RICHARDTON - A new corn-cow relationship could result from a hot date with ethanol.

A 50-million gallon ethanol plant is poised for a construction start this spring at Richardton. It will mean 36 good jobs and a solid foothold on the region's future.

It also could bring a shift in the way people think about agriculture, sort of like a Richardton boy thinking about a Mott girl instead of the girl next to him in English class.

It all has to do with what goes into an ethanol plant and what comes out.

What goes into an ethanol plant is corn. In the case of the Richardton plant, you're talking between 18 million and 20 million bushels of grain corn every year - and that's until the plant eventually doubles in capacity.

That's a lot of corn.

It's especially a lot of corn in an area where wheat is king and corn gets grown mainly for chopped feed because the kernels on the cob don't always mature.

The potential to sell corn for ethanol may cause some producers to think again. Duane Zent, of Richardton, already has, but more on him later.

What might be even more interesting than the corn that goes into the plant is the corn mush that comes out. The mush is what's left after corn, water, yeast and enzymes are distilled into ethanol. It's called wetcake unless it's dried, then it's called drycake.

The cake makes excellent feed for cattle, and access to it may cause some producers to think again.

Zent, who farms in the Heart River country, already plants about 400 acres of corn, more than most everybody around him. He gets a little farm-talky on the subject, but it's not too tough to understand.

Zent's method is to rotate corn one year, wheat the next. He said the key to corn success is a weed-clean field. The chemicals he uses to kill weeds in corn are different than the chemicals to kill weeds in wheat. Between the two, he gets a broader band of weed control.

He doesn't let his cattle graze the stubble because he wants whatever nitrogen is left in the plant stalks to fertilize the soil. And he no-tills to preserve moisture.

Zent said Pioneer has a corn seed brand that works for him, maturing in about 80 days.

In an average year, he gets 40 corn bushels an acre; in a good year, 100 bushels. And better yet - maybe because of soil chemistry - his wheat yield goes up after a corn rotation.

Zent, who's on the Red Trail Energy ethanol board, said farmers are talking more about corn production, though there's still some skepticism about semi-arid corn production.

Joel Ransom, North Dakota State University extension service agent for cereal crops, said producers in fairly dry counties like Stark and Hettinger who want to plant and deliver corn for ethanol next year should be thinking about it now. He said corn should follow low-moisture demand crops like barley or peas. It should not follow high-moisture demand crops like sunflowers and safflowers, he said.

No-till, or zero-till, like Zent practices, conserves about 2 to 3 inches of moisture a year and could make the difference between success and failure, Ransom said.

Frank Kirschenheiter, Red Trail project manager, said he expects that about half the plant's corn will come by truck from within 100 miles. The rest will come by train from someplace else.

Even more so than guys like Zent, it's cattle producers who might have a new opportunity. Instead of raising calves that get sold and shipped to feedlots where they're fattened for slaughter, producers can think about going the whole distance.

Jim Bobb, manager of Southwest Grain at Taylor, which has a sideline in feed products, said livestock producers can think about using corn cake to feed longer and keep the profit between an 800-pound calf and a 2,000-pound slaughter-ready animal.

"It will take a shift in how they do things," Bobb said.

The ethanol plant will make 160,000 tons of corn cake, enough to fatten or "finish" 220,000 head and generate another $75 million for the livestock and ranch economy, according to a study by the Hettinger Research Extension Service.

Zent said he thinks new directions in local agriculture will be a spinoff of the ethanol plant.

"I think you'll see people finishing cattle in feedlots and I think we'll even see large dairies like they have in Minnesota," Zent said. "That would be real cool."