NATCHEZ — Across the country, farmers, scientists, businessmen and investors are looking to turn soybeans into gold, and those in the Miss-Lou are no exception.

“Everybody wants to get on the bioenergy bandwagon,” agriculture economist with the MSU extension service John Anderson said. “A lot of people are concerned about our dependence on foreign oil.”

In the Miss-Lou alone, Ferriday Oil Seed, Delta BioFuels and U.S. Sustainable Energy Corp., market themselves as biofuel companies.

One man leading the charge toward renewable fuel in the Miss-Lou is Clint Vegas, president of Delta BioFuels in Natchez.

After being in the fuel business for years and providing diesel to farmers, two events convinced Vegas to try his hand at biofuels, he said.

“Those were Sept. 11 (2001) and (Hurricane) Katrina,” Vegas said. “Both times, I couldn’t buy diesel. And both those incidents happened in the middle of harvest,” which meant the farmers he supplied were in trouble.

So, Vegas started Delta BioFuels.

“This, to me, was the closest I could come to having control of my own destiny in terms of fuel,” he said.

The plant, located near the port, started production in June and soon after signed with international company Aventine Renewable Energy, Inc. to purchase the bulk of their product.

The plant currently produces 26,000 gallons of biodiesel a day, Vegas said. They hope to be shipping out 300,000 gallons a day in the not-too-distant future.

According to the United Soybean Board, nearly 50 percent of soybean farmers surveyed said they use soybean-based biofuel.

Adams County farmer Ross McGehee said he would use biodiesel if it were available locally.

“Our suppliers do not provide biodiesel because they can’t get enough,” he said.

Some production companies are promoting make-your-own soybean biodiesel, but McGehee said he is too worried about oil purity to consider it.

“I don’t want to burn up a $30,000 engine,” he said.

A bushel of soybeans yields 1.4 gallons of soybean oil. From there, Vegas gets a gallon of fuel for every gallon of oil they process, he said.

Vegas said he would love to buy oil from locally grown soybeans, but the oil produced in the area isn’t pure enough for him to use.

Soybeans, used to make biodiesel, and corn, for ethanol, are used because at one time, those materials were cheap and plentiful, Vegas said.

Now, soybean prices are so high, it’s forcing Vegas to hold back production.

“The soybean market is really a small market,” Vegas said. “It didn’t take much involvement by speculators to drive the price up.”

Farmers like McGehee might not mind paying for the more expensive biofuel if the price is driven up by commodity prices, McGehee said.

“I’d rather see soybeans at $10 a bushel and (biofuel) at $2 a gallon than soybeans at $6 a bushel and $1.85 a gallon fuel,” he said.

How much the market for biofuels will grow will depend on more than crop availability and pricing, Anderson said.

“It’s not just a matter of domestic support, but also one of trade policy,” he said. “Countries like Brazil, which has become very adept at producing biofuels from sugarcane, have potential in this market as well.”

However, the futures markets do play a role in what farmers decide to grow by forecasting expected demand for certain crops, Anderson said.

“These expectations are just a snapshot of what we think today,” he said. “What it says today is not what it is going to say tomorrow, but it’s a good summary of our expectations, and farmers consider that.”

Delta BioFuels isn’t holding itself to just one product, or feedstock, from which to make fuel.

In the $1 million lab, along with monitoring quality, technicians try different methods with new feedstock.

“We’ve been experimenting with palm oil, canola oil and rapeseed — even chicken fat,” Vegas said. “But as big as we’re trying to get, we’re always going to need soybeans as part of the mix.”

McGehee said he’s going to stick with growing soybeans — at least as far biofuel is concerned — because he believes it will be a longer sustained business than the ethanol market.

“Ultimately, there are so many ways to make ethanol, and the current promotion is to make it with corn, but the best use for corn is for feed and food,” he said. “We see corn as being a short-term thing, maybe 10 years.”

Another consideration McGehee makes when it comes to soybeans is they are a hardy plant, he said.

“Soybeans are easy to grow, and there’s a lot less financial risk than with corn or cotton,” he said.

The plants also have a good reputation for handling the weather, he said.

“It’s hard to get a soybean to lay down like corn (in the event of a hurricane or high winds),” McGehee said. “In fact, if you can get them to lean against each other a little, it makes it easier for the harvester to pick them.”

The biofuel market has already affected the farming market, boosting prices of soybeans and forging new ways to get more oil out of the beans produced, Vegas said.

And Vegas doesn’t see an end to the changes.

“We’re going through the biggest agricultural revolution since who knows when,” Vegas said. “Who knows what we’ll be growing several years from now?”