Blight Fright: Wheat’s precarious position in the food supply

Your average aspiring self-sufficient, food-conscious home or community will likely contain a few staple ingredients or food sources that are local and sustainably produced (or at least as close to sustainable as mere mortals can achieve). You’ve got your farmers-market veggies, free-range eggs, organic dairy products, perhaps even some meat from a local grower if you’re so (gastronomically and financially) inclined.
But there’s one key ingredient missing from this happy pie of wholesome foodery. In fact, you would be hard-pressed to make any sort of pie without it. It’s grain – more specifically, wheat. In most parts of the world, its production is still stuck in the industrial, grossly unsustainable way of doing things, which is unfortunate because it’s such a central part of the Western diet. Had any bread, shredded wheat, crackers, pasta, or doughnuts today? Then you’ll see my point – wheat is everywhere. And while it may not seem to be in short supply, any person on a low income will tell you that the price of all of the above items has risen sharply in the last year or so. That’s because wheat is facing some serious global problems – disease, drought and heightened demand – that is causing the price to skyrocket on the global commodity market.
Clearly, wheat is another example of a food staple that is vitally important to re-localize. Having grains nearby, in the hands of hundreds of small farmers (or better yet, individual consumers with backyard gardens), instead of under the lock and key of four or five global conglomerates, makes their availability a surer bet. Only problem is, if you’re trying to be a locavore, bread and wheat products are one area in which you’re likely to break the local-food diet on a regular basis. Farmers growing for a local market tend to stick to vegetables, meat and eggs. Because of the processing (grinding into flour and other products) needed, wheat and other grains have managed to stay centralized, distributed from regional mills.
Let’s follow a typical pound of flour from the field to your morning pancakes. Once the grain is harvested (whether that farm is organic or conventional) it goes to a regional collection point. In Oregon, for example, all the wheat grown by farmers in the Willamette Valley (the main agricultural part of the state) gets trucked up to temporary storage somewhere near Portland. From there, it goes onto containers headed for Asia. That’s right. For all the millions of acres of grain produced close to home, only a tiny percentage of it makes it to the state’s only commercial grain milling facility in Eugene, and an even smaller percentage is actually consumed in the state. So those pancakes you ate this morning were more likely to be made from grain from the Midwest than from close to home. Of course, there's no way to know for sure, thanks to centralized distribution.
Sounds crazy, you say? Sorry, it’s all economics. The lowest price can only be obtained by controlling the supply through a limited number of processing facilities and shipping it out to retailers as needed. Do you like your cheap box of pancake mix? Do you? Well, then don’t ask so many questions.

In the meantime, local-food advocates keep harping on the need to circumvent this consolidated system – which applies not only to wheat but also just about any food product you can think of – and reestablish direct producer-to-consumer relationships. But why? Put simply, it’s a matter of food security. This means two things: the safety of the food we actually consume, and our ability to obtain it in the first place.
Let’s go back to the bag of mix you used to make your pancakes. Contamination in centralized processing plants (which is what recently compromised the safety of peanuts), isn’t the only problem. Black stem rust, a fungus that attacks wheat plants, is a looming but under-reported threat to wheat harvests around the world. It’s been around a long time – probably as long as wheat has been domesticated – but modern-day strains have been bred to resist the fungus. Now, as if it’s starring in its own terrible sci-fi flick, it’s back – with a vengeance. The fungus has finally evolved the genetic upper hand to destroy previously immune plants. Scientists are calling the new strain Ug99, for the country, Uganda, where it has hit the hardest, leaving behind acre upon acre of ashen, inedible wheat. It seems to be getting more virulent as it progresses, and is so immediately devastating to crops that the US (who else?) once bred it as a biological weapon.
We shouldn't have bothered - Ug99 is wreaking havoc all on its own, causing famine and strife all over Africa and the Middle East. We're not hearing much about it now, but as soon as it spreads to developed countries, I imagine that we will hear more.
Ironically, even Norman Bourlag, the much-lauded father of the “green revolution” and industrial agriculture, had to admit that the Ug99 problem is an unintended side-effect of the way conventional agriculture seeks to extract the most production out of a given piece of land. According to this article in NewScientist:

Ug99 will find agriculture has changed to its liking in the decades stem rust has been away. "Forty years ago most wheat wasn't irrigated and heavily fertilised," says Borlaug. Now, thanks to the Green Revolution he helped bring about, it is. That means modern wheat fields are a damper, denser thicket of stems, where dew can linger till noon - just right for fungus.

What Borlaug fails to mention is that not only do wheat plants grow closer together now than ever before, those plants are genetically identical thanks to hybridization. Farmers don’t save their own wheat for replanting, they buy it from a seed company (ie, Monsanto), which has developed wheat genetically programmed to produce the highest yield possible. So when a disease or fungus like Ug99 hits the genetic jackpot that allows it to destroy a wheat plant, it can destroy virtually all wheat plants, because there are only a few varieties grown in the world.
Ug99 isn’t the only threat to the world’s food supply, either. Since the beginning of the year, farmers in Canada and the Midwest have noticed a sharp increase in cases of Fusarium head blight, another fungus that affects wheat, barley, oats, rye, corn and grasses used to feed livestock. This one is sneakier: it doesn’t destroy plants right away but makes their grain toxic to consume. That means any slip-up in our notoriously shaky food-safety inspection system could poison hundreds or thousands of innocent pancake-eaters.
The most frustrating part about all of this is that there’s not much the average consumer can do to voice his or her protest against the way wheat is grown and distributed. Sure, we can buy organic, but organic grain is no more resistant to the diseases bred by conventional agriculture than its chemically nurtured counterparts. And “big organic” uses centralized distribution systems that, like any centralized system, erase the connections between producer and consumer until it’s impossible to tell where any given bag of flour was grown.
Still, one thing organic growers can’t do is spray their fields down with fungicide at the slightest hint of black stem rust, which is what conventional growers will surely do. And there is one way to ensure both the supply and safety of your wheat: grow and mill it yourself. I’m not being facetious. It takes surprisingly little grain to feed a family (ten families can live off one measly acre, according to an anonymous informational signboard at the Port Alberni fair last month), and there are actually super-compact mills built today that you can squeeze under your kitchen sink. Unless you live next door to a giant commercial wheat farm, there’s little chance of any global wheat pandemics affecting your plants.
Unfortunately, I have no personal experience with wheat cultivation, so I won’t instruct you on it here (perhaps in a future blog!) Instead, I’ll post yet another recipe, one that I’ve become quite familiar with since becoming the designated baker of Collins Farm. I’ve been making bread practically since I could reach the kitchen counter, but only started making yeast-free bread this summer. It has a unique flavor and texture but a dedicated fan base at our farm market. I’m a bit conflicted about selling it since bread is so deliciously simple to make, so I’m hoping making the recipe public will make kitchen revolutionaries out of a few of you.
The most important step is to find some local flour. If you live in Oregon, the local grain I discussed above is sold under the name Bob’s Red Mill. You can probably also find local farmers that grow grains if you ask around (try Willamette Farm and Food Coalition’s directory) If you live in Port Alberni, find Wayne Smith at the Farmer’s Market at the Harbor Quay – he sources his own organic grain and grinds it up fresh. It’s incredible stuff.


Tuula’s Whole Grain Bread
Makes 2 loaves

To make from starter:
Starter takes about 48 hours to ferment, but it makes awesome bread and eliminates the need for yeast. I start in the morning two days before I want to make bread. Combine a cup of water and a cup of whole wheat flour in an airtight container. Keep it in a warm place where it won’t be disturbed (in the oven with the light on is good). The next morning, “feed” it by adding another cup of flour and another cup of water. It should be bubbly and smell “yeasty”. Set it aside again until you make your bread (that evening or the next morning). You can keep the starter going for as long as you like but it will turn into sourdough starter after about a week (you can find lots of instructionals online for making sourdough bread this way).

To make from yeast:
Use active dry yeast (not instant) or fresh yeast, which is available from bakeries.
In a large bowl, dissolve 2 tablespoons molasses or honey* in 2 cups lukewarm water (no hotter than 115 degrees). Sprinkle in 1 ½ tablespoons yeast and allow to sit for ten minutes, or until it looks bubbly.

*Molasses gives a nice dark color to the bread but some prefer the flavor of honey, so use both if you like.

Bread recipe
2 cups starter or 1 1/2 tablespoons yeast
1 ½ cups water (in addition to water used in yeast method)
2 tablespoons molasses or honey*
2 tablespoons oil (vegetable or olive work fine)
½ teaspoon salt
7 cups whole wheat flour
½ cup dry 7-grain cereal
½ cup cooked brown rice (or substitute more cereal)
½ cup any combination flax seeds, sunflower seeds and/or pumpkin seeds

1. Add 1 cup hot water to the 7-grain cereal, set aside to soak.
2. Prepare yeast mixture as above or pour starter into a large bowl. Add molasses (if using starter), oil, salt and 2 cups of the flour. Mix well (lumps are ok) and add soaked cereal, rice and seeds.
3. Continue adding flour until a dough forms. Turn onto a floured counter and knead for 10 minutes or until dough is smooth and elastic.
4. Place dough in a clean and oiled bowl, flip to coat both sides. Allow to rise two hours at room temperature or overnight in the refrigerator.
5. When dough has risen (it will not double in volume but perhaps get close depending on the strength of your yeast/starter), punch it down. Divide it into two loaves and place in bread pans or on baking sheets. Brush the loaves with a beaten egg and sprinkle on some extra seeds (this is optional but makes the loaves look prettier). Make a ½ inch deep cut lengthwise along the top of the loaf.
6. If dough was refrigerated, allow to rise an additional hour in the pans. If not, half an hour or so should do the trick. Again, the dough will not rise significantly but should grow a bit.
7. Bake at 375 for about an hour. Bread will brown on top and sound hollow when tapped. Allow to cool in pans for a few minutes, then turn onto racks to cool. Do not bag until completely cooled.

When Pigs Swim

We crash through the thick forest in a single-file line: Andrea, Ann, Carmen and me. Carmen, the border collie, is sniffing out the bushes. Ann and I are shaking buckets of grain and calling in what we hope is a beckoning tone: "Heeere, piggy piggy piggies! Good piggies!"
Despite this effort, no soft oinking noises can be heard in the shrubbery. Ann suggests we make our way down to the river bank to look for tracks. The thought hadn't yet occurred to me or Andrea, another woman who works on the Collins' farm. We're having a hard time comprehending how the pigs got themselves lost over here in the first place. Three weeks ago, they bolted from their pen at the Collins' farm, which is just across the river. Granted, it's not a huge river, but they're not very big pigs, either. Still in disbelief that they actually swam over here, I gaze up into the tall branches of the cottonwoods surrounding us. You never know where a highly mobile pig might hide.

This Tuesday-afternoon swine hunt takes place on my second day as apprentice at Ann and Bob Collins' farm on Vancouver Island. Because agriculture hasn't been profitable here for many years, Ann and Bob also run a campground that provides extra income from tourists willing to pay to pitch a tent or park an RV on the farm's non-agricultural land. What that means for me is that a typical day might have me running the register, preparing food, cleaning the two campground cottages, pulling weeds, feeding animals and of course harvesting the organic bounty. Pig hunting, on the other hand, was not in the job description. I considered it a bonus activity.

The two pigs came to the farm about three weeks ago, before I arrived. They were only in their pen a couple of days before they got spooked by the donkeys and took off through their electric fence. The last anybody saw of them, they were tearing through the woods toward the river. Thinking they couldn't have gotten too far, Ann and Bob called all the neighbors (excepting those across the river), but nobody had seen them. Ann figured they were dead; Bob, a fiction writer, imagined them building a raft and setting off for an adventure, Huck Finn style.
Then, Monday night as I was washing up the dinner dishes, the phone rang. I picked up. It was Georgina, across the river, asking when somebody was going to come pick up the pigs that had been hanging around with her cows the past two days. I told her we would let her know and hung up, scratching my head.
When Bob and Ann returned, I told them about the call. They were thrilled. "Can pigs swim?" I asked. "Sure," Bob said. I still wasn't sure if I believed him. "We'll go pig hunting tomorrow," he added. Proof was on the way.

The next morning, we loaded up the buckets of grain in the back of the truck, attached a trailer to haul the pigs in, and drove through town and to the other side of the river. Bob stayed with the truck while Ann, Andrea (who once lived on this side of the river), Carmen the border collie and I started to comb the forest. As we looked, we discussed whether we should have brought a lasso or if it was even possible to catch a pig on the run. But Ann was confident: The pigs had to be hungry after their long adventure. Luring them into the trailer with a bucket of grain would be a piece of cake. We just had to find them first.
The river bank held no tracks. Using our tracking skills, we deduced that they had been borrowing through the forest underbrush, but not even Carmen, a professional animal herder, could sniff them out. I began to feel a little silly and hung back with Ann at the water's edge, pulling thorns out of my shoes and trying to think like a pig. Then we heard Andrea yelling. She'd found the fugitive pigs!
We broke out into a trot and met up with her at the cattle pen. For some reason we hadn't thought to check there, but there they were, darting around under the bellies of the cows, who were going crazy at the sight of the grain in our buckets. The four or so cows began leaping about, long strings of drool coming from their mouths. Finally, the little hairy black pigs got over their fear of us and slipped under the fence, heading nose-first for the grain buckets. We let them have a sample and then started heading back to the road, continuing to shake the buckets. The pigs followed, their minds no longer on escape but on food. Ann led them straight into the trailer and shut the door. Carmen and I brought up the rear, she more disappointed than I that we hadn't actually needed to chase or herd anybody.

It didn't strike me until later that what the Collins are trying to do here - preserve the farming community and build a market for local foods - is quite similar to catching pigs. I'm not comparing people to chubby livestock, but I have noticed over the years that food is a strong motivator for the human type of animal. Screaming kid at the grocery store? He just wants a candy bar. Squabbling family at the holidays? A tray of cookies does the trick. Angry drunken party getting out of control? Order a pizza. The same principle applies to getting people excited about things in a more positive way. Talk to them about agricultural subsidies, the Farm Bill or food miles traveled and their eyes will glaze over, but put that glaze on a fresh fruit tart or a roast ham and the whole issue becomes a lot more relevant. As Alice Waters said, "food is the one central thing about human experience that can open up both our senses and our conscience to our place in the world." A person who experiences the freshness and flavor of a locally produced vegetable might not go out right away and plant a garden, but they might think a bit differently about food from then on.
Unlike Eugene, Oregon, Port Alberni, BC hasn't quite been hit yet by the local foods craze. I see this as a good thing: There's a lot of room for community education. This weekend, I showed a few campers - one mom and three little girls - around the farm after one of the little girls begged to see the horses. After stopping in at the barn, we walked around the pasture, garden and chicken coop. I'll never forget the look of amazement in the girls' eyes as they examined the three fresh eggs, one of them pale green, waiting in the laying box. I let them keep the green egg, object of much fascination, on promises that they would come back for market day the following weekend.
Most food in Port Alberni is purchased through major grocery chains, and most of the farmers have disappeared from the valley, unable to support their businesses. I don't have illusions about seeing this trend turn around while I'm here, but I think one-on-one interactions that farm visitors get can help spark some sort of change. We don't need to catch people, we just need to show them the better option. After all, if the bucket of grain is tasty enough, even wayward, river-swimming pigs can be led back home.

Oregon Local Foods part 2: What’s for dinner?

Cassava root. Salmonberry. Black Republican cherries.
Never heard of them? There’s probably a reason for that – they are all edible plants native to the Willamette Valley here in Oregon. At one time, native Oregonians (from the Kalapooia and other tribes) ate cassava like we eat French fries today. Berry bushes in hundreds of varieties provided a wild harvest to anyone who knew how to tell a delicious snack from a bellyache. The black Republican cherry tree was introduced as a commercial crop in 1860, producing a plum-like fruit that was known throughout the Northwest.
Today, the cassava is protected as one of the few remaining indigenous plants in the area, our berry diet is limited to the two or three varieties that accompany peanut butter in sandwiches, and the words “black Republican” only bring to mind awful jokes.
But the irony is more immediate than that. Faced with a food culture that has been completely commodified, stripped of all regional identity and packed into neat little boxes (salmon burger, anyone?), chefs and food aficionados around the Willamette Valley are scratching wildly, looking for dishes that we can claim and incorporate into a distinctive local cuisine. I feel their pain – the lack of “American” food, leave alone Oregonian or Pacific Northwestern food is something I’ve long failed to understand. Once, a friend and I brainstormed an entire afternoon trying to think of something to cook for Saudi Arabian friends coming over for an authentic American dinner. We ended up making enchiladas. Close enough –as long as our guests never find their way south of the border.
It’s not that we don’t have material to work with in this region. Heirlooms like the black Republicans, including apple, pear and nut trees, as well as a varieties of beans, vegetables and berries, have been cultivated here since the first white settlers set up camp. The sense of local pride that has evolved around these crops is revealed in some of their names: Gramma Walters bean; Oregon Champion gooseberry. Because they are for one reason or another not commercially viable (delicate fruit, short shelf life, inconsistent production), many are in danger of extinction. Today, only a few, very old black Republican trees survive in the Eugene area and nowhere else, according to a book compiled by Gary Paul Nabhan, a well known ecologist and localization writer. The loss of heirloom varieties would be a blow to local agriculture, not just for cultural reasons but also because locally adapted crops tend to be hardier, better suited to the climate and soil conditions and thus less likely to need chemical inputs to thrive.
Anyway, anyone trying to establish a regional cuisine in Oregon has my full support, especially given some of the difficulties involved. Salmon is no longer an obvious choice for any of the Pacific Northwest. Gary Nabhan splits North America into distinct bioregions based on indigenous food traditions, and names this corner of the continent Salmon Nation. I support the idea behind this effort, but wish we could move beyond this beleaguered fish for its basis. One species is limited as a basis for an entire cuisine, and nobody with an ounce of ecological awareness would (or should) be caught dead eating anything but wild-caught salmon, whose numbers are swiftly dwindling anyway. In addition, any food trend that might eventually filter its way down to the masses (ie broke college students who find cooking an enjoyable form of productive procrastination) must be affordable, but most restaurants that attempt to differentiate their fare from that of Seattle or Portland tend to be in the price range of middle-aged urbanites with real jobs. In this economy, that leaves out roughly half of the population. (Really, though: the poverty rate in the Eugene area is higher than the state average, and Oregon is now has the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation.) Although the efforts of local chefs to get us to eat seasonally and locally with braised lamb in wild mushroom sauce are admirable, they aren’t the American’s South’s cornbread and grits. That is, you won’t see many of us switching from ramen-based diets anytime soon. As I mentioned in the previous post, the industrial food system has gotten most people used to food made from two or three major plants plus meat. It’s cheap and childishly easy to prepare (or pick up at the drive-thru window). Some serious re-education is in order before we can even think about preparing regionally based foods.
That said, I do see some adventurous farmers and blogger/cooks in the area making steps in these directions, first making the food available and then showing people that it’s not rocket science to put it together. Farmers near Corvallis are making serious efforts to reintroduce bean and grain production in the Willamette Valley; one Eugene-based blog has a recipe for black bean brownies. Is that the smell of synergy baking?
I’m not suggesting that Oregon farmers abandon all commodity crops for fields of waving cassava and garbanzos. After all, grass seed production generates $1.6 billion in economic activity in the state, and how else would every suburban home be able to cultivate an overwatered green monoculture without these farmers? Plus, other forms of agriculture are just way too much work, and since there simply aren’t enough illegal immigrants to go around, who will do it? On the other hand, small, organic farms have been shown to provide more ecosystem-like benefits while being more productive per acre than huge operations. And aren’t we facing something like a global food crisis? Wouldn’t it make more sense to give up just a few of those acres for diversified food production rooted in local traditions that we can all take pride in?
It’s all too confusing for me. I think I’ll just head to the kitchen to see if I can make black bean brownies that look as good as the picture on that blog. I only wish I had some black Republican cherry ice cream to put on top of them.