Valent’s Osage roots run deep

Biosciences company planted 50 trees in May in Osage in the spring

JASON W. SELBY | Press News

Last spring, in front of the Cedar River Complex, Valent BioSciences planted the first of 50 trees it will donate to the city of Osage. When ground was broken, Valent employees and community leaders lifted the world’s richest soil in their shovels.

Valent’s Osage plant began operation in 2014 with around 30 fulltime employees. Currently there are more than 100, and there are more workers on their way, many highly skilled.

Senior Marketing Communications Manager John Mandel of Valent anticipates adding over 10% to the current workforce over the next few years. He credits the growth of Valent’s sustainable pesticide DiPel, celebrating its 50th anniversary, as fueling this worker demand.

“We’re a leader in the biorational market,” Mandel said. “The products are made locally, but they’re transported around the world.” Mandel indicated there would also be new construction at the Osage facility, which he describes as state-of-the-art. In addition, Valent is undertaking a 34-acre solar field prairie project east of the factory. Mandel anticipates a fall start date.

Valent, G5

“Our biggest goal right now is to keep improving and automating the plant,” said Ertan Hyuseinov, Valent’s Osage plant manager. He indicated that the expansion project, the largest since the Osage facility was opened, will take a few years before it is complete.

Growth is driven by customer demand.

“We are not here to stop getting better,” Hyuseinov said. “There has been a lot of cooperation with the city and the county since 2014. We’ve been helping each other, we’ve been supporting each other.”

Sustainability

According to Mandel, the main reason Valent chose Mitchell County was because of the company’s close relationship with Osage’s A to Z Drying, founded 50 years ago in 1972. The first contract between the two was for six months, but Valent has been working with A to Z Drying ever since.

Osage’s 50 new maple, oak and crabapple trees are symbolic of Valent’s investment in the future of agriculture in Mitchell County and in the world, according to Rosa Gimenez, global business director, biorational crop protection for Valent. Gimenez made the journey to Mitchell County to celebrate 50 years of DiPel.

Despite DiPel’s tenure of five decades, it has found new relevance.

“It’s going to be here for the next 50 years,” Gimenez said. The reason for her optimism is the demand for sustainable products to replace or enhance current methods of crop protection.

According to Gimenez, it is not only a matter of growth in agriculture, but a matter of public health.

Daniel Zommick is global technical development specialist, biorational crop protection for Valent. He sees DiPel’s market demand as a byproduct of its safety. It is found in nature and returns to nature.

“We see the growth in replacing some of those more traditional chemistries with something that doesn’t affect bees, has a good worker-exposure profile, and DiPel doesn’t leave any residue on food,” Zommick said. “So it can be used right up until harvest and sold to people the next day. It’s an incredible sustainable technology.”

“We all work in the industry, but we still eat the food,” said Savannah Bertram, a digital communi- cations analyst for Valent.

DiPel’s sustainability was something of an accident. Five decades ago, the focus was on finding effective herbicides and pesticides. According to Zommick, a USDA researcher had a colony of caterpillars that infested cotton, and DiPel was a bacterial disease in those caterpillars. When the colonies started crashing, the researcher isolated the DiPel strain.

“Fifty years ago we were not talking about sustainability the way we’re talking today,” Gimenez said. “That’s why we say the product is more relevant today than ever.

“Fifty years ago we were using DDT. Rachel Carson published ‘Silent Spring’ in 1962.”

Gimenez said that since the publication of Carson’s landmark book on conservation and the environment, people have sought pest control alternatives. It was a decade before DiPel emerged as one of those alternatives. DDT was not banned until 1972, the year after DiPel’s birth.

“Humanity is trying to learn how to be safer and healthier and feed more people with fewer resources,” Gimenez said. “It was relevant then. It’s still relevant today, because a lot of chemicals came after DDT that are not the same profile as DiPel. We keep improving.”

New world Valent is uniquely suited to survival. According to its website, its Osage plant is the largest purpose-built biorational product facility in the world. The majority of the company’s products are manufactured in Osage.

However, in the post-pandemic years, COVID-19 is still wreaking havoc, causing worker shortages and increases in material and production costs.

“We have delivery problems and problems with logistics,” Hyuseinov said. “We have a difficult time getting parts right now. Even simple items for dayto-day operations are two or three times more expensive.” He added that manufacturers are experiencing difficulty finding delivery drivers. “Everything is related to COVID-19.”

As well, Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine has disrupted the global food supply chain. Over a quarter of the world’s wheat exports come from those two countries.

“We’re all connected,” Gimenez said.

“We have to be creative in solving the challenges of today’s world,” Mandel said.

A saving grace for Valent is that their industry is agriculture, whose products are always in demand. That demand will continue to grow.

“We are an essential business,” Gimenez said.

According to Mandel, even though he believes Valent pays its employees well and has a good reputation, navigating the current job market during COVID-19 is a challenge.

“Like everybody else, we’re competing for a limited applicant pool,” Mandel said. “But it’s not impossible.”

Valent actively markets and seeks talent from Iowa State University, the University of Iowa and other technical colleges. They work with community media outlets as well.

“Our business is a little different,” Hyuseinov said. “We are looking for a specific background when it comes to technology and the chemistry side of it. The employees we’re looking for are more specialized.”

As well, as a consequence of an influx of workers, Valent is attempting to address the need for additional housing in Mitchell County.

“We are very closely working with the county and the city,” Hyuseinov said, “with incentives they can have for the newcomers. Not only for our business, but for other businesses here in town with the same housing issue.”

Hyuseinov sees progress, however, in housing developments planned for Osage and St. Ansgar. “We need that housing for the people, or else they’re going to leave,” he said.

Mandel added that the quality of the workforce was another reason Valent expanded to Osage. Small towns in Iowa are often diagnosed with brain drain, where natives flock to better opportunities in larger populations, but Valent is attempting to reverse course and draw talent to Mitchell County.

It all begins with 50 trees.

“We want to give back to the community and send this message of legacy,” Gimenez said. “We’re forward thinking in everything. The trees are symbolic of that.”

Jason W. Selby is the community editor for the Mitchell country Press news. he can be reached at 515-971-6217, or by email at jason.selby@ globegazette.com.