What became of the wheat?
What Became of the Wheat? (and flour in CSA boxes??)—
A year ago, I was very bullish on winter wheat as a significant addition to Featherstone Farm’s crop rotation. It made sense on so many levels, from soil health to disease and weed suppression, minimizing tillage… the list goes on and on. We had harvested two very healthy crops the previous 2 years. And almost exactly 365 days ago, we seeded nearly twice the acreage we had ever planted. We mulched strawberries a few weeks later with wheat straw from our summer crop. Fantastic!
This winter, we came so close to building a grain bin (small silo) at the farm to store the 2023 crop, I had actually sent in a check for down payment. The sky seemed like the limit for wheat.
Fast forward to early July of this year, and we all watched as a neighbor cut down all the wheat- acres and acres of it- while it was heavy with immature seed, baled it “green” and hauled it off to feed his cattle. I concluded that we would never plant small grains again for commercial harvest, for milling into flour for CSA shares. Dang! [Lucky I asked that grain bin construction guy to “hold our deposit” to see how the 2023 crop came off… at least we will get that money back!]
What could have brought about such an abrupt and complete end to something that made so much sense (still does, for all the original reasons!) for Featherstone Farm? The answer requires a bit of backstory (scroll down to July 2023 if you prefer to skip the details, important as I think they are). What I have concluded, after wrestling with this for several years, is that the Industry of Agribusiness in modern America decided that FF should not grow wheat. Or that our row crop farming neighbors shouldn’t, anyway, and FF got swept up in the housecleaning. Here’s the lead, followed by the backstory (according to my narrow perspective, anyway!).
Plainly stated, big Industrial buyers like ADM, Cargill and the like have decided that it does not make sense to grow small grains in our region of the state. This is King Corn and soybean country!!! Better grow winter wheat on the great plains or in central Canada, where the test weights and other grain specs are slightly more predictable, from the point of view of industrial buyers and processors, anyway. It’s the Kingdom of Optimization at work here, and it leaves precious little room for regional operations- not just Featherstone Farm, but every single one of our conventionally farming neighbors- to produce “sub optimal” crops at scale. Even when it makes all the sense in the world for whole farm, food system and particularly soil health.
For many, many generations, small grains like oats, barley and wheat were big parts of the crop rotation for nearly every farmer in our corner of SE Minnesota. (this is why traditional granaries were divided into 4 storage bins, corn being only one of 4 major grains harvested and stored on a farm). Then, as agribusiness replaced the family farm, and critically, as the grain Industry consolidated, small grains produced in areas like ours became less and less “viable” in the minds of grain merchants in St Paul and Chicago. It became more and more difficult for small regional producers to process, store and sell small grains without trucking longer and longer distances.
Featherstone Farm’s first foray into grain was roughly 2011-13, when we collaborated with a medium scale row crop farming neighbor, to plant hull-less oats (we hoped at the time to provide rolled oats for CSA shares). This guy was a smart, innovative farmer, and well recognized the importance of having a third set of crops (small grains) to compliment corn and soybeans in his rotation, from the standpoint of soil health. He was all in. We worked very well together. In the summer of 2013 (I estimate) we harvested a beautiful, heavy crop of oats and then… we came up against the Industry.
When I called our local farmer’s Co-op to ask about cleaning and storing a semi trailer full of oats, Lexie almost laughed at the question. “We ripped out our small grains equipment 10, maybe 15 years ago” she told me. Dang. What are we gonna do with all these oats, I wondered, if we can’t find anyone to handle them commercially?? After searching in vain for weeks for a place to clean (winnow), store and eventually roll the oats, we eventually put a very few “oat berry” bags in CSA shares, and re-seeded the rest of the grain as cover crop. DANG.
Our smart, innovative neighbor gave up on growing small grains. Period.
Fast forward to 2020. Now there is a new cottage industry of small scale grain processors like Meadowlark Mill, that are re-introducing locally grown grains into the food system. The soil health concerns that prompted our neighbor and me to experiment with oats a decade before, are more urgent than ever. I decided to try again; we seeded 11 acres of winter wheat that fall. Great!
So now, how are we gonna get all this grain harvested?? My first thought, buy “old school” equipment- the very machines that cut, combined and hauled small grains on the very same fields 50,60 years ago- fix it up, and give it a whirl. With the help of a different neighbor, we bought a self propelled swather (cuts the plants at ground level, and consolidates into a 5’ wide windrow) and a 1950s vintage pull-behind combine (picks up swatted grain after it has cured on the ground for 3-4 days, separates the grain from the straw, and collects the grain to be augured into a cart). Long story short here, despite our valiant efforts, it didn’t work. The old equipment was simply not capable of handling a super heavy crop of modern “improved” wheat (yield was north of 70 bushels/acre!).
In an emergency, we were super fortunate to find a pair of additional neighbors to help us, one a contract equipment operator with a 1980’s medium scale swather, and another guy who just happened to be combining rye on a field nearby (certified OG to boot!). These two guys stepped in and helped us get the wheat harvested and into bins… yet another neighbor baled the straw (gorgeous stuff!). Super fortunate!! We thought we had the best crop in the world until… once again we came up against the Industry.
When we sent the grain in to a lab for testing that week (can’t have even traces of blights like vomatoxin, I get it!), we got bad news. Because the wheat had sat an extra few days in a dry field as we pivoted from 1950s to 1980s technology to combine, the “falling number”- a measure of amino acid development in the grain- had slipped slightly out of optimal range, as defined by Industrial buyers. The grain was fine for flour- many of you baked with it successfully that year, as we did in our own kitchen!- but its value on the commercial market had slipped 30% to “distillery” grade, one notch above “feed grade” (livestock rations). DANG!!!
But still we were undaunted. We planted another 12+ acres that fall (2021), imagining that we would get more timely harvest help, which we did. We took off a strong crop of both wheat and wheat straw in July of 2022, got better test results with the lab, scaled up milling for CSA boxes, mulched both our strawberries and Abby’s garlic with the straw, and started to imagine that this could be an important part of the future of Featherstone Farm.
This time last year we planted nearly 25 acres of wheat. I would have planted more, if we had had more ground free in our vegetable rotation. I started talking with the bin builder about designs. I started talking with yet a different neighbor about buying a combine together in the off season. The sky was the limit on small grains! Could we consider hull-less oats again at some point?!? Sure seemed possible.
July 2023
Then the fateful phone call early this summer, from the custom equipment operator who had swathed our wheat the 2 previous years: “Jack, I’m not even gonna get the swather out of the shed this year. NOBODY around here is growing small grains to combine anymore. Not even oats [still planted by dairy farms as a “nurse crop” for alfalfa]. My swather is so old, can’t get parts to keep it running. Plus, I’ve been watching your field from the road. When you seeded it last year, you didn’t roll it flat enough. All of my customers roll ground flat as a parking lot, so they can run hay equipment over it at 6-7 miles per hour [FAST]. Your field would have been too tough, too hard on my equipment, even if I had got it out. My apologies.”
A week later, we watched as the 2023 wheat crop- and the future of small grains at Featherstone Farm- was cut down, rolled up and hauled away.
This is not a story about farmers or neighbors making bad choices, or abandoning small grains chasing big bucks in corn (though this certainly must have happened in places). The farmers I know and work with would love to be able to grow, harvest, clean, store and sell small grains as part of their farm rotations, just as their parents and grandparents did for generations. But they have no place to sell the grain locally. They can’t take the risk of the lab specs being slightly out of rigid Industry standards. They can’t afford the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment needed to grow small grains at scale, because the crop price is depressed by competition from the Industry from Kansas to central Canada (arid plains, where growing conditions are optimal for Industrial wheat).
DANG. Featherstone Farm is done experimenting with this completely sensible set of crops. We simply can’t afford a $40,000 grain bin, much less a $25,000 modern (used!) swather, much less a combine that might cost… don’t even get me started. We can no longer contract these services from neighbors, because the Kingdom of Optimization has decided that the margins are not there. As the custom operator told me on the phone, “NOBODY around here is doing this anymore”
Please understand, dear CSA member, we gave it our very best shot. But we can’t keep pushing back against the ocean here. Our business is certified organic, fresh market vegetables. Meadowlark Mill’s business is growing and milling small grains. They took over a growing concern with legacy small grains equipment (a real rarity these days, at least in the upper Midwest!), and have done a super job upgrading and developing their system. We would gladly grow and supply them wheat, oats and perhaps other crops long term. But there is near 0.0 commercial support for this in our area. We will continue buying Meadowlark flour and making it available to you (this winter!) in CSA shares. But we can no longer say that that flour is milled from wheat grown at Featherstone Farm.
And while we’re on the subject- the Kingdom of Optimization- ever wonder why such an overwhelming percentage of fresh fruits and vegetables are grown in California and Mexico? Like I said… don’t even get me started!!
Gratefully- Jack