By Jake Christie for Great Lakes Echo.
Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Minnesota News Connection, reporting for Great Lakes Echo/Solutions Journalism/Public News Service Collaboration.
After 10,000 years of domestication, farming and its popularity for use in bread and beer, wheat could have some competition.
Scientists call it Thinopyrum intermedium. Growers call it Kernza.
One of its biggest advantages?
It's perennial.
Perennial crops require less tilling and fertilizer, and grow back year after year.
Kernza has deep roots and excels at soaking up nitrates in soil and runoff, said Jake Jungers, assistant professor in the department of agronomy at the University of Minnesota. And that helps protect water systems.
Those roots also take carbon out of the air and lock it away in the soil, which helps combat climate change, Jungers said.
The Land Institute is a nonprofit research organization based in Kansas that develops crops and cropping systems that benefit the soil.
The organization has been developing Kernza for about 20 years, trying to improve the wheatgrass so it can be an alternative to wheat, said Tammy Kimbler, director of communications with The Land Institute.
The institute works with several universities and researchers across the United States and worldwide.
The Forever Green Initiative at the University of Minnesota works with Kernza, and 15 other crops to improve crop production.
The initiative took a holistic approach in developing Kernza, thinking about how the plant could benefit farmers and the environment, said Mitch Hunter, associate director of the Forever Green Initiative.
The challenges are significant. Kernza yields only about 20% of the grain wheat does, one of the downfalls of having deep roots, said Prabin Bajgain, an assistant professor in the department of agronomy and plant genetics at the University of Minnesota.
Improving Kernza's yield is a focus of his work, but other traits with strange names like shatter resistance and free threshing ability are just as important, Bajgain said.
Shatter resistance is a seed's resistance to breaking from physical contact, or as part of its lifecycle. Free threshing ability is how easily the plant can be harvested mechanically.
They've had some success in developing those traits, but still have a ways to go in developing yield, Bajgain said.
One technology they're avoiding is genetic modification.
Wheat has a several thousand year head start on Kernza, and genetic modification could help to bridge the gap. But it comes with downsides, Bajgain said.
Negative perceptions of genetically modified organisms could hurt Kernza's introduction into fields and markets, Bajgain said.
"You don't want any negative press, especially when these crops are so new," Bajgain said, "The crops are so diverse, we might not need that right now. If I plant 500 plants of Kernza, each plant looks different from another."
While there's a focus on natural breeding practices, researchers use genetic sequencing technology to speed the selection of plants and to keep desirable traits, Bajgain said.
Kernza has already made its way into a few different markets.
Patagonia Provisions partnered with Dogfish Head Brewery and released a Kernza pilsner in 2022 that's available in stores across the country.
Bang Brewing in St. Paul, Minnesota, started working with Kernza in 2016, said Sandy Boss Febbo, the brewery's co-owner and co-brewer.
From its prefabricated construction, and native prairie and wildflower beer garden, to their use of all organic ingredients, the brewery was built with sustainability in mind, Boss Febbo said. So when they had the chance to brew with Kernza, they jumped on it.
Kernza brings a nuttiness, as well as some spice, to the beers it's used in. But its flavor changes depending on where it's grown, a quirk similar to wine grapes that likely stems from deep roots, Boss Febbo said.
A few other businesses use Kernza across the rest of the country and Kernza flour is available online.
In terms of fighting climate change and producing food, it's not enough to just switch out wheat with Kernza, Hunter said.
Part of the Forever Green Initiative's work is a concept called continuous living cover. That means planting crops so there's always something living in the soil.
"We need to bake conservation right into our cropping system." Hunter said, "Conservation should not be an add-on to the way we grow food, it should be essential."
Using perennials like Kernza with winter annual or perennial crops can increase soil and water health, Hunter said.
The Land Institute hopes Kernza can catch up to wheat in terms of availability and surpass it in economic benefit.
"With the rate of technological advances and the kinds of funding and collaborations that are happening now, it should be able to achieve wheat-like yields in about 15 to 17 years," Kimbler said.
"Which, in plant breeding terms, is remarkably fast."
This story was produced with original reporting from Jake Christie at Great Lakes Echo.
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By Jessica Scott-Reid for Sentient Climate.
Broadcast version by Danielle Smith for Keystone State News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
American consumers spend roughly $11.6 billion on candy each Halloween, but even at that rate, candy companies end up with a surplus. Those leftovers end up in some interesting places, including farms, where some farmers end up feeding candy to their animals. Chocolate and other treats that can’t be sold, or candy bits leftover from production, are being sold to some meat and dairy producers to add to their animal feed. While the practice has been going on for years, more recently, the agriculture and candy industries have been framing the practice as “sustainable” — a way to curb waste that would otherwise go to landfills. Major meat producer Cargill, for example, deems it “upcycling” and a “win-win” for the animals and the environment.
A deeper dive reveals that both meat and candy companies also benefit financially from feeding candy waste to farm animals. And some food waste experts say consumers should be questioning why there is so much of this waste to begin with.
Where the Practice Originated, and Whether It’s Healthy
Feeding candy to farm animals was initially motivated by rising corn prices during times of drought, making the practice a way for producers to reduce feed cost. Candy can apparently fill in for corn as a required sugar source. As one former cattle nutritionist turned dairy farmer, Laura Daniels, claims via social media, sugar is needed to feed bacteria in the stomach of cattle that breaks down the fiber in plant foods they consume.
However, at least one farmer doesn’t see the benefit. “Empty, nutritionally void, chemical laden sugars are being foisted on cattle and their rumens,” writes Minnesota farmer Lauren Kiesz,“all in the name of the conventional food system’s four horsemen: bigger, fatter, faster, cheaper.” Kiesz, who says she farms animals exclusively on pasture, notes, “a mouthful of grass and a mouthful of Mounds are extraordinarily different.”
The debate doesn’t end there. While some advocacy groups for pigs kept as pets urge owners not to feed candy to their animals, there are hog farmers who also add candy waste to their feed.
And it continues. “Candy of all forms is unhealthy for pigs,” says the North America Pet Pig Association. Yet, according to National Hog Farmer, “Waste chocolate can also be added up to 30 percent of finishing pig diets to support optimal growth performance without affecting carcass composition or pork quality.”
Feed is the greatest expense for most animal farmers, so cheap candy waste offers an economical solution. “When producers find a way to blend in other, cheaper ingredients into the standard cow meal, they frequently will,” reports The Counter. “As long as the stuff doesn’t hurt milk and meat output, they’re going to make more money.
Many consumers learned of the practice of feeding candy to cows in 2017, when a truckload of red Skittles spilled onto a highway in Dodge County, Wisconsin. The story went viral, making news across the country. Those particular candies were reportedly defective, lacking the signature “S” due to a power outage at the factory. Interestingly, while the truck was reportedly on its way to a nearby dairy farm, Mars (the owner of Skittles) later denied that it had sold the candy to be fed to cattle.
Questioning Candy Waste
The Hershey Company has been selling candy waste to Cargill since 2011; which the chocolate maker describes as an “innovative” “sustainability partnership.”
“Today we have an entire plant in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania (U.S.), dedicated to this environmentally, economically, nutritionally friendly effort,” states Cargill on its site. “There, our team turns tens of thousands of pounds of Hershey’s chocolate waste per year into feed ingredients for cows, pigs and other species of livestock.”
As the farmer Kiesz notes, though, claiming that feeding castoff candy to cows is a net positive to the environment, is, “on closer inspection […] completely misleading.” She explains that with all steps considered, “middle-men, inputs, and expended resources” — including the added transport of the candy — “there is no way anyone can make the argument that our environmental system is better off.”
Dr. Kathryn Bender, assistant professor of economics at the University of Delaware, seems to agree. Bender says that while “it’s always great to see these innovative solutions,” meaning the diverting of candy waste to livestock, “the most ideal thing would be if we just didn’t have that waste in the first place.”
She says that programs such as the one employed by Hershey and Cargill should be there to aid companies in measuring and subsequently cutting their waste. “Oftentimes, there’s just a lot of food waste that’s not measured, and so programs like this can allow companies to start tracking what that waste is, and then we would hope that companies would say, ‘Okay, what can we do to decrease that waste?’”
But that doesn’t seem to be happening. According to news reports, candy companies have been selling their waste to animal farmers for over a decade, at least. It turns out that having such a fallback may be quelling the motivation of a company to cut their waste, says Bender. A similar example of these perverse incentives played out in a study she worked on regarding consumer food waste that showed waste increased when consumers believed it was being composted rather than going to a landfill.
Inside the U.S. Corn Surplus
While both Hersey and Cargill tout the benefits of the partnership, Dr. Tammara Soma, associate professor and research director of the Food Systems Lab at Simon Fraser University, says consumers should be questioning why so much candy is being produced to begin with. The reason, she tells Sentient, “is because we’ve commodified corn,” and we have so much high fructose corn syrup being produced as a result.
As Soma explains, because corn is “produced in such excess and is highly subsidized in the U.S., high fructose corn syrup —- which became a cheap sweetener in lieu of sugar cane or beet sugar — got put into everything.” She says this is what spurred the production of many corn syrup based items, “like all of the candies we see for Halloween.”
Corn (and, for the record, this is dent corn not the sweet corn you eat off the cob) is considered the most valuable commodity in American agriculture, with the U.S. being the largest producer and consumer of corn in the world. Though dent corn, also called field corn, is grown mostly for feed for livestock and for ethanol, it also plays a massive role in processed food. “Corn is in the sodas Americans drink and the potato chips they snack on,” writes Roberto A. Ferdman for the Washington Post. “It’s in hamburgers and french fries, sauces and salad dressings, baked goods, breakfast cereals, virtually all poultry, and even most fish.” It’s also in candy.
Tom Philpott, a researcher at John Hopkins Center for a Livable Future, and former food and agriculture correspondent for Mother Jones and Grist, tells Sentient that the agri-food industry, “is just always looking for another profitable way to get rid of this overproduction of corn.” He adds that “someone’s going to find a use for that and a way to make a buck off of it. Selling high fructose corn syrup to the candy industry is just one way.” And because corn syrup is so cheap, he says there is little risk to candy companies to overproduce, especially when livestock farmers are there, ready to pay for it.
Hershey’s classic chocolate bar contains sugar — another product Soma explains is produced in surplus — but many of the brand’s other products, such as Twizzlers licorice, Almond Joys and York Peppermint Patties, contain corn syrup.
Soma says the commodification and surplus of corn and sugar results in waste, including “too many surplus candies, that are then fed to commodified animals.” Because animal farming has become so industrialized, she adds, “the large scale [of animals] can somewhat absorb the large scale of waste.” And on top of that, everyone gets paid.
Feeding candy to cows is not only done to curb waste and allow major corporations like Cargill to claim to be more sustainable. It also saves them money. Large companies like Hershey would otherwise likely have to pay private waste haulers, Soma explains, to either transport and dump the waste in landfills, or to be dealt with by anaerobic digesters that turn food waste into biogas. Instead, candy companies can charge meat and dairy producers to take the waste off their hands — producers who then save money thanks to the cheaper feed. They can also continue over-producing, rather than working to cut waste, while claiming to be sustainable.
Sentient reached out to Cargill for this story, but did not receive a reply.
The Bottom Line
Ultimately, Soma says that without the option of using commodified animals to absorb the surplus candy waste, “we would be able to question more why cows would ever need to eat highly processed candy derived foods,” as well as question why there is so much waste being produced to begin with, and be pushed to seek better solutions.
Overall, she says, “we need to critically question industrial agriculture and industrial commoditized food systems,” which she says are “very wasteful, very extractive, focused on profits alone at the expense of the environment, promotes monoculture and takes nature out of the equation.”
Jessica Scott-Reid wrote this article for Sentient.
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For decades, Florida's upstream farmers and downstream aquaculturists have been at odds over water quality and environmental impacts.
Now, the new initiative "Healthy Farms-Healthy Bays" seeks to bridge the divide and foster more collaboration to protect Florida's fragile ecosystems. It has released a new report outlining its vision, as well as specific steps to protect water quality and conserve Florida's working lands.
Randall Dasher, a Suwannee County farmer and co-chair of the initiative, played a key role in uniting groups to work on creating a healthier watershed.
"It is about coming together and collaborating, getting across the table from each other in a nonthreatening way," Dasher explained. "Because too much of that has gone on. That just makes people be less likely to listen and hear, and talk about best practices."
The partnership, supported by the Florida Climate Smart Agriculture Work Group and a $100,000 grant from the VoLo Foundation, brings together farmers, aquaculturists and environmental experts to tackle challenges like nutrient runoff, declining water quality and the effects of climate change.
Ernie Shea, president of the nonprofit Solutions from the Land, said the initiative marks a turning point in how Florida's agriculture and aquaculture can work together when it comes to climate change.
"We're all affected," Shea pointed out. "Climate change takes no prisoners; it affects all sides of operations. And what we've done with Florida Climate-Smart Agriculture is bring together the entire value chain - the producers, right up through the associations that represent farmers."
The Suwannee River Basin was chosen as the focal point for their efforts. A team of farmers, aquaculturists and university experts conducted a two-year analysis to identify the most pressing challenges and propose solutions. One key recommendation is accelerating best practices to reduce nutrient runoff, from planting cover crops to using microbial sprays and reducing chemical inputs that affect water quality.
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Native grasslands are the most threatened ecosystem in North America.
A South Dakota advocacy group hopes its educational campaign will reach a wider audience after receiving a regional award. The South Dakota Grassland Coalition's recent television public service announcement, part of its "Where Good Things Grow" campaign, recently won an Upper Midwest Regional Emmy award.
Quality grasslands help clean air and water, sequester carbon, reduce erosion and provide wildlife habitat.
Ron Nichols, one of the campaign's creators, produced the television spot.
"The television spots in particular are designed to help people understand that we are all connected to the grasslands and that they're definitely worth protecting and improving their health," Nichols explained.
He said it was "affirming" the film's message resonated with the region and met the high standards of an Emmy Award. Nichols also hopes it will educate people about threats to grasslands including conversion to cropland, woody encroachment and the effects of poor management.
The one-minute film features footage of rancher Kelsey Scott and her nephews caretaking land on the Cheyenne River Reservation. Nichols emphasized he appreciated the opportunity to film a local rancher practicing good grassland management.
"Rather than going out and trying to get an actor, these spots are genuine," Nichols stressed. "They really reflect what's happening out on the land in South Dakota."
Along with the rancher's cattle, the PSA includes images of sage grouse, buffalo, pronghorn and a diverse sampling of grassland plant species.
Joe Dickie and his son, Charlie, filmed the scenes and images featured over several years traveling through South Dakota's grasslands. He is glad to showcase the results of regenerative ranching practices.
"Running cattle, resting the land, not overgrazing, being really aware of riparian areas along water," Dickie outlined. "Really just doing the right things for the environment."
The PSA aired more than 4,000 times this year.
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