Finally, our group focused on the question of how the processing facilities that are tied to new biobased products will affect the communities where they are located. We noted that these plants will need to be located near the raw material, an agricultural product, but will also have other requirements. Examples include power, infrastructure, transportation, labor, and human capital. Therefore, as these facilities are developed, it is clear that they will have some major socioeconomic impacts on rural communities. In fact, their development implies very large changes for many communities.
Labor is a good example.
Getting enough labor is already a problem for many farmers. Processing industries will demand not only more labor, but also a different set of skills and knowledge. The same issues arise for any of the major components needed to build and operate large scale processing facilities. In our final session, we examined four of our five priority issues. We did not analyze the issue of increased liability.