#kernza

[tonyfitzgeraldphotography]

What Is Kernza? The Sustainable Perennial Grain Changing How We Bake Bread and Waffles

Updated: 1 minute Continue reading What Is Kernza? The Sustainable Perennial Grain Changing How We Bake Bread and Waffles

What Is Kernza? The Sustainable Perennial Grain Changing How We Bake Bread and Waffles

[rjzimmerman]

Patagonia’s Big Bet on a Modest Grain. (New York Times)

Excerpt from this story from the New York Times:

Regenerative agriculture is often promoted as a straightforward fix for farming, which is one of the world’s biggest sources of planet-warming emissions.

By using techniques like cover cropping and planting crops that absorb more carbon dioxide, proponents of regenerative agriculture say it has the potential to turn an everyday necessity into an ally in the fight against climate change.

But an article I published on Sunday makes it clear just how hard it will be for regenerative practices to go mainstream. In it, I detail how Patagonia, the clothing company based in California, is trying to popularize Kernza, a type of intermediate wheatgrass that can be used for brewing and baking.

Kernza, which can be used as a substitute for wheat, has roots that can stretch more than 10 feet into the ground, allowing it to absorb more carbon dioxide than many crops. And because Kernza is a perennial grain and doesn’t need to be replanted each year, it requires less water and fertilizer than traditional wheat, making it a boon for cost-conscious farmers.

“It’s just a way better way of doing things,” said Paul Lightfoot, the general manager of Patagonia’s food business. “Humanity isn’t doomed to do things in a way that ruins everything.”

Today Patagonia is using the grain as an ingredient in its beers, and a few other companies are using it in some products, including General Mills, which makes cereal featuring Kernza.

The market appears to be growing, too. Sales of regenerative agricultural products, which include Kernza, are growing 30 percent annually, according to Circana, a market research company, which expects the market for the category to reach $11 billion to $16 billion annually by 2032. Big food companies — including PepsiCo, Hormel, Nestle and McDonald’s — have begun dabbling in regenerative practices.

Still, hardly anyone knows about Kernza. Current production is minuscule, with fewer than 4,000 acres planted in the United States, compared with more than 47 million acres of wheat.

California came up with a definition for what constituted “regenerative” this year, but the process was fraught with debate and some critics say the term remains too vague.

What’s more, there are real questions about whether Kernza is actually good for the planet. Whatever gains it might produce in terms of carbon sequestration and reduced water and fertilizer usage are tiny compared with the colossal volumes of planet-warming gasses being pumped into the atmosphere by the relentless burning of fossil fuels. And the yield from an acre of Kernza is still just a fraction of the yield from an acre of wheat.

“The problem with Kernza is that it makes one-third as much grain per acre as wheat, and that means it needs three times as much land to make the same amount of grain,” said Michael Grunwald, author of “We Are Eating the Earth,” a new book that is critical of regenerative agriculture. “That’s environmentally disastrous.”

[jbe200]

I read an article last week about Kernza, a regenerative wheat grass. I was curious and ordered a small "surprise box" from Perennial, a MN company that sells products made with Kernza. Things like granola, pancake mix, crackers, flour, kind of regular stuff you would expect.

Well.....there was a huge surprise! They included a snack pack of BBQ Cricket Mix made with roasted crickets and toasted sunflower seeds. Perennial is a member of the Rural Business Innovation Lab that works on climate change. Another member of the Lab is a company called 3 Cricketeers, they raise crickets and turn them into food.

The product description says that crickets provide 2x the protein of beef, gut-healing prebiotic fiber, an excellent source of vitamin B12 and more calcium than milk. They use a fraction of the water and land resources of livestock and conventional crops, while upcycling waste into feed.

I've heard stories about crickets being considered a delicacy by some people but, so far I am not one of those people. I'm not sure what is going to happen with the cricket mix.

The granola is good. There was no thinking or pondering required!

[horsesarecreatures]

From Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot

[the-puffinry]

“Large areas dominated by annual plants are rare in nature. They tend to colonize ground in the wake of catastrophe: a fire, a flood, a landslide, or a volcanic eruption that exposes bare rock or soil. They survive, in these circumstances, only until perennial plants return and start to mend the broken land, whereupon they are usually overwhelmed.

But it’s not hard to see why our ancestors selected them. Plants that colonize bare ground have evolved to grow fast and invest much of their energy in seeds, rather than in deep roots or dense foliage, so that they can spread as far as possible before the new land closes up. Their seeds tend to be large and to germinate freely.

The problem is that in cultivating annuals, we must keep the land in the catastrophic state they prefer. Every year, we must clear the soil of competing plants, puncture or turn it, and plaster it with the nutrients required to raise a crop from seed to maturity in a few months. However sensitively it is conducted, annual grain production relies on sustaining an ecological disaster for its success. But if instead we grew perennial grain crops, we would not depend on smashing living systems apart to produce our food.

For the past forty years, the Land Institute has been scouring the world for perennial species that could replace the annuals we grow. With other research groups, it has assessed thousands, looking for particular features: high yield, synchronous development (so all the grain can be harvested at the same time), seed retention (which means that the grain stays on the plant until it’s harvested), and ease of growing and reaping (especially by small farmers).

Once they’ve found likely species, the researchers start selective breeding to raise their yields and improve their food and farming qualities. At first, they simply selected, crossed, and multiplied the individual plants with the highest yields. Now they use new technologies to speed up the process. Breeding of the kind that once took centuries can be compressed into a couple of decades.

Sometimes a promising plant goes nowhere. Sometimes an unpromising plant takes off. For example, the Land Institute gave scarcely a thought to a perennial sunflower called Silphium, because in the wild it produces only fifteen or twenty seeds on every flowerhead. But by casually selecting the plants that had a few more seeds than average, within eight years its researchers found themselves harvesting heads with 150 seeds.

Though Kernza—intermediate wheatgrass—is still being developed, it’s one of the first crops that the Institute has tentatively brought to market. So far, the plants have been bred to carry as many seeds as wheat does, but each one is only a quarter of the weight. The breeders hope to match wheat yields within thirty years.

Because the land remains covered for years at a time, bound by their massive roots and showered with their abundant litter, perennial grains like Kernza are likely to reduce erosion and raise the amount of carbon in the soil. One estimate suggests that, if the switch were made worldwide, agricultural soils would regain between a quarter and two-thirds of the carbon they’ve lost since they were first plowed. Ecosystems dominated by perennials, such as forests and natural grasslands, support richer and more abundant soil life than fields growing annual crops. ”

A Moment with Wheatgrass - excerpt of an excerpt from from Regenesis: Feeding the World Without Devouring the Planet by George Monbiot (as featured in Orion magazine).

[rjzimmerman]

When wheat never dies

Could commercially perennial crops like Kernza be regenerative agriculture's holy grail?

Excerpt from this story from Grist:

Last summer, most of the fields surrounding Joel VanderSchaaf’s Prairie farm were baked and brown, withered by one of the most severe droughts in recent memory. One stood out among the rest: A plot the Saskatchewan potato farmer had planted on a whim three years earlier with an experimental grain called Kernza, similar to the wheat used to make bread and beer.

“Our crop was pretty much the only green field around that wasn’t irrigated,” he recalled. “It (Kernza) is very efficient, very hardy … we were quite pleased with how it was growing.”

Kernza is a perennial, which means, like a lawn, it regrows and produces grain every year without having to be replanted. Its extensive root system allows it to draw water and nutrients from deep beneath the ground. Its roots sequester carbon in the soil and boost soil health, making it a regenerative agriculture dream crop. Those environmental benefits are what first drew VanderSchaaf to the unusual crop.

Tim Crews is the chief scientist at the Land Institute, the Kansas-based research center that created Kernza. The organization is devoted to breeding perennial crops like wheat, rice, legumes, and oilseeds without using genetic engineering. It is also developing farming techniques that mimic natural grasslands in an attempt to regenerate Prairie farmland.

Nearly five decades after it was founded in 1976, the Land Institute is confident its efforts, bolstered by success stories like Kernza, demonstrate the “scientific feasibility” of perennial crops. Over the next 40 years, the team plans on crafting new farming methods that recreate the Prairie grasslands natural ecological stability while producing yields similar to conventional crops.

Under Crews’ leadership, the organization is also helping researchers in other countries develop perennial crops suited to their local needs. After years in the shadows, perennial agriculture is starting to catch people’s eye.

[elektroskopik]

Sustainable grains for baking bread — and fighting climate change - Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/interactive/2021/bread-baking-sustainable-grain-kernza/

“It’s so different from anything I’ve baked with,” says my baking partner, Jenny Starrs.

We’re standing in the tiny kitchen of my D.C. apartment, examining palmfuls of a dark, coarse, rich-scented flour. It’s unfamiliar because it was milled from Kernza, a grain that is fundamentally unlike all other wheat humans grow.

Most commercial crops are annual. They provide only one harvest and must be replanted every year. Growing these foods on an industrial scale usually takes huge amounts of water, fertilizer and energy, making agriculture a major source of carbon and other pollutants. Scientists say this style of farming has imperiled Earth’s soils, destroyed vital habitats and contributed to the dangerous warming of our world.

But Kernza — a domesticated form of wheatgrass developed by scientists at the nonprofit Land Institute — is perennial. A single seed will grow into a plant that provides grain year after year after year. It forms deep roots that store carbon in the soil and prevent erosion. It can be planted alongside other crops to reduce the need for fertilizer and provide habitat for wildlife.

In short, proponents say, it can mimic the way a natural ecosystem works — potentially transforming farming from a cause of environmental degradation into a solution to the planet’s biggest crises.

This summer I traveled to Kansas, where I met the scientists who are trying to make Kernza as hardy and fertile as traditional wheat. I visited the farmers who must figure out how to grow it effectively. And I invited my friend Jenny, the founder of artisan baking company Starrs Sourdough, to help me make a loaf of Kernza bread.

Kernza has a long road from the laboratory to the kitchen table. It will be even harder to transform the farming practices that humans have relied on for most of history. But if the scientists, farmers and processors are successful, perennial foods might one day be available on grocery store shelves — and the bread that Jenny and I are baking could offer a taste of what’s to come.

[rjzimmerman]

A recipe for fighting climate change and feeding the world

It tastes like wheat but is much better for the planet.

Excerpt from this story from the Washington Post:

We’re standing in the tiny kitchen of my D.C. apartment, examining palmfuls of a dark, coarse, rich-scented flour. It’s unfamiliar because it was milled from Kernza, a grain that is fundamentally unlike all other wheat humans grow.

Most commercial crops are annual. They provide only one harvest and must be replanted every year. Growing these foods on an industrial scale usually takes huge amounts of water, fertilizer and energy, making agriculture a major source of carbon and other pollutants. Scientists say this style of farming has imperiled Earth’s soils, destroyed vital habitats and contributed to the dangerous warming of our world.

But Kernza — a domesticated form of wheatgrass developed by scientists at the nonprofit Land Institute — is perennial. A single seed will grow into a plant that provides grain year after year after year. It forms deep roots that store carbon in the soil and prevent erosion. It can be planted alongside other crops to reduce the need for fertilizer and provide habitat for wildlife.

In short, proponents say, it can mimic the way a natural ecosystem works — potentially transforming farming from a cause of environmental degradation into a solution to the planet’s biggest crises.

This summer I traveled to Kansas, where I met the scientists who are trying to make Kernza as hardy and fertile as traditional wheat. I visited the farmers who must figure out how to grow it effectively. And I invited my friend Jenny, the founder of artisan baking company Starrs Sourdough, to help me make a loaf of Kernza bread.

Kernza has a long road from the laboratory to the kitchen table. It will be even harder to transform the farming practices that humans have relied on for most of history. But if the scientists, farmers and processors are successful, perennial foods might one day be available on grocery store shelves — and the bread that Jenny and I are baking could offer a taste of what’s to come.