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 Lina Tran for Grist.
Broadcast version by Nadia Ramlagan for North Carolina News Service reporting for the Grist-Public News Service Collaboration
The first time Chris Smith tried to grow taro on his experimental farm in western North Carolina, the plants were too eager. He’d started them in a heated greenhouse one February day a few years ago, thinking the tropical crop would need plenty of time to establish. Within a month, the taro had sprung up a foot and a half. Their heart-shaped leaves crowded the small greenhouse, but it was too early to transplant them into the still-cold ground. “That was a fail,” said Smith, the founder of the nonprofit Utopian Seed Project.
In the tropics, the starchy, lavender-hued root vegetable is grown year-round. But even North Carolina’s relatively mild winters aren’t taro-friendly. Smith and his team have kept tinkering with taro, as part of their wider effort to diversify farming — work that would not only make the food system more resilient to climate change, they thought, but also more delicious. Now, they start the seedlings in mid-April, or directly sow offshoots of the mother plant into the ground, deep enough to withstand any late frosts.
As temperatures rise and rainfall grows erratic, planting different crops is one way farmers can adapt to climate change. Rising heat in Michigan, for instance, has prompted a boom in vineyards and widened the range of grape varieties that can be grown there, leading some to speculate that the Midwestern state could be the next wine hub. In Kansas, as rainfall declines, cotton is flourishing in fields once dedicated to wheat and corn. And in the Southeastern U.S., tropical crops like taro look particularly attractive. But that does little good for farmers if their customers don’t know how to eat it. In his mission to introduce taro to the Southeast, Smith is working with farmers, customers, and chefs alike — making an effort to cultivate taro and create a market for it.
In many countries, taro is a staple, and it’s among the world’s oldest cultivated plants. First grown in southeast Asia, taro made its way across the Pacific around 1,500 years ago in the canoes of Polynesian voyagers who traveled the open ocean before making new lives in Tahiti and Hawaii. (While climate change may give the crop a leg-up in the southern U.S., rising temperatures and severe storms are threatening taro in Hawaii, where it’s part of the native Hawaiian creation story.) Root to leaf, the entire plant is edible, though it needs to be cooked first, since taro contains high amounts of oxalic acid, which is usually linked to kidney stones. It can withstand stretches of days without rain because its hairy corms, or potato-like roots, store water. And its broad, sturdy leaves can stand up to heavy rain.
The quest to grow taro in the South reflects a broader theme in efforts to protect agriculture from the hazards of climate change: diversification. “If I put all my eggs in one basket, say all I grow is watermelon, and I get hit with a pretty nasty disease, I lose everything that year,” said David Suchoff, an alternative crops specialist at North Carolina State University who studies plants like hemp and sesame. Or, one year may be dry, another too wet. “We need to be able to weather that better,” Suchoff said. Some plants endure heat or dry spells better than most, while others may be immune to emerging fungi and bacteria. Diversity — meaning both different kinds of crops and different varieties among a particular crop — offers natural protection from pests, disease, and extreme weather.
The global food system is anything but diversified: It’s propped up by three crops — rice, wheat, and corn — that supply half the world’s calories. One NASA study found that in the next ten years, climate change could cut into the yields of wheat and corn by as much as 17 and 24 percent, respectively. Experts say diversifying the food system will help it recover faster when inevitable disruptions come.
That led Smith and his Utopian Seed Project to experiment with tropical crops: bambara, achira, cassava, taro. Most of those plants grow in the tropics year-round, but in North Carolina, the farmers had to figure out how to save the plant material over the winter until it could be re-planted the following spring. It’s the same puzzle farmers solved for now-ubiquitous tomatoes and sweet potatoes, which also originated in the tropics. Taro soon distinguished itself as a high-performer. Taro was easy to grow. It could also be grown organically, and without extra heating or lighting.
Just as important, taro is tasty. Even more versatile than a potato, taro can be steamed, fried, boiled, and braised into sweet and savory dishes alike. Asian-American and Black chefs in Asheville were eager for a local supply. “It’s not like everything we’re doing is about preparing for catastrophe,” said Smith, who pointed to a broad nutritional base and wide representation of cuisines as benefits of a diversified food system.
This summer, with the help of a U.S. Department of Agriculture grant, the Utopian Seed Project scaled up their research trials. Partnering with two farms in the Southeast, they’ll study several varieties, including Korean, Filipino, and Hawaiian taro. The farmers will track costs, yields, and sales, providing a mountain of economic data. At the nonprofit’s farm, different plots will undergo various treatments to compare planting time, planting methods, watering methods, and harvesting techniques.
One of their partners is Michael Carter Jr., who runs Carter Farms in the Piedmont region of Virginia, which has been in his family since 1910. Carter had spent several years living in West Africa, where he couldn’t get enough of kontomire, a spicy stew with taro leaves and ground melon seeds, called egusi. When he returned to the U.S., he started experimenting with taro and found it easy to grow. After his first harvests, he dropped some greens off to a couple of stores catering to African immigrants in northern Virginia, and they were snatched up within minutes. “I can’t grow nearly enough to meet the demand,” Carter said.
Carter felt happy to provide beloved, but hard-to-find produce for people. He knew what it was like to crave certain veggies when far from home; when he lived in West Africa, much as he loved the kontomire, he still hankered for broccoli every now and then. And the taro could benefit people who hadn’t grown up eating it, too. Carter, who focuses on traditional African crops, believes diversifying food production can help African Americans connect with what he calls “culturally appropriate foods.” Although some consider collards as synonymous with African American cooking, they had their start in the eastern Mediterranean, and were brought to North America by Europeans in the 1600s. “You won’t buy collards in West Africa, but you will find taro leaves,” Carter said. “This is the right path back home.”
Before food producers adopt something new, they need to know there’s a market for it. Chefs and stores, on the other hand, want to know they can get a steady supply before they take on a new ingredient or product. Suchoff said a system-based approach is key. “The challenge is, if there’s no market for a crop, it doesn’t matter how drought-tolerant it is or how heat-tolerant it is,” he said. “If the farmer can’t sell it, it’s not really of much use.”
In his taro crusade, Smith works both sides of the equation, offering farmers information from field tests and giving chefs samples from the harvest. To drum up diners’ enthusiasm, the Utopian Seed Project recently held a tasting event with chefs in the area. Cleophus Hethington, previously the head chef of the Asheville restaurant Benne on Eagle, used taro greens to make epis, a Haitian base for stews and sauces. He blended the root into rice-like flecks before stewing it in coconut milk to make creamy, taro-based grits.
Hethington, who was recently nominated for a national James Beard Emerging Chef award, had been cooking food of the African diaspora on a busy block in a historically Black neighborhood, now the heart of the city’s tourist industry. It had been difficult, at times, to cook the food that he did when people in Asheville often weren’t familiar with it. “Once they get the exposure and experience, they see the connectivity and that’s the fun part of it,” Hethington said. “But I can’t say it comes without struggle.”
To Smith, these challenges speak to the nature of change in the food system: “It’s a slow process, to really integrate this food in a way that makes sense and could have lasting change.” One of the chefs he’d worked with asked when they could get a case of taro every week. Smith said it’d take a couple of years.
Lina Tran wrote this article for Grist.
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