WINDSOR

The grand opening of Montague Farms Inc.'s new soybean processing plant was a celebration.

Any celebration calls for food. But there were no natto soybeans, full of protein and nutritious, a favorite snack in Japan, eaten for breakfast, lunch or dinner.

The beans, they say, taste like strong cheese. A nd they stink.

"A lot of people in Japan are eating natto products at least once a week," said Kazunori Miyagawa, general manager and executive officer of the purchasing department for Mizkan Sanmi Company in Honda, Aichi-ken, Japan.

"We need you," he told the group gathered Friday in the processing warehouse on a corner lot near U.S. 258. "Please provide us with a good, best quality from now on."

That's exactly what the Taliaferro brothers hope to do. The three brothers who own the facility operate a farm in Essex County. They were selling the natto beans to Japan when they started construction of the nearly $3 million facility near Windsor two years ago. The area was close to the farmers, and it was close to the ports.

"The modern plant you see here is the culmination of a long odyssey," Bill Taliaferro said Friday. "We have the capacity to clean and load approximately 13 megatons per hour. That is equivalent to 10,000 bushels of cleaned product in a 24-hour period."

The plant, Taliaferro said, is 35 miles from Portsmouth Marine Terminal and 42 miles from Norfolk International Terminals. His company has nearly doubled its exports since the plant was established, he said.

"If you draw a circle around Windsor for 100 miles, we are right in the middle of our mid-Atlantic growing region," he said.

Local and state officials, farmers, agriculture officials joined the attendees around the platform in the center of the building. It was time to celebrate the facility and the friendship that has grown out of it between Japan and Virginia, said Robert Bloxom, state secretary of Agriculture and Forestry.

"They must have about 100 growers to support the facility," Bloxom said. "The acreage of peanuts in Virginia has dropped. Quite often, soybeans can fill in. Our preliminary numbers tell us that this industry could be a $75 to $80 million industry in Virginia."

The cylinders that sit over the Windsor landscape can each hold 80,000 bushels of the beans. The beans are prepared at the Montague Farms facility to go overseas. The number of storage cylinders will soon be increased, said plant manager Marvin Bridges. The finished plant will cover about four acres.

"The Taliaferros are giving growers in southeast Virginia an opportunity to grow soybeans," said Todd Haymore, state commissioner of agriculture. "They're helping to preserve farmland. I can't think of a finer day to be an ambassador for agriculture."

There were no natto beans at the grand opening of the soybean facility, but they're not unavailable in Hampton Roads, said Chiyoko Chu, wife of Dr. Joseph Chu, Montague's marketing manager. The Chus eat the beans about once a week.

"But mine don't stink," she said, smiling. "Maybe I'm cooking them wrong."

Linda McNatt, (757) 222-5561, linda.mcnatt@pilotonline.com