There’s new hope in the Douglas County agriculture industry these days. And it’s not coming from a weather forecast or predictions of higher commodity prices.

It’s coming from a monthly meeting.

The Lawrence Chamber of Commerce recently started an Agribusiness Network that meets once a month to brainstorm ways to improve the economics of agriculture in the county.

At its meeting last week, 24 people from different segments of the agriculture industry got together to talk about everything from the prospects of attracting a multimillion dollar ethanol plant to smaller goals such as starting a scholarship program to encourage young people to enter the industry.

After a year when drought hit the industry hard by reducing crop yields to well below average, farmers are looking for something positive.

“The agriculture industry hasn’t been too positive for anybody the last few years,” Brian Pine, a Lawrence farmer and chairman of the new group, said. “This won’t be the answer to all our problems, but I think it gives the area farmers some hope that we can find some solutions. It gives us some hope that agriculture can still be viable in Douglas County.”

Seeking value

One of the larger goals of the group is for farmers and other business people who have an interest in agriculture to come together to think about nontraditional ways to expand the agriculture industry.

In an increasingly urban county, thinking innovatively is a must for today’s farmer if he hopes to survive, said Bill Wood, Douglas County extension agent.

“Just think about it,” Wood said. “If a farmer is renting a quarter section of ground and it gets sold off for a housing development, where is he going to find another quarter section of ground to farm?

“In Douglas County, he’s not going to find one. If he wants to keep his same amount of revenue, he’s going to have to figure out ways to grow more high dollar crops on less ground.”

That effort is already under way. Pine’s family, for example, grows turf sod on large amounts of their acreage. Other farmers have turned to such nontraditional crops as grapes, flowers, asparagus and pumpkins to supplement their income.

Thinking beyond the field

The new group hopes to spur other similar ideas that farmers can make work in Douglas County. But the group also will be encouraging farmers to think even bigger.

“I think our ultimate goal is whether we can attract a big agribusiness processor or manufacturer to Lawrence that might help area farmers sell some of their commodities at a better price than what they can get on the open market right now,” Bob Rhoton, a vice president with Lawrence’s Frontier Farm Credit, said.

That means projects like an ethanol plant where farmers could directly sell their corn for a premium price, or a soy diesel plant where farmers could have a better market for their soybeans.

“There are numerous possibilities,” Lynn Parman, vice president of economic development for the chamber, said. “This whole idea of value-added agriculture is a very emerging trend in the economic development field.

“That’s one of the major reasons we started this network. There are a lot of other communities that are aggressively pursuing value-added agriculture, and we didn’t want to get left behind.”

One of the communities aggressively pursuing it is the community Parman just came from, St. Joseph, Mo. Parman left a similar economic development position in that community earlier this year. While there she helped a group of area farmers band together to form a cooperative to purchase the recently closed Quaker Oats plant. The plant now is producing organic grain products and area farmers have a new market to sell their commodities.

Farming for KU

Lawrence doesn’t have an abandoned Quaker Oats plant to capitalize on, but it does have Kansas University.

Parman and others believe the area agriculture community can become players in the city’s emerging life sciences industry. For example, pharmaceutical companies in other parts of the country already are paying farmers to grow genetically modified corn, soybeans and wheat. The crops aren’t harvested for food purposes, but rather are used in the production of drugs. Researchers are finding they can extract specific genes, proteins and amino acids from the crops cheaper than they can produce them in a lab.

“It is all in our imaginations right now, and we’d be the first to admit we don’t know what is possible yet, but we think with having KU here, we at least have a chance to be a part of something like that,” Wood said.

But it will take a bit of an attitude change in the way farmers think about doing business.

“Farmers may have to own more than a combine or a tractor,” Wood said. “They may have to own a piece of a plant or a piece of a company.

“It may sound crazy, but it could happen where 10 or 20 farmers get together and tell a KU researcher that they’ll help him get his company started in exchange for having a contract to be his crop supplier.”

A future for farming?

But can this really happen in Douglas County, a county perhaps better known for Birkenstocks than bean stalks?

Group members admit Douglas County isn’t exactly thought of as a hub of agricultural activity anymore, but they think that is a hurdle they can overcome.

For one thing, Wood said, the industry already is more significant to the county’s economy than most people realize. He said according to recent state statistics, the county still has 223,000 acres of land that is classified agriculture, and the industry produces on average $20 million to $40 million a year in crops in Douglas County, depending on the weather and markets.

“It is arguable whether we are still a rural county or not, but we definitely are in a very unique location in our state,” Pine said. “We can use that to our advantage. We’re close to large metro areas, we have good transportation, and we are in the garden part of the state. We have enough rainfall that we can grow a lot of different types of crops.”

The area’s population, which can sometimes be a detriment to crop production, may be an asset in attracting a value-added company to town. That may give Lawrence an advantage over communities in more agricultural areas, such as western Kansas.

“We have a population base where a company would have a good supply of workers,” Rhoton said. “Not only that, we’re a community where it is easy to attract employees to come here and live.”

But one of the biggest assets may be the new group itself. Pine said he’s excited about the group because it brings a wide variety of people together to talk about agriculture. He said unlike other farm groups the membership was not exclusively farmers, but also included bankers, landscapers, venture capitalists and other professionals.

Parman said St. Joseph had a similar type of committee while she was there. She credits much of that community’s success in attracting agriculture-related firms to the group.

“I think this group has a lot of potential,” Parman said. “In terms of attracting a value-added agriculture project to town, I think the most important thing is it takes a group of people who say we want to pursue this, because it won’t just happen on its own. We have that group now.”