Curated news and information worth Sharing
In this section of the site you'll find news and information we come across related to local businesses in Lafayette Colorado as well as local food initiatives along the Front Range and beyond.
Artisan Grain Collaborative on Instagram: “We enjoyed participating in the Kernza®CAP project’s first all-hands meeting today...”
via Instagram
Posted November 1, 2021 1:27 am by Paul Bonneville
More on the Kernza® initiative...
Science & Research
Seeds
Advocacy & Education

Don Lewis Is Reviving the Grain Economy in New York's Hudson Valley
via Civil Eats
Posted October 27, 2021 7:33 pm by Paul Bonneville
The heritage wheat wizard is adapting grain varieties to present-day climate conditions, developing a local market, and working to diversify the food system.

For some reason, the title and the introduction make it sound like Don's work is something new. He has actually been popping up in a number of sources that both Ashley and I have been coming across separately. His work is inspiring. If you do a quick Google on him, he pops up in an article in the the New York Times back in 2010 as well as other articles which cover him working within various parts of the Grain Chain. Another good read about an inspiring thought leader and do-er.
Science & Research
Seeds
Farming
Milling & Malting
Advocacy & Education

Regional Access in Upstate New York
via Regional Access
Posted October 26, 2021 11:06 pm by Paul Bonneville
A community-oriented, grassroots company, Regional Access was built on a vision of providing ecologically responsible, locally grown food in Upstate New York. From humble beginnings in founder Gary Redmond’s garage to their current spacious modern warehouse, the company has flourished over the last few decades, helping to redefine regional food systems and pave the way for a myriad array of new businesses and social efforts focused on improving and developing more sustainable food connections.

This is a great example of a regional food hub over in Ithaca New York. As we seek to understand what local food systems look like to today across the country, having examples to serve as reference points that we can come back to is going to be important. We also love watching the individual stories of these type of businesses as they unfold 😁.

Daily Grains and the research we do is aimed at continuously building our near real-time knowledge of food systems. As we come across inspiring businesses, you'll be seeing us add them here. While not all businesses we follow end up here in the News Feed, they do get added to our knowledge base so that we can keep an eye on their stories over time. 
Organizations
Sales
Regional

I Tried to Prove That Small Family Farms Are the Future. I Couldn’t Do It.
via The Counter
Posted October 25, 2021 10:34 pm by Paul Bonneville
What does all this mean for the future of American agriculture? That we should stop trying to build a more resilient and equitable food system on a foundation of an unproven (or disproven) small family farm ideal, especially when a very real set of alternatives is available.

In this article, Sarah Mock tackles the very question that my mind has been gnawing on over that past couple months: Why is it that the family farm is such a romanticized idea in today's culture? If we want to rebuild any grain chains or create new markets, we have to look at what is not working today, start from there, and integrate things that are working. The small family farm, as romanticized, is not a sustainable business model to build on. This article points out the problems, but offers some potential alternatives. It's worth the read.

Millers and Bakers Seek to Establish a Wheat Flour Foods Promotion, Research, and Information Program
via USDA Agricultural Marketing Service website
Posted October 24, 2021 10:41 pm by Paul Bonneville
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is posting a draft proposal from the Grain Foods Foundation (GFF) requesting the formation of a national promotion, research, and information program for wheat flour used to produce grain foods.  USDA is currently analyzing the proposed order and, if warranted, may publish a proposed rule with request for public comments in the Federal Register. Interested parties can view the draft proposal and justification on the Proposed Research and Promotion Programs webpage.

If I am reading this correctly, the commodity enriched grain producers, as represented by the Grain Foods Foundation (GFF), are looking to establish a national program that would be collecting a fee from all millers and bakers to fund consolidated marketing initiatives: 

The provisional proposed assessment rate for millers would be 2.4 cents per 100 pounds of wheat flour sold for the purpose of producing grain foods. The proposed rate for bakers would be 13.6 cents per 100 pounds of wheat flour purchased for the purpose of producing grain foods and 8.2 cents per 100 pounds of grain foods purchased from a sub-baker for a baker to market.

Now in reading the proposal, there would be exemptions that would exist for most smaller producers which means they would not have to pay the assessments, but they would need to file for an exemption on a yearly basis. I would assume that if you are filing for an exemption, you are also potentially reporting your sales to a commodity producer-driven entity. 

How about we take those proposed assessment fees and turn it towards local grain chains? Of course that would counter the intentions of the GFF: national marketing dollars for enriched grain producers. 

If your interest is deep enough, you can investigate the links to the right to read all the details yourself, but I was able to find the inspiration for why they are coming to the USDA looking for a new funding source:

"In 2004, when the “low carb” diet was hitting a popularity high and severely impacting the wheat flour industry, ABA, NAMA, and over 100 individual companies formally joined forces by creating the Grain Foods Foundation (“GFF”), a separate legal entity with a mission to serve as the marketing and communications voice for the industry. Companies and industry associations, like ABA and NAMA, support GFF through voluntary donations. Under new leadership in 2013, GFF reoriented its marketing and communications focus away from the consumer and toward media influencers. This shift in focus better aligned with GFF revenue and has successfully benefited the entire wheat flour industry. Despite this success, however, GFF’s ability to scale up its current programming efforts is limited due to its dependence on voluntary donations from members that keep its annual operational budget under $3 million."

A Gem from the Artisan Grain Collaborative's Newsletter "The Crumb" for October 24, 2021
via Mailchimp archived newsletter
Posted October 24, 2021 10:45 pm by Paul Bonneville
Reading through the Artisan Grain Collaborative's weekly newsletter and came across the following quote:

Once, addressing a group of culinary historians, she said, “I tell customers that I’m not here to sell you a loaf of bread. I’m here to sell an organic farming system that will put wheat back in the bread basket.” Such ideology can get a little heavy for the general public, so Ellen jokes that she is banned from working the counter at Hewn...

A very true statement from Ellen King, Co-owner & Baker at Hewn, that I very much agree with. While she joked about being banned from the counter, I think her statement is part of what actually does need to be "sold" to customers. 

How we evolve marketing messages while revitalizing and building  grain chains regionally across the country needs to be clever about education. With misinformation being top of mind for many Americans in social media, along with misleading food labels in the grocery stores, I think there is an opening for a new approach to weaving real stories back into our food.
Baking
Advocacy & Education

Inspiration from Mill Museums and David Macaulay
via YouTube
Posted October 22, 2021 5:05 pm by Paul Bonneville
So...this link is for an expired event, but it taps into a couple of major inspiration points for me when it comes to thinking about how to market grain chain initiatives:

Heritage Winooski Mill Museum is pleased to present David Macaulay: BUILDING A MILL TOWN as part of the 2020 Vision initiative of the Vermont Curators Group from December 2- March 12. The show is free but timed tickets are required. Timed tickets can be reserved on our website. Featuring original drawings, sketches, research notes, and manuscript from Macaulay’s 1983 book Mill.

One is the museum itself. While this particular museum does not appear to have much in the way of a history as a grist mill, the mill technology and its evolution have a rich and nostalgic history to to tap into (for good of course). There are also a number of historical working grist mills and mill museums across the country that are ripe to have their stories woven into this retro-revolutionary grain chain story moving forward.

The other inspiration point is the author David Macaulay. I read his illustrated books on castles and mills when I was still in grammar school, and they still inspire me to this day. The combination of fact, the creativity and whimsy of the illustrations, and the inadvertent gaining of knowledge along the way is something I have always aspired to being able to do myself.

Myths vs. Facts About Nutrition and Bread
via The Washington Post
Posted October 21, 2021 6:39 pm by Paul Bonneville
“Less than half the breads we looked at that were labeled multigrain, oat or made with whole grain, for instance, contained only whole-grain flours,” Keating says. “And even all-whole-grain breads can be surprising sources of added sugars, sodium and additives that you may want to eat less of.”

I'm posting this article as an example of just how confusing nutritional education can be when it even comes to the basics. Granted, this is an article coming from a mainstream news source and is not geared toward people people with their "nose to the grindstone" in the world of grains and nutrition. 

My point in posting it: The article does illustrate the fact that consumer marketing, and in turn sales, succeeds today mainly anchored on the premise that people want to believe what they read. In this case, on the labels of the food they buy. 

Information needs to become easier to validate.
Organizations
Advocacy & Education

Enjoy Cajun-Asian Fusion At Casian Seafood in Lafayette
via 5280 Denver's Mile High Magazine
Posted October 19, 2021 10:36 pm
It all started with a walk last summer. Dau Xiong and his wife Maria Nguyen were out for a stroll in their hometown of Lafayette when they saw a restaurant up for sale on the outer edge of Old Town. While the two are both restaurant industry vets—Xiong is a chef, and the couple previously owned a fast-casual franchise—they’d never served their own food: the Hmong cuisine Xiong grew up eating, along with the Cajun seafood boils his family loved.
Locations
Lafayette, CO,
United States
Organizations

The Grain Chain
via WHYY website
Posted September 27, 2021 9:33 pm by Paul Bonneville
Great video from January 2021 illustrating how community members of a grain chain are working together in Pennsylvania. It always amazes me how much information can be packed into a video if it is done well, and this is indeed well done. This is one of those mini-documentaries that brings attention to local food systems without avoiding discussion of the business realities and hard work required.
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