In a visit to three North Iowa businesses Friday, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig commended the progress and innovation being shown in the ag sector locally, while listening to comments and concerns and offering support from his office.
First stopping at Pure Prairie Poultry in Charles City, Naig praised its recent $50 million expansion of the facility, made possible with the help of a U.S. Department of Agriculture loan.
Naig
“I was really impressed with what they’ve undertaken here,” said Naig, “… taking of an idle facility, bringing it up to date and online to provide high-quality chicken.”
The plant added to Pure Prairie’s existing network of over 75 barns within a 250 mile radius, and added up to 520 jobs in the surrounding area, according to a press release.
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Pure Prairie’s processing facilities in Charles City are capable of providing 100% air-chilled refrigeration for its chicken, which it says delivers a better-tasting and higher-quality product than the industry-standard water and chemically cooled chicken.
The chicken is cooled through a frigid, circulating, purified air-cooling process that eliminates excess water while retaining the meat’s natural juices and tenderness. The chickens are 100% bred and raised on independently owned family farms in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. The finished product touts a “No Antibiotics Ever” label, as well as a pledge by the company to eschew using animal byproducts in their feed, instead opting for only vegetable and grain feeds.
Pure Prairie products can be found at major retailers in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Dakotas, with expansion into more markets in the works.
A file photo from June 2022 of construction at the Valent BioSciences plant in Osage.
Naif also made a stop at Valent BioSciences in Osage. The facility conducts biochemical engineering of naturally occurring microorganisms to create a wide variety of “bio-rational” chemicals for use in agriculture, public health and forest health markets. Most products manufactured at the plant made through fermentation are biologically derived and thus considered “low impact” and carry few ecological side effects. The company, along with its parent Sumitomo Chemical Co. Ltd of Japan, has a goal of reducing its carbon footprint by 50% in the year 2030 and carbon neutrality by the year 2050.
The Osage plant — the largest of its kind in the word — serves as one of Mitchell County’s most competitive employers, providing nearly 110 jobs, with more positions to be filled as the plant undergoes a $34 million expansion to be completed later this year, which will significantly increase the facility’s manufacturing capacity.
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