Soybean exports to Japan a cash crop for Windsor facility

ISLE OF WIGHT - The three towering silver cylinders on Cut Thru Road are visible for miles.

The cylinders near Windsor - which can each hold 80,000 bushels of soybeans - are part of Montague Farms' new processing facility. They're used to store natto soybeans, a specialty product in Japan that some people eat for every meal.

"It's like our potato," said Bryan Taliaferro, vice president of the operation based in Essex County, on the Middle Peninsula. "The Japanese do a lot with these soybeans."

In Japan, the tiny pearls of protein are eaten for breakfast, on a sandwich for lunch, or as a dinner side dish. In this country, many soybeans are used for animal feed and oil.

Montague Farms is the only one in the state to ship the soybeans to Japan. The Taliaferros have double-sided business cards - one is in English, the other in Japanese.

In their most popular form, the natto beans smell a little rotten and taste like strong cheese. The Taliaferros shipped 10,000 tons of them to Japan last year. They hope the Windsor facility, representing a $2.5 million investment, will help them double their exports.

The soybeans are inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture before shipping.

"These soybeans are for human consumption, and they have to be treated as a food product," said plant manager Marvin Bridges.

The Taliaferros purchased 32 acres of county land earlier this year and are operational now but still have projects to complete. In addition to the storage cylinders, there also will be an office building and a modern processing plant to prepare the Virginia beans for their journey across the seas.

The finished plant will cover about four acres, said Bill Taliaferro, president of the family farming company. A third brother, David, keeps the 4,000-acre family farm in Essex County going. About half of that land is planted in soybeans, Bill Taliaferro said.

In the Windsor location, the land surrounding the storage and shipping facility will be planted in farm crops, about half in cotton, the other half in different varieties of soybeans - a kind of experimental soybean farm.

About 100 farmers across eastern Virginia grew nattos on contract this year, and the Windsor location is convenient for many of them, especially farmers on the Eastern Shore, the state's largest soybean-producing area.

As part of trying to understand the culture they serve, the Windsor men have already tried this year's natto crop.

"We sample everything," Bridges said, grinning. "Boiled, with a little molasses to sweeten them - they taste a lot like pork and beans."