CHS Inc. and Land O’Lakes Inc. have announced the continued divestment of their Agriliance LLC joint venture. In the latest round, LOL’s Winfield Solutions is planning to acquire the Agriliance retail locations in the states of Arkansas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. These locations will be operated as a business division of Winfield Solutions, and LOL said they will support the cooperative system in this geography by enabling the business to maintain a highly efficient distribution system.

Agriliance and Tennessee Farmers Cooperative (TFC) also signed an agreement under which TFC will acquire 11 Agriliance retail locations in Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Missouri. This transaction is expected to close at the end of August.

In addition, CHS is planning to acquire nine locations in the northern plains of Texas, which will enhance the company’s ability to serve customers in an area that already includes a grain receiving operation and crop nutrients hub plant at Friona, Texas.

No terms were announced for any of these divestments. However, LOL reports that due to Agriliance’s current and expected restructuring efforts, LOL anticipates that it will receive, on an aggregated basis, cash proceeds of approximately $100 million between now and March 31, 2010. These proceeds will consist of periodic distributions from Agriliance, net of the cost of the acquired properties and associated working capital.

CHS told Green Markets that efforts continue to reposition Agriliance’s last remaining major asset, ProSource One, a Memphis-based distribution company that supplies fertilizers, chemicals, seed, and services to professional users throughout the U.S. ProSource serves the professional turf market, the ornamental and nursery market, aquatics, and the vegetation management market.

The bulk of Agriliance’s assets were split between CHS and LOL in 2007 (GM Sept. 10). This past April, Agri-AFC LLC, Decatur, Ala., acquired Agriliance retail outlets in Georgia, along with two in Mississippi (GM April 13). Agri-AFC LLC is a joint venture between Alabama Farmers Cooperative Inc. and LOL’s Winfield Solutions.

J.R. Simplot Co. officials welcomed U.S. Magistrate Mikel Williams’s Aug. 4 decision to deny a request by environmental groups to impose a permanent injunction that would block the expansion of Simplot’s Smoky Canyon Mine.

His much-anticipated ruling essentially gives Simplot the green light to proceed with the controversial project, which will help ensure the continued supply of 1.5 million annual tons of phosphate ore to Simplot’s fertilizer plant near Pocatello, Idaho, and the employment of more than 500 workers at the plant and mine.

Meanwhile, Greater Yellowstone Coalition Idaho Director Marv Hoyt said his group plans to appeal Williams’s ruling to the 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. While expressing disappointment, Hoyt said he was not surprised, asserting Williams incorrectly interpreted National Forest Management Act, Clean Water Act, and National Environmental Policy Act requirements applicable to the case.

Simplot officials have said the 26-year-old mine’s phosphate reserves would be exhausted by 2010 if the company were not allowed to expand onto two panels in the Caribou/Targhee National Forest near the Idaho/Wyoming border. The expansion should provide ore for another 15 years.

“With the stringent monitoring requirements and safeguards in place, expansion of the Smoky Canyon Mine 800 yards from its existing mine into an adjacent portion of the known phosphate leasing area of southeastern Idaho appears to strike a reasonable balance between Simplot’s mining efforts and the employees, farmers, communities and other stakeholders affected by the expansion,” Williams concluded in his 53-page decision.

The federal judge said the NEPA process worked as it was designed in regard to regulating the Smoky Canyon Mine’s development on federal land. Environmental groups, state and federal officials, and the public had the opportunity to comment on the mine’s expansion, he noted.

As a result of that input and response by the U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management, “the ultimate action is more protective of the environment than it would have been without the process,” Williams stated.

“We are delighted to receive a well-reasoned ruling in our favor,” said Larry Hlobik, Simplot president and CEO. “I want to thank everyone who has worked so hard on this project for us, including the local communities, counties and cities, and local citizens who have helped us in this long process. It appears at this time that we will be able to begin mining ore in one of the new sections in the fall.”

“Failure to open the new Smoky Canyon sections would lead to closure of the mine and our plant in Pocatello, resulting in the direct loss of about 560 jobs,” said Garrett Lofto, Simplot AgriBusiness Group president. “We have been working on this project more than nine years and have demonstrated beyond any doubt that all safeguards are in place to allow the mine expansion to move forward.”

Simplot officials noted Williams’s latest decision was the fourth consecutive ruling in favor of the mine’s expansion since environmentalists filed suit last fall.

Simplot spokesman David Cuoio cited a 2009 economic impact study conducted by Idaho Economics, a Boise research firm, that concluded if the phosphate mine and fertilizer plant were to close, it would have a combined economic impact of $171 million per year across 12 counties in Eastern Idaho and Wyoming.

Great Salt Lake Minerals’s hopes for adding potash production from the Great Salt Lake are in the hands of the Army Corps of Engineers, which is being flooded by comments for and against as it conducts the required environmental impact study. Great Salt Lake Minerals is a unit of Compass Minerals, Overland Park, Kan.

The company is planning to increase potash production over several years by expanding its solar evaporation ponds by up to 91,000 acres.

“They are rolling in as we speak,” Jason Gipson, the corps chief of the Utah/Nevada regulatory branch, told the local press. “The last couple of days we have been flooded with them. A lot of alternatives and issues come from these comments, bringing up information on issues that we were not aware of.”

Gipson said the comments have been split about evenly between those people who are adamantly opposed and those in favor, and include a letter writing campaign generating about 1,200 postcards. Opponents maintain the new ponds will jeopardize wildlife habitat, especially of birds, and may irreparably damage the Great Salt Lake in general. But GSLM has said the expansion is almost exclusively on the lake’s most desolate area where there are no fish, marshes, brine shrimp, or bugs.

“New ponds in this area would have zero effect on the millions of birds that flock to the eastern and southern parts of the lake,” said GSLM spokesman Dave Hyams. “The only birds on the west side are pelicans who nest on Gunnison Island; GSLM’s nearest pond would be a full three miles from Gunnison to ensure the sanctity of the nesting areas.”

In the meantime, GSLM has given $25,000 to Utah’s Westminster College to assist the Great Salt Lake Institute. Hyams explained that the institute will be doing the research necessary for understanding the lake and changes that affect lake levels and bird populations, which “are important in determining how you go forward with sensible policies that protect the lake, the human and bird populations, and the economy.”