plant that's located in Great Falls.

And that was actually a legacy Calumet Refinery that they converted half of that asset into renewable fuel production.

So up until a couple years ago, or really a year ago, we were the largest sustainable aviation fuel producer in North America.

So we've had a couple of competitors that have one-upped us a little bit, but we've just gone through an expansion, and now we're capable of producing about 120 to 150 million gallons a year of sustainable aviation fuel.

So I'm sure we'll get into it, but sustainable aviation fuel is just as it sounds, the drop-in that goes into that hard to decarbonize area of aviation, so.

- It's a low carbon fuel, which is a positive, right?

- Yes, yeah.

Yeah, so one of the things about that plant, we're uniquely located to really to source the feedstock and also to supply those markets that are consuming a lot of those fuels, right?

Whether it's renewable diesel, or sustainable aviation fuel, right?

And aviation is one of the hardest to decarbonize areas, right?

There's not a whole lot of other alternatives.

There's certainly some work being done on other sort of second generation fuels that might be able to power airplanes in the future.

But today, a liquid fuel is really our best alternative and it's one that we're taking action on to help decarbonize.

- Okay, thank you.

I'm gonna ask Andy down there.

I'm gonna say Andy, but it's Andrew.

Either way, it's you.

Low carbon, say regular aviation fuel is 100% carbon emission.

What would a lower carbon sustainable fuel emit in carbon?

- Yeah, so to qualify as a low carbon fuel, the emissions have to be at least 50% less than petroleum jet fuel.

However, it can get lower than that.

And so as we talked for the show today will be different types of feedstocks.

And so for something like soybean oil, that's one thing you can make sustainable aviation fuel out of.

That'll be around a 50 to 60% reduction.

Though if you make it out of tallow, that's gonna be around 70% reduction in emissions from petroleum jet fuel.

So at least 50%, but it can get higher than that.

- Okay.

You mentioned feedstock.

Now if I think of feedstock, I'm thinking of something you give animals.

- [Matt] Sure.

- So would you explain what feedstock is in renewable energy terms?

- Absolutely, yeah.

So our plant has a robust pretreater system, so our feedstock slate is pretty diverse.

We can handle anything from beef tallow as a feedstock source to make these renewable fuels.

Used cooking oil, distillers' corn oil, soybean oil, canola oil.

Any of these will work in our facility, because we've got a good robust pretreatment system.

And what that pretreater does is just remove the contaminants that might foul our catalyst in the process.

So, many of these feedstocks actually are derived from the same spots that you would buy soybean oil for example.

It could go into the food industry, but we buy it in a crude form, and then we do that treatment ourselves, right?

So yeah, so the feedstock slate is really diverse.

Our goal is always to optimize for that feedstock and they're not all the same, right?

As Andrew mentioned, certain feedstocks carry a lower carbon intensity.

And that lower carbon intensity has benefits and is more desired in certain jurisdictions and for certain products, right?

So what we do is we try to optimize that book, making sure we're sourcing the right feedstock, not only for the plant, but also for our customer's needs, right?

So if they want a feedstock that is used cooking oil based for a certain sustainable aviation fuel, we can supply that through our facility.

- So before the program, you kinda shocked me with, when you told me how many acres of canola you would need to run your plant for one year.

You might share that with the audience.

- Yeah, it is kind of a staggering stat, right?

So the state of Montana, which we think there's a huge upside in terms of oil seed production in the state of Montana.

Currently, we produce around or grow, I should say, around 200,000 acres of canola.

If we ran our plant solely on canola oil, it would take about 1.8 million acres, right?

So about a nine-time increase in that.

So again, we think there's a real opportunity for Montana agriculture, whether it's canola, or whether it's camelina.

We've used some camelina oil as well.

But an oil seed in rotation with wheat, I think is a real opportunity and the one missing piece of that is gonna be crush, right?

So we really need to see a crusher in the state of Montana to crush all that canola that's produced, and turn it into oil and meal.

And the meal is a very viable animal feed, right?

And it goes into a lot of diets, it's a high protein source.

And so, yeah, so I think, again, not only for the renewable fuel side, but also for the livestock industry, and could benefit from crush in Montana.

- Okay.

We'll get back to you.

We got a lot of questions coming in.

But before we get there, I'm gonna throw a quick one to Abi.

And this came from Great Falls, your background there.

"With the recent moisture, caller suddenly has an overabundance of What is the best product to get rid of it?"

- So I'm gonna start off by talking a little bit about how clover in general, in a lawn setting, the best long-term control for that is gonna be competitive turf grass.

You can use broadleaf herbicide products like 2,4D and Dicamba to help control clover, but unless you have turf grass that's competitive and growing, you're gonna keep getting clover over and over again.

But also clover is fine alongside turf grass that can also benefit the soil.

But there are products, but competitive turf should be a long-term goal.

- So you love pollinators.

Is clover a decent plant for pollinators?

- Yeah, clover is up there in terms of really high carbohydrate source nectar, and really great for bumblebees, especially.

- Okay.

Frank, I've got a question here for lanternfly.

I'll get to you in a minute, but before I forget this, question came in from Billings.

They wanna know where most of the canola is coming from that you use in your plant.

- Sure, yeah.

The canola oil that we use, it comes from all over the place.

A lot of it obviously is Canadian origin.

Canada's a massive producer of canola seed, and they have the crush capacity.

There's been recent expansions, just like in the soybean industry.

Canada's expanded their crush industry as well.

So we do receive canola from Canada, but we also receive from the United States as well.

So from North Dakota and even from Washington State.

So there is one small crush facility in Great Falls also.

Montana Specialty Mills, and we have taken oil from them before, but typically, they're more focused on specialty, so non-GMO, and organic products.

So yeah, a lot of it comes from Canada, but we do receive from the US as well.

- And that's rail car down, I assume, rather than truck down?

- It is, yeah.

So everything we receive at our facility is received by rail.

So we're on the high line of the Burlington Northern Railroad.

And that's a real advantage for us, right?

We have access to all the class ones through interchange, so we can receive feedstocks from really, anywhere around the country.

And that's one of the reasons that that refinery was well-suited, is we've got really good logistics in, access to a lot of the feedstocks that we need to operate the facility, whether it's tallow that's coming from sort of the Nebraska region, or even down into Oklahoma, Texas, Utah.

We can receive all those efficiently.

And then when you look at distillers' corn oil as an example from an ethanol plant, a dry mill ethanol plant, a lot of those are located in the Western corn belt.

And again, flow really well into Great Falls.

So yeah, it's... - Interesting process.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And this has all started since, I think, 2022 in that area?

- Yeah, '22, '23 is when the plant really got ramped up, and yeah, we've been running remarkably well.

Our operations team had obviously a lot of experience in the petroleum side, and they've done a fantastic job of keeping that facility running really consistently.

- Okay, thank you.

From Billings.

What the heck is a lanternfly?

This guy is kind of concerned about 'em.

- Yeah, so spotted lanternfly is a emerging pest in North America for the past few years.

And it's a very beautiful insect.

It's a grayish spotted color.

It's about an inch long, an inch and a half long, and it has a bright red wings.

And it has been spreading through the northeast for the past couple of years or so.

And it's now found as far south as Atlanta, Georgia, just this year.

And it's in Chicago and it's kind of spotty and it's actually traveling along rail lines, so we're kind of watching out there.

So watch, first one to be spotted.

- [Matt] Interesting.

- Lanternflies.

But for Montana it requires a specific host tree, mostly.

There's some recent research that suggests maybe not, it can survive off it, but the host tree is Tree of Heaven.

And Montana does not have Tree of Heaven.

So if it does get to Montana, it's gonna act weird like many things, so.

But we're keeping our eyes out for it.

- That's good.

It's not on that noxious invasive plant list right now.

- Correct.

- Okay.

That's just, I was curious about that.

- [Frank] Yeah.

- Andrew, this is, I love economic questions.

And both of you two can jump in on it.

But this came from somebody here in Bozeman, and they would like to know roughly how much it costs to produce one gallon of sustainable fuel.

Aviation fuel is what they referred to.

So between you two, you guys wanna gimme a figure?

50 cents?

A dollar?

Whatever.

- I can take a stab at it if you want.

Yeah, I mean, it varies by plant and by product, right?

So if you're making more sustainable aviation fuel, you make a little bit more naphtha and that increases your cost a little bit.

Just 'cause the naphtha's a lower value product, right?

So if you're talking about just plant operating costs, that would be somewhere in the, call it 60 to to 80 cent range.

And that varies by the plants.

I'm trying to give you kind of a wide range of our competitors and ourselves, right?

But the cost of the feedstock is roughly, call it 80 to 85 cents a pound right now, depending on if it's a low CI feedstock or not.

So I guess I don't have a calculator with me, but multiply that by about 7.7 pounds per gallon will give you the cost of the raw inputs, so... - [Jack] Okay.

- Yeah.

- Good answer.

I'm gonna throw that.

You worked a lot more with ethanol years ago, did you not?

- [Andrew] Yep.

- So what's it cost to produce a gallon of ethanol on one of the Nebraska or Iowa ethanol plants?

- Yeah, so the biggest thing that's gonna vary with that is the cost of corn.

But in general, the last several years, the price of ethanol has been like $2 a gallon, or something like that.

And it's gone up, it's gone down.

Corn prices can kind of drive it up and down, but ethanol right now is actually pretty compared to gasoline.

- Okay.

Well, just lost that one.

It went up, but I found it here.

This came in from Facebook from an Eddie White.

Thank you, Eddie.

"Is there any Montana facility or organization that people can provide various home-used oils for the refinery to use?"

Excellent question.

- That's a great question.

So I assume he's talking about used cooking oil.

We don't use used motor oil, so we're talking specifically about cooking oil.

That's the oil that we would use.

There are, I'm sure there's collection areas.

There are certain companies that have really focused on used cooking oil as an industry.

So you guys have probably noticed behind restaurants or bars, there'll be an actual bin.

It looks like a dumpster, but it's very specifically says, "used cooking oil," or "used grease only."

So what they do is, in the old days, before this industry kind of emerged, they would actually pay to have this stuff taken away.

'Cause it was a, they had to dispose of this after they emptied their fryers out.

It's turned into now they're actually getting paid for this used cooking oil, right?

So an industry has kind of emerged where people collect that, and then they'll take it to a facility in a depot.

It'd be very difficult for us to try to collect in 55 gallon drums from everyone we're taking in 20 plus rail cars per day, right?

So companies have sort of emerged that are collecting that and they'll decant off the water, and make sure they strain out the chicken wings and then they'll clean it up a little bit and we'll take it from there.

- That's interesting, because I was driving to Oregon about a year ago, and we stopped for gas in Superior, which is right on the border of Washington and, or Idaho and Montana.

- [Matt] Yep.

- And there was a truck from Bozeman pumping used cooking oil from a facility like you described.

Do you have any sense how much used cooking oil is actually reclaimed in a state like Montana?

That's a tough question.

- That is a tough question.

I'm not sure what the Montana stats are, but I guess put it this way, there's billions of pounds that are collected across the US right?

So if you think population center, Montana might not be a great example, because the population is fairly spread out.

But if you look at really dense population centers like the east coast, there's a lot of it, just simply because of the population density.

So if you look at markets, I mean the West coast, you're looking really at Seattle and Portland, and maybe Spokane, where there's large collection hubs.

And then from there, everybody's reaching out to collect and bring it together.

But there are local collectors in Montana, for sure.

We've sourced from them.

So it is being collected, and just not as much as maybe you would see in the more densely populated areas.

- It makes sense.

Thank you.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- Abi, back to you.

Caller has a very large old Christmas cactus, and is having issues with flat mites.

He was told they're harder to kill than spider mites, and he's wondering if you have any recommendation for course of treatment.

And Frank, if you have any suggestions too.

I've never heard of a flat mite, have you?

- I'm not familiar with flat mites, but I would like to take a look at that.

So maybe go to your county extension agent with a sample of the mites to see if they can't get that sent to the Schutter Diagnostic Lab to ID it.

So I'm not that knowledgeable about flat mites, but in terms of mite control in general, that is pretty challenging.

I know spider mites specifically, they like the drier conditions, so increasing humidity can help, but I'm not sure about flat mites.

So that's probably a question for your county extension agent to look into what the best option would be.

But there's also issue with resistance to a lot of insecticides and miticides that mites have too.

So I'm hesitant to make a recommendation without knowing more about that.

- Yeah, I'm curious.

When you find out, I wanna know what a flat mite is.

- I will.

- Yeah, I'm also.

- I've never heard of a flat mite.

- Yeah, I'm not sure as well.

- I'll keep you both in the loop.

- Yeah, okay.

We'll learn something.

Andy, from... Andrew, pardon me.

Do you go by Andy or Andrew?

- [Andrew] Generally Andrew.

- I'll try to remember that.

Okay, Andrew, from Miles City.

How large is the market for sustainable fuels?

- Yeah, so we've just had an increase at the federal level.

So we're gonna be going up to over five billion gallons nationally.

And so in the, again, they wanna try to grow this market and so the next couple years we could possibly be hitting over six billion gallons.

And so that's just for the renewable diesel side of things.

Then we have the ethanol side, which is another 15 billion gallons.

And so in total we're looking at over 20 billion gallons of renewable fuels in the United States.

- Okay, thank you.

Question from Matt.

Didn't say where it came from.

"Do you foresee another crushing facility to be built in Montana, or in the Pacific Northwest in the near future?"

- Yeah, that's a great question.

I mean, I think that people are certainly looking at it, Jack.

I mean, I think that the renewable fuel industry got a bit of a boost here.

As Andrew just mentioned, with the recent set two announcement of the RFS and the RVO, renewal volume obligation.

So we have a pretty clear line of sight that we know the next couple of years, the industry's gonna have to have a pretty high utilization rate for biomass-based diesel.

So the problem is, unless you're shovel ready, these plants take a while to build, right?

So someone's gonna have to sort of see where this market's going, and see the growth of canola in Montana.

Frankly, I'm pretty bullish the opportunity.

I think it'd be a great rotation crop for Montana farmers.

I think that we're here as a very large consumer of oils, the biggest in the region.

And so when you look at that oil, we could literally take every pound of oil that's produced from Montana canola into our facility.

And we buy market competitive prices, right?

So it should be a competitive offtake for someone to build the crush.

So I guess I'm optimistic that it'll get there.

We certainly would welcome and support that.

- Yeah, and I'm gonna, I'll jump in.

There might even be some opportunities with the Montana Department of Ag.

I'm not with the Marketing group, but a lot of times they do a lot of- - Yeah.

- Grants.

- [Matt] Sure.

- To grow through agriculture.

Like, so they will probably support some of that work.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- So if you come in with the grant to the Montana Department of Agriculture, you might have some support there too.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- Okay.

Standard question, the only time we're gonna answer it, the rest of this spring series.

Aeration or core detaching?

- So I don't recommend detaching.

Detaching is basically another word for power raking, and it takes little blades and it tears into the turf grass and pulls up a lot of material.

Core aeration either pokes holes in or pulls plugs out.

So I like core aeration with hollow tines better, which pulls those plugs out because that helps better with soil compaction.

Both of these should be done when the grass is actively growing, but I deter people from detaching, because most lawns don't need it, and it can set your turf grass back, and it can be tougher for it to recover.

Core aeration has more benefits than that, and that's what I would recommend.

- I totally agree with you.

No doubt about it.

- It just takes so long for those plugs to all go away though.

- Yeah.

- It does, it does.

A little bit of a sprinkling of water though, and yeah.

- Yeah.

- Interesting question.

I'm not sure we'll have a good answer.

It came from Facebook here in Bozeman.

"Does the use of tallow as a fuel consider the carbon input for raising the cattle?

Or is the tallow a byproduct, or already being produced cattle?"

I'm not sure exactly what that means, but if you guys want to take a guess?

- Take a stab at that?

Yeah, so when they're trying to score everything out for something like tallows, since it's gonna be a small portion of the economic value of processing cattle, and so most of that kind of emissions are gonna get counted towards the beef side of things.

But there will be some sort of component in there.

But since tallow is maybe five, the byproducts in general may 5% or so of the total economic value of slaughtering their cow.

And so most of that's gonna get towards the meat, but there will be some accounting for that, but a small portion.

- A similar, on like distillers' corn oil, for example, right?

So the primary product that you're producing when you make distillers' corn oil at a dry ethanol mills ethanol, right?

They're grinding the corn to make ethanol, they're not grinding the corn to make distillers' corn oil.

So most of that carbon intensity is applied to the ethanol, not the corn oil.

- Obviously, I'm curious.

Who's buying, say, sustainable aviation fuel.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- Where's it go?

I mean, you're producing, you said, 180 gallon, 180 million gallons a year.

Who's using that?

- Sure, yeah.

Just to clarify, our facility produces about 180 million gallons of liquid fuels, not all sustainable So that is a combination of renewable diesel, renewable naphtha, and sustainable aviation fuel.

- [Jack] Okay.

- So after our recent turnaround, where we increased our capacity, we've actually increased the ability to produce sustainable aviation fuel.

So we can produce somewhere between 120 and 150 million gallons per year of SAF.

And that again, is variable.

We've got the ability to throttle that more towards renewable diesel.

It's really kind of comes down to market drivers and economics.

But who's buying it?

That was your question.

So I mean, it goes really to a lot of incentivized markets.

So in some cases, it'll go to Illinois.

They've got a state incentive that actually encourages blending SAF right now.

So you'll see gallons go there.

Other low carbon markets along the west coast and even up into British Columbia will take our SAF as well.

But there's another market where we actually blend, I guess, to back up one step and get a little technical, we actually make at our facility, the pure sustainable aviation fuel that's made from the renewable products that's called SPK or Synthetic Paraffinic Kerosene.

You take that and you blend it with Jet A, and then you make the SAF that gets blended, and sent off to go into an airplane wing.

So we actually do some of that blending onsite in Great Falls.

So it's very possible that if you've flown outta Great Falls, since we sell it to the airport there, that you may have had sustainable aviation fuel on your flight.

So that could have come from our facility.

- Fascinating.

That's interesting.

A question for Abi that came in, I was gonna get to it, I forgot it last week.

The temperature effect on plants.

And I've had a couple questions about why flower and crab apples are so bloom-heavy at this time of year.

It's usually a little later.

You've shown a little bit of frost damage here.

- Yeah, so that's a question that's been coming up a lot this year, is what's gonna happen to a lot of our plant material that's started to leaf out, or flower earlier than expected.

And then we of course have that cold snap that occurs in the spring.

So plants usually will have varying degrees of damage as a result of these cold temperatures.

So you could see different types of damage.

Usually the most sensitive parts of plants are going to be the youngest new leaf tissue, flower tissue as well.

Those are gonna be the most sensitive.

When flowers are buds, they usually have more sugars and more protective compounds that help prevent that freeze damage.

But as soon as they flower, there's some of the most sensitive tissues in plants.

But the good news is plants can recover from this.

So the reason we were seeing a lot of this earlier than normal growth is because we had the cooler kind of fall and then the really warm temperatures, pretty much all winter long, sustained warm temperatures.

And that's confusing for plants.

And a lot of plants that don't have that long chilling requirement end up breaking dormancy, because they think it's spring.

So whether that was February or March or even April, whenever they started to leaf out, they were thinking that a majority of that threat of frost had passed.

That's why we were seeing a lot more growth earlier than expected.

But plants can handle a hit like this.

Most healthy plants can refoliate themselves.

So even if they're completely defoliated, most healthy plants have the energy reserves within their tissues.

They have buds that are on standby that will bloom if these leaves are lost.

And the severity of damage depends on the type of plant, but plants can usually survive.

They're pretty resilient.

- I just noticed something.

That green plants match your green fingernails.

- Yes, they do.

- I just noticed.

Very nicely done.

Frank, grasshoppers, Terry, Montana.

It's been chilly, it's been marginally wet.

Do you foresee that being a positive in reducing grasshopper numbers?

- I do.

I do see it as a positive.

In terms of me hunting for insects, this cold snap right now is gonna knock down a lot of the populations, I think not this weekend, but the weekend beforehand it was beautiful, sunny, high 60s, low 70s, see things flying around.

And now you're not gonna see much flying around now after this cold snap.

So I think it is good for grasshoppers.

It's kind of what you want right now, a cool wet spring.

And the moisture's good too.

- Okay, makes sense.

I hope you're right.

- I do, too.

- Yeah.

- I've been proven wrong a lot of times.

It's hard to predict.

- On that note, we have a Great Falls caller here, that wants to know if there's a source for Nosema, which is kind of a biological control for grasshoppers.

He said the farmer's source factory burned down.

I did not know that.

- Yeah.

Burned down a while ago.

And I don't think there has been anything that comes, has come back into that market since it burned down.

I think it just kind of done.

- Done, that was relatively efficient way of minimizing grasshoppers.

- Yeah, there's a apocryphal story that it was held by a person who made it and he didn't share his method for rearing the Nosema.

So it's kind of lost with him, but it's apocryphal.

That's the story.

- Back to Andrew and Matthew.

I'm using your whole name now, because he corrected me down there.

Anyway, this question came in via Facebook.

It's from Joliet, and they would like to know, if using all that canola oil for fuel will drive up the cooking oil prices, which they say has doubled over the last year or so.

And I probably agree with that.

I know canola oil, which I use quite a bit of, - [Matt] Yeah.

- Has really increased.

From about $2.50 to almost $5 now.

Are you guys partially to blame for that?

- I don't think so, but listen, I'll give you my take, and then Andrew can certainly elaborate.

But I mean, there's a lot of value throughout the entire supply chain.

It's the cost of transporting the canola, it's the cost of crushing the canola, it's, all these things are cost to produce.

So that obviously drives cost and expense as well.

The future's price has not gone up quite as much as maybe you have seen as a percentage in the store.

So no doubt renewable fuels has created new demand, but I don't think it's solely to blame.

I think there's just an awful lot of supply chain costs that have really come in, and it's not just the new demand.

Yeah, so that would be my take on that.

- Yeah, we talked about importing most of the canola oil current time from Canada.

- [Matt] Right.

- Between you two, do you have any clue how many acres or hectares, if you want to go that way, of canola is produced in Canada?

- [Matt] What is it, 20 million acres?

Something like that?

- Yeah, that sounds about right.

It's a lot more than what we do in the US.

- Yeah.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Yeah.

- So you're just taking a small percentage of it?

- It's a small percentage, yeah.

I mean they sell into obviously, a lot of food applications as well, right?

So if you look at where canola oil goes, Canada's also a big exporter.

So they've got good export logistics off of Vancouver.

So a lot of canola's exported canola oil, and seed for that matter.

So yeah, they're a little bit more balanced in terms of their outputs.

- Yep, and there was a big push for camelina here for a number of years.

There's still some growing.

- [Matt] Yep.

- Is that crushed in Great Falls?

Or is that going out of the state?

- Great question.

I'm sure there's probably cases for both, right?

There's probably some small crush that's being done, not on a very large commercial scale, but I know some of it is making its way back to North Dakota as well for crushing.

So yeah, some of that is definitely leaving.

- [Jack] Okay.

- Yep.

- Frank, a quick one.

They keep hearing about the emerald ash borer.

Has it moved any closer to Montana?

- It hasn't moved by states.

It has spread in Oregon.

They found it in multiple locations there.

It's spread beyond their initial detection.

So as always, we're keeping an eye on it.

- Okay.

I hesitate to use this question, but it's from Bozeman.

And obviously this was a physics major that sent it in, and we really don't have anybody with a physics background here, but he says Newton's third law states that every action has an equal or opposite reaction.

I do remember that, even though I didn't do very well in physics.

He would like to know if sustainable fuel is a positive reaction.

Is there a negative reaction that you know of?

- I mean, I guess I'm not sure what maybe he's driving at.

But no, I feel like we're, there's a lot of reasons why sustainable aviation fuel or renewable diesel, or ethanol play a vital role.

Number one, these are all Ag inputs that we can control, right?

So if you look at it, we're keeping a lot more of these Ag commodities in the US.

We're processing 'em into ethanol.

It's a great example, a very strong example of what's happened early on, right?

That was the first big fuel boom was ethanol.

And then you go the next step where you see biodiesel, which was a big wave, and now renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel.

All these are contributing to the liquid fuel markets, right?

So when you look at pricing, and where the liquid fuel markets are going, I think that we are creating not only the decarbonization that goes along with these renewable fuels, but also the fact we're adding to the liquid fuel pool.

I think it's all positive, so.

- Okay, you mentioned that.

We've had a big jump in jet fuel prices.

If you watch the evening news, that's all you'll see.

Airfares going up.

Jet fuel has basically almost doubled, not quite.

Has that been a positive impact for your company?

- Yeah, I mean it's certainly the price of the finished product has been going up.

So we're definitely seeing the price of the finished product go up.

But we're also seeing the price of the feedstocks go up as well.

So margins have improved, and the big reason margins have improved, and again, I think this is pretty universal, whether it's biodiesel, or renewable diesel.

The bigger reason is, the margins have improved is because of the renewable volume obligation increases, right?

So we have to produce more fuel.

And so when you have to produce more fuel, there has to be an incentive to do so.

And that's economics.

Renewable identification numbers are sort of the currency of the RVO, right?

So you use these renewable identification numbers that are attached with the gallons of fuel that are produced, and the price of those RINs have actually increased quite a bit, and that's one of the margin drivers as well.

- Okay.

Andrew, from Malta.

Is sustainable fuels impacting Montana's rural economy at all?

Would you think it does?

Or is biodiesel available to producers at reduced cost, or anything like that?

- Yeah, so for, in rural area Montana, some of your local fuel stations, you may able to buy biodiesel.

And so the supply is there.

There possibly is some renewable diesel, but in the renewable diesel side, mostly that's gonna be in the larger markets.

But there are definitely possibilities for folks in rural areas to buy biodiesel.

I think where we kind of see a lot of the benefits for these rural economies is again, just driving demand for Ag commodities, and just increasing that kind of just pass-throughs down to everyone, right?

I got a friend, he works for the Farm Bureau.

He likes to say that the Ag economies are just the big driver, right?

And so if their economy has a cold, the whole state kind of sneezes, right?

But also if the Ag economy is healthy, the entire state's doing well.

And so I think that's kind of where we see a lot of the benefits for what's kind of happened here with Calumet, and just renewable fuels in general.

It's kind of helping the whole kind of Ag economy space right now to kind of give us some help for this kind of main drive or increase in commodity demand.

- Okay.

Folks, if you got questions tonight, we've suddenly had a lull on the phones, which I don't like to see.

And if I have to make up the questions, the panel's not gonna like it at all.

So get on the phone if you have any questions.

And before I do that, I've forgotten the last two weeks to promote something called "Profitability in Montana Agricultural" podcast.

That's produced by people here at Montana State University.

It's hosted for the most part by Joel Schumacher, who's on this program quite often.

And John Hawley, who is our Communications Director.

It's called "Profitability in Montana."

It's an agricultural podcast.

I've listened to one of them.

Hey, they know what they're talking about.

So you can get involved by checking that out, and finding out a little bit more about how to be profitable.

Chester, this person says how much sustainable aviation fuel is actually being used in Montana?

Do you have any clue on that?

- Boy, I sure I don't have the exact gallons, or how much is being used in Montana, but like I mentioned, we do blend on site, and so some of it is certainly staying here in Montana.

I couldn't give you an exact number of barrels though.

- Okay.

From Bozeman, while you're up.

And it's a good question, I hadn't thought about this.

Can you explain how a crushing facility actually works?

- Absolutely, yeah.

So interesting.

I spent the first probably nine years of my career in the crushing industry.

So I've got a little experience on this.

So there's really two ways you can process oil seed.

There's expeller pressing, which is literally just taking the seed and putting it through a mechanical press.

And you imagine a big auger, you squeeze it through, tighter and tighter corrugation on the auger, and then it squeezes out through some wedge wire bars.

The oil gets squeezed through and the meal stays in there and goes through the auger, right?

So that's just mechanically squeezing the oil out.

So that's the expeller pressing.

And a lot of smaller operations do that.

And the downside is you leave a little bit of oil in with the meal.

That can be a positive if it's going into a certain livestock diet where they need some fat in the meal, so... But that's a lower cost alternative to actually get into crushing is through a mechanical extraction of the oil.

The second way you can do it is solvent extraction.

And that's what is far more common in the large, big commercial crush facilities.

And they'll actually bring in the seed and they'll do a process step to condition it, warm up the seed and kind of free up the cell walls of the oil so they can actually break the membranes and the oil flows outta there more freely.

And then from there they'll, sometimes on a high oil seed, like a canola, you still go through an initial press phase where you squeeze out the first easy oil, if you will.

And then after that you run it through a hexane extractor and you actually use hexane, which is a solvent, right?

And that hexane will wash the oil out of the rest of that cake, and then through distillation, you can distill off the hexane and you're left with the oil.

So that's the commercial methods for doing it.

- I should know this, but I don't.

Percentage of oil in canola.

What is a good average percentage for canola?

- So round numbers, I mean 40%.

Maybe you get more like 42 or 43%.

And on soybeans, it's also, and canola as well.

It varies by crop year.

Some years, depending on the growing conditions, you end up with the right combination of moisture and temperature, and you create a little bit higher oil content in the seed.

And you could probably tell us exactly why that is, what stress that puts on the crop that creates that oil.

But anyway, so long story short is yeah, around 40% oil in canola, maybe 42% soybeans, more like 20% or call it 11.5 to 12 pounds per bushel of oil.

- Okay.

That's pretty good, right?

- [Matt] Yep.

- Camelina fall in that same category too?

- Camelina's gonna be a little lower in oil content.

I think there's some challenges.

I'm not an expert in camelina, but just the seed size makes it a little bit more difficult to- - [Jack] Okay.

- To crush, right?

So maybe not quite as efficient in the crushing process, but yeah, it'll be a little bit lower in oil content.

- All right.

Well, since you grew up in the corn and soybean area, how much oil in a corn, now you hear about corn oil all the time.

Is that a high oil producing crop too?

I would not view it that way.

- No, no.

So corn is gonna produce probably about a pound per bushel, or so.

And so, it's not a high oil crop, but there is still some in there.

And so there's definitely some value in kind of extracting that.

And so this renewable fuels market's kind of been a big boost for these ethanol producers and it's kind of helped them become more efficient in their production process because a lot of times, a lot of that was maybe kind of going into what they call the distillers' grains, which is the livestock feed that comes out of ethanol production.

Now they can kind of separate that out and so kind of get some additional value for these ethanol producers and kind of pull out more of that oil and kind of sell in the renewable fuels market.

- Okay.

Rumor has it that you grew popcorn on the farm that you grew up on?

- Yeah, yeah, we did.

Yep.

We grew for Orville Redenbacher and for another local company.

- And the reason it pops is because water, or oil in the kernel?

- Oh, I think it's the, that's a good question.

- [Jack] I don't know.

I'm curious.

- Well, my guess would probably be the water content.

- Okay.

- [Andrew] Yeah.

- That's probably... When you harvest popcorn, at what moisture will corn, 15, 16%?

- So it's probably gonna be a little bit drier than that.

- [Jack] Is it?

- Yeah.

'Cause it's, you gotta be careful with popcorn, just 'cause it is the food grade, and so you gotta be careful about kernel damage, everything like that.

And so, yeah, and it's also heavier too.

- Thanks, I just had to throw that out, because being a cornhusker, you gotta talk a little bit about corn when you're on this program.

- [Andrew] All kinds of corn.

- Yeah.

All right.

Question from Waterloo.

Interesting question.

And basically what they're asking is how much fuel does it take to produce a gallon?

In other words, in your distillation, or whatever process you use, how much energy does it take for you to produce the fuel, say on a per gallon basis?

Follow what I'm trying to... - Yeah, are you asking like about energy balances?

- [Jack] Yes.

- Yeah, so I'm gonna avoid getting out over my skis on that one.

I can talk all day about feedstock, but when you get into the chemistry of it, and the sort of the energy balances, that's probably best left to our engineers, so.

- Yeah, I don't, I have no clue myself, but thank you.

That question came from Waterloo.

Who knows where Waterloo is?

- [Matt] I do not.

- [Abi] I don't.

- [Frank] I don't.

- It's on the way to Twin Bridges when you leave.

No, I can't, I'm not sure, but it's on the way to Twin Bridges on the east side of the road.

There's a tiny little community in there.

- I would, I'm gonna jump in just randomly.

I don't, it's not my area of expertise, but I would assume because a lot of it comes on rail.

- [Matt] Yep.

- You would think that the cost relative, 'cause rail is, - [Jack] Now that would add to the cost.

- Energy efficient, so.

- Yeah, but rail is very efficient, compared to truck.

- [Frank] Right, yeah.

But I have also not my area of expertise.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- [Frank] Leave it to the experts.

- Okay.

Well let's change the subject to mountain pine beetle.

And what has this mild winter done to increase the damage of mountain pine beetle?

It's an excellent question.

- Yeah, so we'll probably not see the damage now, but because it's a mild winter, you'll have more of them surviving.

So I know in Colorado, they're already experiencing a high levels of mountain pine beetle, so I would expect high levels this summer, especially if it is a drought year like we suspect.

So that stress will add to the mountain pine beetle damage.

So- - [Jack] Okay.

- Probably nothing too much this year, but if it continues like it is, we'll see something especially next year.

- All right.

This caller from Sydney would like to know in what farm does tallow show up at your processing facility?

- In what form?

Yeah, that's a great question.

So we can take a couple different grades of tallow, but tallow actually comes in a rail car, just like you would normally expect.

So just a tanker rail car.

They load it from the rendering facility hot, so it'll be 120 to 140 degrees when they load it.

And then we ship it in insulated rail cars.

They've got coils on the outside, exterior coil where we can actually put steam on the car to heat it back up.

And then the cars are insulated, so they'll make their transit from wherever they were rendered all the way to us.

Typically, you get in the middle of winter in Montana, they come, they're pretty solid, right?

So they'll be solid hard tallow at that point, right?

And so what we do when it gets to the plant is we put steam on those cars, and it'll actually reheat 'em from the outside.

And then we've got a system that we use to kinda agitate those cars to get that all mixed together so it's homogeneous and it's all the same temperature.

And then we get that up to a temperature that we can actually pump it off, and then we just pump it outta the rail car, once it's in liquid form.

- So I like to follow the commodity markets a little bit.

- [Matt] Sure.

- Yeah, and Wall Street Journal, it tells you about the daily prices of corn and soybeans.

- [Matt] Yep.

- Spring wheat, because I've always been interested in spring wheat, working in Montana.

I noticed that there's two categories for tallow.

One is edible tallow and other just says tallow.

- [Matt] Yep.

- What's the difference?

- Yeah, so it really just comes down to the grade, right?

So there's more commonly is BFT, or bleachable fancy tallow, or technical tallow are two of the, are the most common grades of tallow.

And again, it just, there's a difference in the impurities, right?

I don't know the exact spec off the top of my head, but the BFT is the lower grade, the technical tallow is the higher grade.

And then edible tallow, there is a category as well of edible tallow that would be in addition to the tech.

It's certain streams that are separated that are safe for human consumption.

- I'm gonna put a plug in for the Mannix Brothers Ranch, which uses tallow to, beef tallow, - [Matt] Okay.

- To fry their potatoes in.

And you know what?

It's really pretty darn good.

- [Matt] Fantastic, yeah.

- Yeah, it is excellent.

I'm not allowed to do that at home, but when I'm at one of their restaurants in Helena, I do have their fried potatoes that's fried in beef tallow.

- Well, if I'm not mistaken, I think that's where McDonald's all started originally too, right?

Weren't all the McDonald's french fries fried in beef tallow?

- [Jack] Yeah, they got rid of that.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And they used, they're still good, but- - [Matt] Yeah, years ago, yeah.

- They were really good.

Yeah, there's something about frying in beef tallow.

And I grew up when you had a bacon that you used for cooking, but enough of that.

Anyway, from Clancy, the caller grows the same variety of yellow onions every year.

And last year, they all kind of failed and he wonders why you have any idea because they get two of 'em grown together.

And I see that a lot.

Why does that happen?

- I think it could depend on like spacing, but also soil moisture.

So if you have like plants that grow in together or split apart when they're growing, a lot of that has to do with moisture.

Some varieties are more likely or more susceptible to issues like that.

It'd be something worth investigating.

So if this is something you've grown year after year and this is the first time that they haven't worked well, maybe we can investigate further.

So that could be a good question for your county extension agent to help work through those issues.

- Okay, thank you.

From Billings, this viewer saw an article in a paper, he doesn't say which paper.

That the EPA announced finalized renewable volume obligation for renewables.

- [Matt] Yeah.

- And what does that mean?

- Yeah, so that's great.

I kinda hit on that a couple times, but let me maybe explain it a little more clearly.

So the EPA sets the standards for renewable fuels and that renewable volume obligation is just as it sounds, right?

It's the amount of renewable fuels that are the obligated parties, which are the refiners or importers are obligated to blend in with the fuel.

So we've got the set two rule, I think it was March 27 is when that was announced.

And that set those standards, so for ethanol, for biodiesel, for advanced biofuels, and cellulose biofuels, those all have mandates now.

And this isn't new, right?

I mean it's just, this is the newest version of it, right?

So we had the original rule, the set one rule, and set two rule.

And this rule actually goes through 2027.

And so what it called, the baseline called for 8.86 billion RINs, or about 5.4 billion gallons of biomass based diesel.

But in addition to that, the biomass based diesel, which is what we fall under, right?

So that's renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel fall under that category, for EPA RVO and the RFS program.

We also have a likely shortfall in ethanol.

So ethanol has a mandated amount of 15 billion gallons and they'll likely produce something more like 14.6 or something like that, or 14.2 billion gallons.

So because that ethanol is a lower category of RIN, or a D6 instead of a D4 RIN, we can actually fill that part of the mandate as well.

So what it really means is we've got a strong RVO and the Ag products that supply both ethanol producers and biomass based diesel producers.

So again, the soybean farmers, the corn farmers, the canola farmers, right?

They have a lot of demand for this finished product now.

- Okay, a follow up question here.

And this person says, "With less interest in the current administration in renewable fuel, has that impacted your industry?"

And both you and Andrew can get into that.

- Well, I'll take a first crack, then Andrew can give me a, I'd love his perspective too, but I mean, this rule was finalized under the Trump administration, right?

So this is a significant increase, about a 60% increase in biomass based diesel over the previous rule.

So I think that that actually shows that this administration is pretty committed to agriculture, number one.

I mean, these really are programs that do support agriculture.

All the inputs into these programs are largely agricultural, right?

So I think that there's that.

And then the other thing too is energy independence has been certainly a top initiative, right?

And renewable fuels do help on both of those fronts.

So I guess, in short, I mean, this was finalized under the Trump administration.

- Okay.

Andrew, you got anything to add?

- Yeah, I think the only other thing to add to that is there are some other tax credits that the Trump administration has changed the rules on.

And so they've changed the rules to make those tax credits easier for feedstocks that come from agriculture.

So such things like soybean oil ethanol, that they've changed the rules for how they do the carbon accounting now to make it easier for these farm feedstocks to kind of make their way into this kind of supply chain.

And so there's some other factors like that I think have been positive for farmers, in the renewable space over the last kind of year or so.

- Okay, thank you.

Abi, this call comes from Sheridan.

The caller has a four-year-old pear tree and noticed that some of the bark is coming off.

She pulled the bark off and noticed a worm underneath.

She wants to know, is the worm responsible for bark issue?

And if so, how to prevent any future damage?

What do you think?

- I don't think, so when people say worm, it's hard to say what they're talking about.

A lot of larval forms of insects can sometimes be referred to commonly as worms.

It's probably the larval form of an insect that you're seeing.

I can't imagine an earthworm climbing up a tree.

But in terms of when we see bark coming off like that, I don't think that that is primarily attributed to a larval insect.

I think part of that issue could be maybe if you have your pear near a sprinkler system.

That could impact the bark.

Or if it was damaged with the sun scald and things like that in the winter, because pear is a very susceptible tree to sun scald.

And so wrapping the tree next winter can be helpful, keeping an eye on that bark.

If you're seeing any other signs of insect presence, reach out to your county extension agent to identify the exact cause.

But take care of the bark.

Make sure that the trunk doesn't get wet through spraying and wrap it in the fall with one of those white plastic wraps.

Or you could use 50/50 latex paint and water to paint it to reflect the sunlight to prevent kind of splitting and cracking bark.

- Thank you.

This caller says you haven't talked about sunflower oil.

Do you use any sunflower oil?

- I'll tell you, we haven't.

And the reason we haven't at Great Falls, it's typically too expensive, right?

There's a lot of food applications that pay premiums for that.

So if it was competitive with other oils, and we could get the appropriate pathways to go to those LCFS markets I mentioned, certainly it's a viable oil.

From the chemistry side, we can certainly make renewable diesel out of sunflower oil.

It's just a matter of making the economics, and the carbon intensity pathways work.

- I should know this, I don't.

On a oil per acre basis, will sunflower out produce canola?

Anybody have a clue on that?

- Great question.

I think it does.

I think it probably on a per acre basis, it probably produces more oil.

I don't know that for certain, but again, it's all about what that per pound value of that oil is.

If it's going into confectionary or into other food streams that might be higher value there than more commodity oils.

- Okay.

Anything you want to add, Andrew?

- No, I think that sounds good to me.

- Okay, sounds great.

We're getting a little low on time, but I want to get this comment in because I don't think it's quite right.

But this came from Gardner and this person says it takes two and a half gallon of diesel to make one gallon of ethanol.

Is that correct?

- Oh, I mean, how are they calculating that?

- [Jack] I don't know.

- I need to know how they calculate that before I comment on that.

And so, 'cause diesel kind of makes me, but wondering what they mean by diesel?

Are you talking about like diesel used during production of corn?

And so that's kinda, I'm kinda confused why they're enriching diesel, because most ethanol plants run on natural gas.

- [Matt] Right.

- [Jack] Okay.

- And so I'm a little confused what they're, how they're getting the diesel with that one before.

- All right.

We're down to the end here.

A quick answer.

Can you make sustainable fuel out of olive oil?

- I'm sure we could.

Again, olive oil would be extremely expensive, but I'm sure we could.

- [Jack] Well, if you buy olive oil anymore, that's going up too.

- Right.

- There's no doubt about it.

- [Matt] Right.

- Folks, we're down to the last 30 seconds.

I hear the music, which tells us to get outta here.

Andrew, thank you.

First time on the program, we'll have you back.

No doubt about it.

Matthew, thank you for coming down.

It's been enjoyable.

I learned a lot.

Frank, Abi, as usual, thank you very, very much.

Next week, Precision Ag with Ricardo Pinto from Havre.

With that, folks, thank you for watching.

Have a good evening and good night.

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