Millard County commissioners agreed to sign a memorandum of understanding last week with the Six County Association of Governments in a regional economic development project to locate an industrial-sized ag processing facility in Juab County.
The memorandum does not yet require funding assistance from the county but likely will include a request in the future, officials said.
Darin Bushman, a Piute County commissioner—Six County serves the interests of Millard, Juab, Piute, Wayne, Sanpete and Sevier counties in the Central Utah region— gave a presentation on the project proposal during a September commission meeting.
He said the effort began as a means of improving the profitability of small family farming operations across the area who were being squeezed by the ag sector’s corporate behemoths.
“Time and time again, everything we came back to was small family agriculture is in big trouble. Corporate farming has really taken quite a bit of control. I would say monopolistic control of the producer prices as well as the retail prices…that’s because there are basically four corporate entities that control the entire market,” Bushman said.
“We started looking at several models that would improve the profitability of local agriculture, small family agriculture. One of the models that has gained a lot of traction is…a producer to consumer model. So people can buy their food products from local producers and know where it comes from. There’s quite a bit of interest in the market place for that type of opportunity,” he added,
Using the example of beef producers, the Piute County commissioner said small Utah beef processing outfits are being swamped, scheduling work sometimes as many as 16 to 18 months out. Large beef producers, he said, are having to ship cattle out of state for finishing and processing, with product returning to the state for sales at stores. He also cited a recent university study showing that demand for beef products in Utah outstrips supply by as many as 775 head of cattle a day.
Six County officials started working with small ag processors to figure out what could be done to ease this problem.
Three questions in particular were noted: how to finance a large processing facility in Central Utah; where to locate it to benefit the region as a whole while avoiding residential encroachment; and, third, how to deal with wastewater from such a facility.
Bushman said Six County had previously engaged with numerous large processors that would relocate to the region but couldn’t reach agreement with local municipalities on how to handle the resulting wastewater.
Bushman then went on to say that Six County officials have located a desirable place, with the requisite infrastructure and hired three engineering firms to produce a feasibility study. At one point he said the community chosen for the Agri Park would likely use restrictive planning and zoning requirements to keep larger competitors from moving into he area to better compete.
Millard County was the final county to be invited to sign an MOU for the project—the five remaining counties have already agreed to support the project.
“It’s one of these situations where every county has to look at how this will benefit the region because certainly everyone would like the asset to be in their county,” Bushman said, adding that the new facility would be called the Central Utah Agri Park.
Commissioners said they probably will be asked to contribute all or a portion of funds provided for economic development by the state, thanks to a 2020 piece of legislation, SB95. Millard County receives an annual allocation of up to $200,000 in state economic development funds from SB95.
Bushman said Six County is also devoting its SB95 allocations to the processing project.
Commissioner Dean Draper said he supported the project.
“The agri center would be large enough that it would also encourage other ag related businesses,” not just beef processing, he said. “I believe that going forward with this would be a good decision for the county and it would benefit those people in it. We understand that it’s not in Millard County, but we have so many agricultural products that need to be marketed and shipped, that that becomes a consideration on my part.”
Commissioner Evelyn Warnick said to her knowledge Six County was not asking for funding yet, but that they likely would in the future. Warnick said the MOU would be an acknowledgment that the county approves the idea and is willing to be a part of it.
There was some question about exactly how the plan would unfold.
County attorney Patrick Finlinson said the MOU was “vague”—an agreement to agree, as he characterized it.
“Basically it says that we are supporting them going forward,” Warnick said.
Finlinson said that the MOU itself didn’t specify what was being supported or where it was supported at.
“I have no legal issues with it. It’s just extraordinarily vague,” Finlinson said. “It doesn’t say anything that Dean just said.”
After a brief discussion, Draper moved to approve the MOU for the Central Utah Agri Park. Warnick seconded the motion.
Commissioner Bill Wright, himself a family farmer, was not present to vote on the measure approving the MOU.
