By Gary DeVon
Northern Okanogan Valley Editor
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Carbon Cycle Crush, the canola crushing oil plant that will soon be operating in Oroville (see front page story) is the training that will be taking place.
Once the oil extracting plant is underway the company plans to use the Oroville operation as a template for at least six others to be opened around the state. The big football field size warehouse that once was part of the Oro Fruit operation, will become a place where similar plants will be set up and training will take place for new operators. After the set-up and training is complete the whole outfit can be picked up and shipped to its new location, making way for the next plant to be put together and the next crew to be trained.
While this Canola Technical School might sound like it will be a short-lived program, there are more communities out there that are looking to start their own operations. According to CCC President Tim King, the company has had inquiries from other states and especially from the Canadian province of Alberta where much of the canola that will be crushed in Oroville will be grown. Since canola is Canada's biggest crop and they only crush about half of what they grow much of the excess seed used to be exported to China and other Asian Markets. However, like apples before it, China and other Asian countries are growing their own seeds. What to do with the excess -- one small part of the solution is to crush the seed in Oroville, but even when the Oroville plant is operating at full capacity, crushing about 200 tons of seeds a day, that will be just a drop in the bucket according to King, who says it makes sense for small facilities to operating close to where the seed is being grown. That's another good reason for local farmers to consider planting canola as a cash crop in Okanogan County. King says he'd like to see 50 percent of the seeds come from the local grower.
So not only will Oroville have a plant employing people at good living wage jobs to crush the seeds into oil, it will also have a training facility for people looking to set up sustainable jobs in their community -- which in turn employs more local people at home. If area farmers start growing the seeds themselves then there's another potential boost to the local economy. After that there are value-added processes that people can do that benefit from a local canola-oil plant, like making Green Diesel (can't call it Bio-Diesel because the soybean industry has patented that name). There has even been talk of making a co-generating plant to make electricity.
It all sounds very exciting, last Saturday we saw that the presses at Oroville can mill the seed into oil for a variety of uses and meal for animal feed. Now with only a few more pieces to the puzzle left to fall into place, like the arrival of the boiler for one, the next thing we should see are trucks from the Canadian prairies bringing seeds to crush at the plant every day, putting people to work.
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