Reeve Cattle Co. has a storied history in ethanol and beef cattle production in southwest Kansas, and an even longer family legacy there. For the past 40-plus years, the company’s footprint has included a 17 MMgy ethanol plant—Reeve Agri Energy—which is a sister company to RCC. The ethanol plant and connected 50,000-head feedlot are co-located outside the town of Garden City, the county seat of Finney County. The small corn biorefinery was brought online in 1982 for the express purpose of supplying the feedlot with distillers grains. Both operations sit on land that’s been operated by the Reeve family for over a century. Brothers Chet and Oliver Reeve originally homesteaded the land. Chet’s son, M.P. “Jack” Reeve, took over the operation in the 1950s. And today, M.P.’s son, Lee, oversees both RCC and Reeve Agri Energy.Along with the ethanol plant and feedyard, RCC runs a center-pivot irrigation operation on several thousand acres. Catching Lee Reeve in between his duties with the feedlot and the ethanol plant can sometimes be a challenge, but Ethanol Producer Magazine caught up with him in mid-February. Even after all these years of operation, Reeve says, ethanol production, and the constant supply of on-site feed it provides, remains integral to the business.Fueling Kansas and Beyond&nbsp; Reeve is well known in Kansas for his role in developing and championing ethanol production. Since first convincing his family and team at RCC to pursue building the ethanol plant in the early ’80s, he has been heavily involved in the ethanol space. Ag outlets, universities, and TV stations in Kansas have all highlighted Reeve and his Garden City-based businesses. It’s hard not to discuss the past when talking to Reeve, whether he’s reflecting on the history of his family’s 5,000-acre ranch, changes in the cattle business, or the evolution of ethanol production since the early ’80s. He’s seen it all.At one time, the area where the current feedlot and ethanol plant reside was a national park. Or at least it was supposed to be. According to Reeve, the government planted trees in western Kansas and planned to designate the area as a national park or preserve. But the plan didn’t stick. The area is low in moisture, especially during the winter. While not good for growing trees, the dry conditions make western Kansas a good place for feedlots. In fact, within 50 miles of RCC’s operation, there are several other high-volume feedlots. Reeve estimates that nearly 20,000 head of cattle are processed in the area every day. Behind only aircraft parts, Kansas generates its second highest amount of revenue from chilled beef cuts, followed by wheat, soybeans, and then frozen beef cuts.The first time Reeve and his team ever heard about ethanol was from a Colorado School of Mines professor who was an advocate for blending ethanol into gasoline. That was in the 1970s. The professor’s research included insight on using ethanol’s principal coproduct, distillers grains, for cattle feed.“In the ’70s, there was a big push to include ethanol blended fuels in clean air legislation,” Reeve says. “There was some research out there talking about how ethanol cleaned up fuel. It wasn’t just about how to get rid of corn.”After talking with an engineering firm that built ethanol plants, RCC invested in and built a 1 MMgy corn ethanol plant.“Most people were probably pretty skeptical, but we saw the numbers and it made sense,” he says.The whole point of the ethanol plant was to provide consistent feed rations for the feedlot, according to Reeve. “The plant, [even] back then, produced some really good feed,” Reeve says. “We have the same feed today. Cattle are really good at cleaning all of this up and we knew that from day one.”Over four decades, the plant has expanded from 1 MMgy to nearly 17 MMgy—an impressive legacy of expansion but still a small biorefinery by today’s standards. Milo is Reeve Agri Energy’s preferred feedstock, when available, but corn is typically easier to source. According to Reeve, milo, or grain sorghum, can often be difficult to obtain due to foreign buyers, China among them, procuring much of the available product in the region. Most of the ethanol produced at Reeve Agri Energy is sold into the Denver area or to nearby terminals. Some of the plant’s ethanol ends up in Oklahoma City, Amarillo, and other lower-central U.S. markets. While many ethanol producers rail their ethanol to market, all of Reeve Agri Energy’s biofuel leaves the plant via truck. The employee headcount at the plant ranges from 12 to 15, about a third of the people employed at larger corn dry mills.Although the plant may have started at very small scale, the team never considered it to be a pilot or demonstration facility. Katzen Engineering Inc. was instrumental in the creation of the original plant, providing the first process design package, detailed engineering, operator training and start-up service. Katzen continued working with Reeve to expand the plant over the years—a few million gallons at a time—from 1985 to the modern era, as the feedlot expanded almost ten-fold. In the early days, the ethanol plant’s waste heat was utilized for a colocated aquaculture operation. The main focus of each stage of growth was always creating synergy between the ethanol plant and the feedyard.The centrifuges are in the feed mill. Instead of creating multiple byproducts out of the beer stripper, the plant’s design only produces a wet product and forgoes drying. The wet stillage is dropped out into the feedyard for cattle rations.Several years ago, ICM Inc. did a renovation on some of the equipment that was 25 years old and needed to be replaced. The plant added an ICM frontend with a vacuum system that, Reeve says, is quite efficient. Although Reeve says the ethanol sector has always been a good business, he also says it hasn’t been easy.Navigating A Changing Industry&nbsp; “Even though we think there is good synergy in having the plant and feedlot together, through the years it has been rocky,” he says.There has been opposition to aspects of the colocated operation dating back to ’82, and sometimes it has come from people and places that have surprised Reeve. Financial institutions were afraid of ethanol early on. The fight with oil has always been just that, a fight.He specifically points to a rough period in the ’90s when the oil industry developed and promoted a product known as methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE). A byproduct of the hydrocarbon refining process, MTBE became the darling of the oil industry for a time due to its ability to increase oxygen levels by adding octane to gasoline, Reeve recalls. Had MTBE continued without being regulated out of use due to safety and environmental issues, Reeve believes ethanol production and usage wouldn’t have taken off like it did.Reeve and his team in Kansas have helped promote ethanol across the state and in Washington D.C. While the Kansas plant’s ethanol production capacity is limited by the size of the feedlot, he still wants to see the overall ethanol market expand. “We need a bigger market or more exports,” he says, pointing to developments in corn and cattle.Genetics are improving in corn, leading to an increase in yield every year. The cattle industry, currently on a headcount &nbsp;decline across the entire sector, isn’t going to expand. However, the cattle produced at places like RCC are bigger and more efficient than ever with feed and nutrient consumption.Although the Garden City plant doesn’t have a clear path to expansion, Reeve still follows the latest technology trends across the industry. One of those improvements is corn oil extraction. His plant doesn’t extract oil. They actually buy palm oil for the feedyard because they need more fat than they are currently getting out of the stillage ration.Reeve is amazed at how far the industry has come since the early '80s, and how producers have persevered through rough periods. He says there were times when he and others thought the industry wasn’t going to make it. The Kansas State alumni is proud of everything he’s added to RCC’s legacy, especially the introduction of ethanol. Given the accomplishments of those before him, it should come as no surprise that he and his team have accomplished so much in Garden City.In 2023, Jack Reeve, Lee’s father, was posthumously inducted into the Cattle Feeders Hall of Fame after a career that included a degree in veterinary medicine from Kansas State, time in the U.S. Army, starting the feedyard in 1962, and running it until Lee took over.Today, there is a largely undefined next-stage for RCC and Reeve Agri Energy. But with how efficient their current operation is, Lee isn’t worried. “It has all evolved the way it needed to,” he says, “just as the ethanol industry has.”He continues, “It has done what it set out to do from the time we got into it. Ethanol cleaned up a lot of gasoline. It provided a lot of rural jobs for rural areas. Now, it could play a big role with aviation fuel, and for us, it’s been a good business the whole time.” Author: Luke Geiver &nbsp;&nbsp; Contact: writer@bbiinternational.com&nbsp;

2024-03-06 - Paired for Productivity (Ethanol Producer Magazine)

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Lee Reeve, a multi-generational Kansan who operates a feedlot colocated with a small ethanol plant, explains how producing fuel and feed has impacted his family business for over four decades.

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