Guar is a desert legume, a bean-like vegetable that is used as an emulsifier in everything from ice cream to kitty litter. Powdered guar is also used by drillers to release oil and gas from shale formations in the process of hydraulic fracturing, usually called fracking. Guar is sometimes called a cluster bean and does in well without a lot of rain and thrives in sandy soils.
Klint Forbes, who also farms cotton and other crops at his dryland farm near Brownfield on the South Plains, has been growing guar for 14 years. Along with partner Wes Gowan, he owns and operates West Texas Guar Inc., which has the only guar processing facility in the country. West Texas Guar is the country's only broker of U.S.-grown guar; the rest of the world's guar is grown in India and Pakistan.
Forbes came across it when he was looking for an alternative crop to rotate with his cotton, something that would add some nitrogen to the soil and cut down on his fertilizer costs. One of the first things he discovered about guar is that it put 196 pounds of nitrogen into every acre of soil where he planted it, which cut down dramatically on the cost of nitrogen for his other crops. He's been growing it ever since.
The price in the early days was 15 to 16 cents a pound. In 2009 the price rose to 18 cents and has since zoomed to 35 cents. Forbes said it will take several years for the product to catch up with demand. The increased demand for guar has grown in proportion with an increase of drilling in shale formations to release reserves of oil and gas trapped within the formations. Guar is mixed with water -- millions of gallons of it -- to thicken the mixture and force grains of sand and ceramic beads into fractures within the limestone that allows the oil and gas to be recovered as it seeps out. Without guar, the process doesn't work, and the process requires tons of powdered guar.
That leaves Forbes with all the U.S. guar there is at a time when demand is spiking.
"We're the seed company. The farmer buys our seed and we sign a contract to buy back 100 percent of the harvested crop," he said. "The farmer has a market for everything he produces. We have to control our seed because we have to know how many acres we're going to be responsible for buying. That protects the farmer, because he knows he's going to sell it and it helps me because I know how much we need and how much is going to be available."
Forbes has been farming all his life, just as his father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He didn't set out to corner the U.S. market on cluster beans; it just sort of happened. He talked with farmers who had grown it in the 1980s when he first decided to try it out. He contracted to sell his first crops to Rhodia, Inc., which was the only guar been processing facility in the country at the time. The company initially wasn't interested in buying guar beans, but called back a couple of months later after prices started fluctuating.
Forbes and Gowan started contracting locally, but Rhodia later switched to exclusively imported guar. That's when Forbes built his own processing facility and began buying back all the guar he could while trying to convince some producers to give it a try, at least as second crop.
The crop has taken hold on the High Plains and also on the Rolling Plains, where Forbes said it has gone from being grown in rotation with wheat to replacing wheat acres in some cases.
"Unless you're grazing cattle, and there is a lot of livestock in that country, you can sometimes just skip wheat and grow guar as the main crop," he said. But Forbes always advises farmers: "Never plant more than you can afford to lose."
West Texas Guar receives guar from as far south as Corpus Christi, north and then east a bit to the Dallas area ,and mostly west of that. East of that line, there is generally too much winter moisture, which won't affect the growth of the bean, but will affect the quality.
The same hot and dry conditions that affected other crops also put the whammy on guar production this year to the point where he let a lot of farmers out of their contracts. Enforcing the contract in such a dry year is a waste of the farmer's money and his seed, Forbes said. Forbes said his company is all about the farmer.
"Our company caters to production agriculture, unlike a lot of companies," he said. "We're nothing without the growers. The grower has the largest say because if they're not making money, we won't have anything to make money on."
Guar is not for everybody, and it's not for all regions of the state or country, but Forbes believes that a lot of farmers are missing out on an opportunity by not planting guar.
"Farmers in the Stephenville area, where there used to be a lot of peanut production, could be knocking a home run with guar," Forbes said. "We don't advertise. If a grower calls us we will speak to him and tell him what we have to offer and what he needs to know about growing it. The people who are looking for something like this will find us."
