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Twenty tears later--Hard white wheat's demise is a mere exaggerationBy Larry Dreiling "The report of my death was an exaggeration," wrote Mark Twain in an 1897 note to a London correspondent to the New York Journal over a dozen years prior to his ultimate demise. The same might be said about the ruin of the hard white wheat industry, if you listen to its supporters. The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Hard White Wheat Incentive Program, created under the 2002 farm bill, ended with the 2005 crop year. Since then, hard white planted acreage in Kansas--the largest hard white production state--has decreased from a high of 4.9 percent of production in the 2004 crop year to 1.9 percent in 2008, according to the Kansas Agricultural Statistics Service. That decline isn't stopping grain buyers from purchasing hard white and moving it onto the retail market with the promise of whole grain goodness. It also isn't stopping Dr. Joe Martin, professor and wheat breeder at the Kansas State University Agricultural Research Center-Hays, from making new selections for white wheat varieties. "Oh, we might have reduced a little bit of research here in the last couple of years," Martin said as he checked the condition of growing crops in his outdoor nursery a few weeks prior to harvest. "We're still over 50 percent in terms of how much white wheat we're working on." Naturally S'Wheat While total white wheat production is modest, it's still a big change from just a generation ago, when the only wheat varieties High Plains producers had was hard red. A little over 20 years ago, a task force representing members of the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers, Kansas State University Research and Extension, AgriPro, Kansas Wheat Commission and the Kansas Crop Improvement Association (KCIA) was founded to explore the market possibilities of hard white based on the naturally mild, sweeter taste than hard red varieties. "The task force was put together when Lowell Burchett, who ran KCIA, brought together people from every group he could think of including millers, bakers and shippers, and these people were representative of the larger group," said Kent Symms, who helped represent KCIA on the task force and is now CEO of Farmer Direct Foods, the new name for the American White Wheat Producers Association (AWWPA), which led the charge in development of this novel product. From that task force, it was decided that a co-op was a good way to go for the industry to begin to accept hard white. "The main concern of the task force was in keeping white separated from red," said Larry Kepley, a Ulysses, Kan., producer who served as president of AAWPA for much of the organization's existence. "We saw opportunities in identity-preserved production and marketing. That's how AWWPA was born and from that Farmer Direct Foods." The charter meeting of AWWPA occurred 20 years ago this summer. From two to 26 AWWPA had just two varieties to sell at the time: K-State's KS84HW196 and AgriPro's Rio Blanco. They had one disadvantage and that was they would sprout when there was high humidity at harvest. "It limited production to the western part of the state until that issue was solved with Danby. We have had a marked increase in varieties since then," Kepley said. He estimates there are 26 varieties that would be acceptable to the western two-thirds of Kansas, eastern Colorado and the Oklahoma and Texas Panhandle. Some of those have been declared obsolete as others have come on. "One of the things we look back on is this has opened the door for proprietary varieties and shelved some of the issues about acceptance. More importantly, it's showed there are opportunities out there, not only for growers, but for first handlers, millers and bakers to take advantage of these attributes for the benefit of the consumer." Added Symms: "There's been so much progress made in new varieties. Lakin was probably the fourth or fifth variety released out of Hays and Joe has showed me a whole array of good noodle wheats like that. The progress has been tremendous." Say whole grain, please Originally, hard white's mellow, naturally sweet flavor, targeted to artisan bakers looking for a new taste, was to have been a selling point for AWWPA. That's not the case now, Symms said. "Believe it or not, we aren't selling as much to the artisan baker. Their customer has developed a taste for the bolder flavor of red wheat," Symms said. "It's back to the old saying I've had for a long time: There's no such thing as bad wheat. It's just that there's wheat delivered to the wrong place or the right market." Instead, it's no longer wise to call bread products made from hard white as "white" bread, Symms said. "Call it whole grain bread, a great-tasting whole grain bread, and label it so they can distinguish the loaf so they'll know that, when they run out, they can go to the store and find another one," Symms said. Still, there's plenty of confusion out there. "We still have perception problems because, when we say white wheat, people often think of white, fluffy Wonder bread," Symms said. "You can tell the story of good nutrition and being good for farmers, but people still hear the word white rather than whole grains." Also, as the years of drought have shown, wheat-no matter what the class-can vary in quality. New buyers have shown up seeking white wheats of various protein levels, making sales considerably easier. "We've found that we might have lower-strength wheats in our production pipeline that may not sell as bread flour but could be excellent as pastry flour," Symms said. "There are many ways to sell the product. "Truth be told, the best agronomic wheats are white wheats. They are not only coming through us in Farmer Direct, but through other channels. There are significant amounts of white wheat being sold at significant premiums. People are growing under contract for a particular market. You just have to find them." Too much expected White wheat remains a niche product, Symms thinks, because too much is expected of it as a savior of the industry. "I think we, ourselves, might be part of the problem because we put up an image in people's heads that they should get a premium just for growing white wheat," Symms said. "There should be a premium--for growing it the right way to be taken to the right place to be sold at the right price. Sometimes our growers took a discount, instead. It continues to be a problem. "We get into trouble when we think the commodity pool can and should take everything and anything. We really get disappointed when we think we should get paid a premium for a product when all we are doing is dumping it into the commodity pool. It's sort of ridiculous. We actually may lower or mess up the quality of the commodity pool by putting in a different kind of wheat." Truth be told, Symms said, much of the action in hard white is going on without much attention. It's a new way wheat is being sold, from contracts for specific varieties taking the place of traditional commodity sales, with specially designated delivery points rather than at any country elevator and good premiums rather than commodity pricing. "I hear a lot of people complain they're spending money on something that buyers don't want," Symms said, "but when the industry gets down to business, they don't open their mouths and tell everyone what they're doing. "Certainly, more of this business has been going on than it ever has before, a greater amount than I'd ever expected at this point in time. It's being delivered with a high demand but they aren't publicizing it." Popular products We may not realize it, but hard white--correction--whole grain bread has become a popular product on the nation's grocery shelves. "Every major baker has a whole white wheat, whole grain bread. Interstate Brands has Baker's Inn Honey Whole Wheat. Pepperidge Farms, George Weston (Boboli), Sara Lee, Flowers all have them," Symms said. "We've worked with all of them, and Flowers and George Weston a lot, over the years. "They're all doing premium whole wheat breads that aren't labeled as white whole wheat bread but are really white whole wheat. People can tell by the yellow cast rather than the brown or even pink cast. They sell well, with school food services and institutional food services using whole wheat a lot. An early adopter for home bakers was King Arthur Flour and they're with us still." Success in spite of it Farmer Direct's own stone-ground flour mill, near New Cambria, Kan., is running at up to full capacity, Symms said. It needs to remain that way to make it pay. That means producers will have to continue to see the benefits of growing hard white wheat. Symms doesn't think there will be much trouble with that, if the recent past is any indication. "What a shame there are so many people complaining in the fact of so many opportunities. You just have to find them," Symms said. "I'll be the first to grant you that, if everybody did it, there would be too much. Still, everyone can be working on a few projects. The people who want to be innovative and who take the appropriate risks to produce large quantities of hard white are laughing all the way to the bank. "It's a lot harder job than what everyone expected, but we are having success--whether because of us or in spite of us, I don't know. Probably both. It isn't without challenges, but we want to continue to perfect an opportunity for success for family farmers." Larry Dreiling can be reached by phone at 785-628-1117 or by e-mail at ldreiling@aol.com. 7/7/08 Date: 7/2/08 Advertisement
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