Vilicus farms will purchase equipment to support the farm in maintaining expanding and creating new markets in montana and beyond for organic RYE grains legumes organic animal feed and organic seed

This investment significantly upgrades the farms seed cleaning capacity in both quantity and quality and increases operational efficiency by locating all cleaning equipment at one site with dedicated storage and handling. These changes enable the farm to maintain and expand direct sales of identity preserved single origin organic RYE and grains to craft distillers and farms who wish to offer grains and legumes as part of their vegetable community supported agriculture csas. Screenings will be sold as animal feed creating a new product. The farm will clean seed for onfarm use and potential sales to other farmers to begin building a market for organic seed which does not currently exist. Because of the limited organic processing infrastructure in montana the farm will be able to support crop cleaning needs for other organic producers. This will help the farm and others take advantage of larger out of state market opportunities for organic grains. This project will impact at least 15 farms and businesses.