Several Elected Officials from our area including Govenor Mike Beebe were in Mulberry on Tuesday morning to announce the opening of an Edamame processing plant in Mulberry that will intially employee 40 to 60 full time workers. The company intends to start with a total of 900 acres of the soybean variety within 10 miles of Mulberry with plans to more than double the amount of acres farmed in 2013. The company also hopes to double the plant production by the year 2014. The plant is under construction in the Mulberry Industrial park and will be a 32,000 square foot facility for processing, packaging and distributing the edamame products. The investment reported to be $5.8 million. It was announced that the edamame processing plant in Mulberry will be the first of it's kind in the nation, in years past the edamame has been imported from China. The company name is American Vegetable Soybean and Edamame or AVS.

For those wondering, Edamame is a soybean harvested at the peak of ripening and is often eaten as a snack, a vegetable dish, in soups and processed into sweets. Consumption of edamame in the US has grown 12 to 15 percent in recent years.