Kansas rice to help fight childhood illness
The Wichita Eagle
BY PHYLLIS JACOBS GRIEKSPOOR
September 15, 2007
JUNCTION CITY - Within a month, Kansas will begin its first-ever rice harvest.
But this is not your average rice. The crop that will be harvested from about 300 acres of Geary County farmland has been genetically engineered to express a protein found in human breast milk.
It is headed for a processing plant in Junction City where it will become a key product in the fight against childhood diarrhea, the second-leading killer of infants and small children worldwide.
The Junction City plant is the only processing plant for Ventria Bioscience, a California company that has been working on the development of the rice and the method of processing it for eight years. It has been processing at the Junction City plant since June, using rice harvested in other growing areas.
The products being made include a liquid suspension and a powder, both of which contain the protein concentrate in a form that can be added to rehydration fluids and used to combat childhood diarrhea.
Current production at the plant has a market value of about $3 million a year, said Ventria chief executive Scott Deeter. A year from now, the company expects to be producing 20 times that volume.
"We're going into initial test marketing this year," Deeter said. "The initial tests will be in a domestic market with a population of around 250,000. If all goes as expected, we will start the expansion plan."
Ventria has a permit to grow up to 3,200 acres of the rice and contracts with local growers for production. Farmers can expect to earn about $200 more per acre than they could expect to earn from growing irrigated corn or soybeans on the same acreage.
The rice is ground to a flour on the farm and transported to the plant as a flour.
Last week, officials of Ventria, shareholders of the company, city officials from Junction City and state Secretary of Agriculture Adrian Polansky toured the processing plant and the test plots where Kansas State University is growing about a dozen varieties of rice in an effort to see which performs best for protein content, yield and plant health.
"It's been kind of an unusual year in that we've had far more rain that we normally see," said Greg Unruh, Ventria vice president and general manager of the Junction City plant. "Of course, rice loves water, so we're expecting it to do well this year."
The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp. (KTEC) and the Kansas Bioscience Authority were instrumental in bringing Ventria to Junction City. The company had manufacturing operations in Iowa and in St. Louis, but has moved all its production to Kansas.
About 10 people are currently working at Junction City. Unruh said he expects employment to double by the end of the year. The company will also be hiring mechanics and machinery operators to help with the Kansas harvest.
Unruh said he is excited to see harvest nearing and learning how the Kansas-grown product performs in processing.
"It's really rewarding to be part of something that is bringing a new product, new benefits to people and new economic development to Kansas," he said.
Source: The Wichita Eagle
