Why we need to go
beyond corn, wheat and rice
Thursday, May 15, 2014 - 5:00am
What was the last
grain you ate? Chances are very good it was wheat, corn or rice, the grain
triad that directly contributes more than half of all calories consumed by
humans worldwide. Early on, humans recognized food that was relatively easy to
process, with high yields (and therefore high calories) and good taste. Each
grain traveled far from its origins long before agricultural industrialization.
Already familiar to most people, and aided by modern practices, the triad was
in the perfect position to dominate the modern food grain market. But today's
changing world brings with it questions around these dominant grains.
“Diversity is good for
the human gut,” said Cynthia Harriman, director of food and nutrition
strategies with the nonprofit Whole Grains Council, an advocacy group that educates the public
about health benefits of whole grains, including uncommon ones. And it’s good
for the land, too, she adds, pointing to modern-day “problems with
monoculture,” such
as vulnerability to pests,
disease and severe weather.
As we face a world
with a changing
climate and unpredictable
weather patterns, a concentrated food
crop portfolio could be a risky thing. Diversifying
the food system with uncommon
grains could be a good step toward resiliency, but getting people to welcome
something new into their diets is a tall task, and our current food system is
geared against them — they’re uncommon, unknown and underappreciated.
Benefits and obstacles
Many uncommon grains
come with environmental benefits. A grain such as teff, for example, is
hardier, more drought tolerant and more nutritious than wheat. It can be grown
in water-stressed and waterlogged conditions (depending on the cultivar).
Similarly, from an environmental standpoint millet is preferable to rice, which
depends heavily on water. In Asia, 20 percent of the rice-growing area is
drought prone. Foxtail millet, one of several millet varieties, is the only cereal
grain in nature that can produce grain with 4 inches or less of annual
rainfall. And many uncommon grains can grow in less fertile soil than wheat,
corn and rice require.
Dipak Santra,
assistant professor in the Department of Agronomy and Horticulture at the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, emphasizes Harriman’s point that diversity of
grain is most important — for both the environment and nutrition. “A more
diverse grain portfolio out in the fields is better for the environment because
pest management is better when diverse crops are planted,” he said. Currently
millet has few major disease problems and teff is relatively free of plant
diseases compared with other grains.
Despite such
advantages, there are many obstacles to bringing these uncommon grains to mass
market.
Kantha Shelke, a food
scientist and consultant for the Chicago-based Institute of Food Technologists, said that for mainstream food companies to
be interested in alternative grains, they must have consistent access to large
quantities of a crop. Even then, to invest in an uncommon grain such as millet,
quinoa (a pseudo-grain) or teff as a food ingredient takes capital for new
processing equipment — another factor that can inhibit the rise of uncommon grains.
For example, North America lacks large facilities that wash saponin from quinoa
before it can be used. Saponin is a bitter substance, an evolutionary
adaptation to predation, and food companies want quinoa with the saponin
removed.
“Tried and trusted
trumps the new and uncertain,” Shelke said.
Government subsidies,
too, tend to favor established grains over uncommon ones. The Indian government
subsidizes rice and wheat, up to 86 percent of the cost for the lowest income
families, and only recently included millet. In the U.S., from 1995 to 2012,
the federal government’s agricultural subsidies totaled almost $300 billion,
with corn ranking first, wheat second and rice seventh on the Environmental
Working Group’s top 20 list of subsidized crops.
Because tastes are
mostly learned, in one generation it’s easy for farm policies and practices to
cement consumer relationships with specific grains. Producers rely on high
yield and are obviously looking to make a living, so untried, unfamiliar crops
are scary. And because most uncommon crops lack even a small market, farmers
would be foolhardy to grow them. Besides that, consumers can harbor biases
against certain foods. Today, for example, millet is used for bird feed in
North America, while in the 1980s teff faced a stigma associated with Ethiopian
famine.
So, how do you make a
market for a crop no one grows?
It takes a village
Nurturing a new cereal
grain market is a lot like raising a child — it takes a village to do it right.
For a new food to thrive, it takes public education, financial security,
infrastructure and opportunities to grow.
Wayne Carlson has done possibly more than anyone else in North
America to bring teff to the marketplace. A biologist, Carlson was working in
Ethiopia during the 1970s when a series of events hit the country — an influx
of development aid, revolution and famine, the latter of which defined the East
African country for years after. But what Carlson learned working in remote
traditional farming communities led him to believe in the value of the
country’s indigenous agriculture practices, and especially the value of teff.
“I got to observe the local economy, the local farmers, and I started to
appreciate the role of teff in their society,” he said. “I just thought there
was a lot of value to the crop and it served them well for thousands of years.”
Seeing the value,
especially after realizing the opportunities for improved pest management teff
provided, he wanted to bring the grain to global consumers. But to survive
outside remote Ethiopian communities, Carlson knew teff had to develop a cash
value.
But Carlson’s efforts
to bring teff to market in those days were difficult. “People thought it was a
joke at first,” he said. “The only thing they knew about Ethiopia was that everyone
was starving, which was totally wide of the mark of what was really happening.
They thought growing Ethiopian food was stupid, so that was an early barrier.”
Starting in the 1980s,
through the company he founded in Idaho, the Teff Company, Carlson slowly laid
the groundwork for a teff economy. That meant developing seeds, working with
farmers and finding a market — all at the same time. It also meant avoiding
hype, which can destroy a crop, Carlson said. “People jump in, then they don’t
know what to do with it, they dump it, and that destroys the market,” he said,
pointing to Jerusalem artichoke as an innovative crop (ideal for alcohol
production for fuel, which, on the heels of the oil crisis in the 1970s made it
attractive) destroyed by hype — a pyramid scheme — in the 1980s. The scheme ruined farmers who had a crop
and nowhere to sell it. (Today, quinoa also could face a hype crisis, with U.S.
farmers clamoring to grow a popular food that lacks a large-scale domestic
infrastructure).
Following the upheaval
of the 1970s, thousands of Ethiopians immigrated to North America. Carlson
rightly assumed they were the teff market — a small one, but one that valued
and missed their traditional grain. Aunt Jemima pancake mix had been used to
try to recreate injera, their traditional bread, but it proved to be a poor
substitute.
Carlson’s efforts have
met with success; he’s created a teff industry where there was none before.
Despite still being relatively small, the market is growing in Turkey, and
efforts in Europe are following Carlson’s lead. “We spent 30 years promoting
teff, and it’s quite gratifying because it worked,” Carlson said, acknowledging
that it was an effort that happened at the right time: Political instability
forced people to move beyond borders, creating an opportunity for exposure.
“There was a lot of serendipity. I think there’s a certain amount of luck and
art involved.”
Farmers count on
scientists
Scientists constantly
fiddle with wheat, corn and rice. They ponder yields and disease, and they
sequence genomes. At McGill University in Montreal, Valérie Orsat, chair of the
Department of Bioresource Engineering, works with alternative grains. Her lab
experiments with cultivars with farmers, develops recipes for consumers
and has created a simple, mechanized de-hulling tool for millet in India. But
Orsat’s lab is one of the outliers; uncommon grains more often than not get
short shrift from the scientific community — in terms of funding and therefore
research — because the market is too small. Yet farmers count on scientists
leading the way by experimenting with new varieties before they’re willing to
plant them in their fields.
“There’s a big
disparity in funding, that’s for sure,” said Kevin Murphy, an alternative crop
researcher at Washington State University in Pullman, Wash. “It’s a
chicken-and-egg thing.”
Research funding for
crops such as wheat is abundant. In Washington state, for example, the
Washington Grain Commission helps fund wheat research through a 0.75 percent
assessment on each bushel at the first point of sale, which equals roughly $5.7
million per year. Meanwhile, Murphy writes a lot of grant applications to find
funds for buckwheat, hull-less barley, millet, amaranth and quinoa.
Santra agrees that
there is a huge funding disparity, saying the difference is likely a
thousandfold or more. Tracking down specific data is difficult because there’s
not an assessment put on uncommon grains such as the one put on wheat in
Washington. But, to give some idea of the disparity, between 1988 and 2014,
the Sustainable
Agriculture Research and Education Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture gave out $17,703 in
funding to millet-related projects.
It can take about 10
years to breed a grain variety for a specific environment. For quinoa, Murphy
built on seed research that began about 35 years ago by growers who, like
Carlson, started their own companies: Wild Garden Seed in Oregon and White
Mountain Farm in Colorado. Quinoa could be ideal for farmers in the relatively
cool Pacific Northwest. Murphy’s research has led to successful field trials in
2013, and this year he launched more trials in Washington, Oregon and Utah,
planting quinoa on plots from half an acre to two acres, typically testing 35
varieties at each location. He expects to commercialize his seeds next year.
“If we can grow food
domestically, it can influence consumer eating habits,” Murphy said.
Availability, after all, is an important part of the battle to bring uncommon
grain to the market.
Tricky business
Beyond science,
marketing is another way to bring uncommon grains to a broader consumer base.
The Whole Grains Council promotes whole grains, including uncommon ones,
through a slow, steady education. The organization supports an annual grain
sampling day the first Wednesday of April each year, fanning out in
supermarkets, schools, restaurants, food trucks and bakeries to offer consumers
a taste of something new. It has a website that features a grain of the month,
recipes and other information.
“The whole food system
needs an overhaul if we want to prioritize healthy food,” Harriman said.
Although uncommon
grains are a growth business, it’s a touch-and-go one, because everything has
to be just right if these grains are to contribute to diversifying the world’s
food economy in any meaningful way. Right now, gourmands are touting teff as
the next superfood. But the Ethiopian government has banned teff exports to
avoid price increases that shut out local consumers. Plus, the teff in Ethiopia
is a multivaried stock, fine-tuned over thousands of years of feedback between
farmers and the grain. One family might farm 15 or more varieties that flourish
in specific terrain, relying on diversity to keep the larder full. Because of
such factors, bridging that gap between a subsistence market and a commercial
market is tricky. Still, even with a possibly difficult road ahead, in a world
with a changing climate that brings with it unpredictable weather, getting
alternative grains with traits such as drought and disease resistance to market
may be an important step toward resiliency.
This story originally appeared on Ensia and is reprinted with permission. Top photo
of corn, wheat and rice circle by nadyatess via Shutterstock.
