A little over a year after its grand opening, the Ag Innovation Campus (AIC) in Crookston, Minn., has announced that operations at the soybean-processing plant have ended.

AIC, a not-for-profit facility, was built to be an incubator for agricultural innovations, initially for soybean products. It was intended to be a three-phase project, with the first phase being a soybean crush plant that produced an estimated 240 tons of soybean meal daily, with the ability to crush organic, non-GMO and GMO soybeans.

“As with any startup, there are risks — not everything goes according to plan,” says Erik A. Ahlgren of Ahlgren Law Office in Fergus Falls, Minn., who serves as legal counsel for the AIC board. “I think the organization made some real progress in developing new processes for soybean production, but they just ran out of funding.”

Making matters worse, an early August fire in the bean-conditioning system “was the last straw,” Ahlgren says.

Phase two was to feature an office complex and research labs, and phase three was expected to consist of rentable discover bays that companies could use to prove their designs at full production scale.

In a statement on the AIC website, the board says that project funding in large part came from AgCountry Farm Credit Services, as well as investments from private entities and grants from various institutions. The project also received checkoff funding support from the Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council and the United Soybean Board.

Moving forward

Hopes are that the facility can be sold “as an ongoing operation or, however the assets are moved to a new use, the proceeds from the sale are going to go first to the priority-secured creditor and then to any other secured creditors,” Ahlgren says. “Creditors get paid first.”

Echoing the hopes of finding a buyer for the facility, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture says in a statement that it “will work to support a potential buyer for the facility.”

The MDA statement goes on to say: “The closing of the Ag Innovation Campus is disappointing news for farmers and the surrounding Crookston community. Research into value-added agriculture is critical to the continued success of our farming industry.”

Ahlgren stressed the commitment that the board had in addressing that need for research and innovation. “They worked for probably three-plus years prior to it getting started to get this thing up and running,” he says. “It was all volunteer effort, and they’re committed to the idea of developing new production processes for soybeans in particular. I think the idea of having an innovation campus that’s an incubator for agricultural innovations is a good idea, and not everything works, and sometimes you’ve got to just move on.”

Speaking for the board, Ahlgren says the hope is that the “new owner will operate this facility as a soybean production facility. We think that’s best for the community, that’s best for the industry, and we’re hoping that the work that was done will be able to be utilized in the future.”