Progress report for LNE16-351

1,000 grain farmers in New York, Vermont, Pennsylvania, and Ohio learn about our project and education opportunities with perennial grains through email networks, meetings, and newsletters.

• Our article, “Perennial Grain Crop Production in New York State” was published December 7, 2016 in the ‘What’s Cropping Up’ Newsletter, which described research from our group on perennial grains, and introduced the project.
  • A year after being posted, the article on the website received 142 page views. 
  • The true extent that the article reached is hard to estimate, because it was emailed to stakeholders, including Franklin Egan of PASA, Kat Carestio of NOFA-NY, Jude Maul of USDA-ARS Beltsville, and the group at Plovgh, a group that handles distributing novel agriculture products, who then may have passed it on to others. This article was shared as a link on the Perennial Grains Blog Site (http://pwheat.anr.msu.edu/).
• Project coordinators Sandra Wayman and Matt Ryan gave a field presentation in our field of intermediate wheatgrass on perennial grains, “Perennial Grain Crop Production: Novel grain crops to regenerate soil and augment grain production in the Northeast”, at the Cornell Musgrave Research Farm Field day on July 14, 2016. We provided attendees a handout about perennial grains, which included details about this project. 167 participants attended. 
• Sandra Wayman gave a project update presentation, “Perennial Grains”, at the Wheat Field Day at Cornell University on June 10, 2016. 40 participants attended. 
• Sandra Wayman and Eugene Law spoke about the work undertaken within this project at the “Small Grains Management Field Day” June 8, 2017 at the Cornell University Musgrave Research Farm in Aurora, NY. A handout was shared, in addition to plant and grain examples. 90 participants attended. 
• Cynthia Bartel, Eugene Law, Sandra Wayman, and Matt Ryan spoke at the Cornell Small Grains Management Field Day about perennial cereal rye at the Musgrave Research Farm on June 7, 2018. 80 participants attended. 
• Sandra Wayman shared information about cleaning and dehulling intermediate wheatgrass with researchers at Patagonia Provisions in 2018, who shared this information with a farmer in Sweden who is setting up an intermediate wheatgrass cleaning operation. 
• An article on our Sustainable Cropping Systems Lab website (http://blogs.cornell.edu/scslab/perennial-grains/) covered an introduction to perennial grains and our lab’s work with them, and received 35 unique page visits since that website was launched in February 2018.
• Cynthia Bartel presented “Perennials: From groundcovers to grains” (Bartel, C.A., S.V. Archontoulis, A.W. Lenssen, K.J. Moore, I.L. Huber, D.A. Laird, S. Fei, M.R. Ryan, and P.M. Dixon) at the Cornell University Soil and Crop Sciences Section Fall Seminar Series, Ithaca, NY on October 25, 2018. Approximately 80 people were in attendance.
• Eugene Law presented results from the first two years of data from the Musgrave Research Farm perennial/annual grains interseeding experiment for the Cornell Soil and Crop Sciences Department weekly seminar on December 6, 2018. 50 people attended.

200 of these farmers are inspired to learn about perennial grain crop production in the northeast from a presentation at an organic farmer meeting and a distributed article reporting preliminary results from our field research.

• Sandra Wayman presented an introduction to perennial grains and this project, and reported preliminary results to New York State organic grain farmers at the NYCO (New York Certified Organic) Winter Meeting on January 10, 2017, at the Geneva CUAES experiment station to 63 attendees.
  • After this meeting, a local organic grain farmer was interested in planting perennial grains on his farm. In August 2017, intermediate wheatgrass was planted on 8.4 acres at his farm.

• Sandra Wayman gave an update on perennial grains at Cornell at the January 9, 2018 New York Certified Organic Winter Meeting at the Geneva CUAES station. Topics covered included on-farm trials, challenges with stand success, harvest challenges, yield, seed size, and forage use. There were 45 grain and dairy farmers in attendance. A discussion about planting intermediate wheatgrass as pasture resulted as part of this meeting. 
• Forthcoming on January 17, 2019, we will present a workshop on perennial grains to the farmers of NOFA-NY at the NOFA annual meeting in Syracuse, NY.

100 of the 200 farmers learn about perennial grain crop production, observe mature intermediate wheatgrass and perennial rye ready to be harvested, and learn about market opportunities as part of a small grains workshop at the Cornell University Musgrave Research Farm annual field day. Based on research results, we advise farmers on optimal harvest windows and techniques, post-harvest handling, and economics.

• It is not yet known in the Northeast the best time to harvest perennial grains for ease of combine management and sufficient grain maturation. Thus, before providing education on this topic, we completed a harvest timing trial in August 2017 to help ourselves, our collaborating farmers, and our future farmer beneficiaries to better understand harvest management. This side-project was part of the process towards completing this milestone. We observed maturity of seeds and greenness of rachises of intermediate wheatgrass over time to help determine the best time to harvest the crop (Fig 4). We learned that waiting later in the season may be the best harvest choice as far as crop moisture (Fig 4). 

Figure 4. Percentages of intermediate wheatgrass seeds and rachises at three levels of maturity on four harvest dates in August 2017.

• On July 13, 2018, Sandra Wayman, Matt Ryan, Eugene Law, and Cynthia Bartel presented a workshop on perennial grains at the 2018 Cornell University Musgrave Research Farm Field Day, which included intermediate wheatgrass and perennial cereal rye field site visits. The presentation covered our interseeding work with red clover, harvest techniques and yield, field management, and perennial grain dehulling and cleaning. There were 160 farmers in attendance. A hand-out detailing our work with perennial grains was shared with attendees.
• Eugene Law presented a talk entitled, “Comparing Annual and Perennial Small Grain Cropping Systems: Agronomy, Economics, and Soil Health” (Law, E.P., Wayman, S., Pelzer, C.J., Ryan, M.R., and DiTommaso, A.) at the Northeast Plant, Pest, and Soil Conference, January 8-10, 2019, Hunt Valley, MD. ~200 attendees
• A collaborating baker with Wide Awake Bakery (Trumansburg, NY) staffed an educational display about his bakery and the grain from intermediate wheatgrass at the event “Science Center After Dark: Beer & Bread”, at The Sciencenter, Ithaca NY on April 25, 2019. The exhibit included intermediate wheatgrass grain and an educational poster about intermediate wheatgrass. 89 attendees.
• Eugene Law presented a poster, “An Emergy Comparison of Annual and Perennial Small Grain Cropping Systems” (Law, E.P., Wayman, S., Pelzer, C.J., DiTommaso, A., and Ryan, M.R.) at the American Ecological Engineering Society Meeting, June 3-6, 2019, Asheville, NC.  ~200 poster viewers.
• Eugene Law, Sandra Wayman, and Matt Ryan presented “Evaluating Kernza, the First Perennial Grain” at the Cornell Musgrave Research Farm Field Day on July 11, 2019. The field tour featured a soil pit (Figure 5) to expose the deep roots of intermediate wheatgrass. Participants were given a hand-out about perennial grains and offered tastes of bread made from intermediate wheatgrass. 117 attendees.

Figure 5. Soil pit dug for Cornell Musgrave Research Farm Field Day, July 11, 2019, to expose the deep root systems of intermediate wheatgrass.

• Eugene Law presented a poster, “Investigation of Soil Carbon Storage and Soil Structure Impacts of ‘Kernza’ Intermediate Wheatgrass” (Law, E., Cagle, J., Godwin, G., Pelzer, C., Wayman, S., Culman, S., and Ryan, M.R.) at the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability Research Fellows Symposium, October 28, 2019, Ithaca, NY. ~25 poster viewers

50 of these farmers attend a perennial grain tasting event where eight high profile bakers, distillers, and maltsters share test-products of bread and beverages made from intermediate wheatgrass and perennial rye. At the tasting event, 10 farmers network with suppliers and bakers on future contracts.

• More thorough preparation of intermediate wheatgrass grain than originally expected will be necessary for any large scale uses of flour. We need to develop functional intermediate wheatgrass post-harvest cleaning and dehulling methods before flour could be milled. To clean and dehull our first harvest of intermediate wheatgrass during the winter of 2018, we worked with, and learned from, partners at the Big Flats Plant Materials Center, The New York Seed Improvement Program, The Small Grains Lab at Cornell, Farmer Ground Flour, and our three collaborating farmers. In December 2018, the most successful to-date dehulling of intermediate wheatgrass occurred at Klaas Martens farm, using his Horn Spelt Dehuller. Following this dehulling step with a gravity table is what we recommend as the most efficient preparation of intermediate wheatgrass grain for milling into flour.
• In May 2018, 60 lbs of intermediate wheatgrass grain was ground into whole-meal flour at Farmer Ground Flour on a 30″ Meadows Mill. In June 2018, Wide Awake Bakery made test loaves with 25% intermediate wheatgrass flour (with 75% wheat flour, Fig 6), 50% intermediate wheatgrass flour (with 50% wheat flour, Fig 7), and 100% intermediate wheatgrass flour (Fig 8). Although the 100% intermediate wheatgrass loaf did not rise like a wheat loaf, it had the flavor and texture profile of a traditional German-style dark rye loaf. Other intermediate wheatgrass flour products experimented with by bakers within the Ryan lab have included chocolate chip cookies, crackers, and pretzels.

Figure 6. Loaf of 25% intermediate wheatgrass flour and 75% wheat flour.

Figure 7. Loaf of 50% intermediate wheatgrass flour and 50% wheat flour.

Figure 8. Loaves of 100% intermediate wheatgrass flour.

• Sandra Wayman created a factsheet to share with four local farmers growing intermediate wheatgrass, which details the post-harvest cleaning and dehulling steps, machines, and settings necessary to turn harvested Intermediate wheatgrass into flour. This factsheet was shared with farmers at the winter 2018 advisory board meeting.
• In spring 2018, 300 lbs of perennial cereal rye was sent to Van Brunt Stillhouse in Brooklyn for a test batch of whisky. The product cured in barrels for 7-9 months and the distiller said that the perennial cereal rye made “good” whisky, though not as preferable as his favored standard cereal rye variety, ‘Danko’.
• For the winter 2019 perennial grains advisory board meeting, Wide Awake Bakery provided trials of products from intermediate wheatgrass to the 11 attendees: round loaf with 30% intermediate wheatgrass flour, rectangular German loaf with 100% intermediate wheatgrass flour, shortbread cookies with 50% intermediate wheatgrass flour and 50% almond flour, and both sugar cookies and chocolate cookies with 20% intermediate wheatgrass flour. Tasters considered formulations for these products to be successful.
• In August 2019, a total of 550 lbs of intermediate wheatgrass seed was successfully cleaned by our collaborators at the Farmer Ground flour mill, using a Clipper 3-screen cleaner followed by an Oliver High Capacity gravity table. The cleaned seed was planted onto 18 acres at the Cornell University Mt Pleasant research site in August 2019.
• In August 2019, 150 lbs of cleaned intermediate wheatgrass grain (from Klaas Marten’s Horn dehuller) was successfully ground into flour at the Farmer Ground mill, using a hammer mill.
• We have modified the original plan of hosting a networking/tasting event to take advantage of an opportunity to collaborate with a graduate student and economist in the Applied Economics and Management department at Cornell University to conduct a willingness to pay study on bread made from intermediate wheatgrass flour. We hosted intermediate wheatgrass bread tasting sessions with the goal to understand how bread from intermediate wheatgrass might be received by local consumers. We believe this is a valuable change to our project, because it allows us to better understand how intermediate wheatgrass might be received by local consumers before we work to push any products into the local market.

  We collaborated with Nima Homami and Miguel Gomez in the Applied Economics and Management department and the Wide Awake bakery, with guidance from Lee DeHaan of the Land Institute. Two-hundred and twenty participants (local community members and students) were divided into 40-minute sessions on September 14, 21, and 28, and November 1, 2019. Participants blind-tasted four types of bread (15% intermediate wheatgrass, 25% intermediate wheatgrass, and both a spelt and whole wheat control) and bid an amount of money on the variety of bread they preferred. Some participants were given information on the sustainability of intermediate wheatgrass, to determine if this knowledge influenced their willingness to pay. Results suggest that consumers with a higher self-reported interest in the environment were willing to pay more for intermediate wheatgrass bread. There was no preference for bread made with 25% over 15% intermediate wheatgrass flour.

20 farmers are provided with seed and supporting information to plant perennial grain crops on 400 acres.

• Between September 9 and 21, 2016, three farmers in Penn Yan NY, Interlaken NY, and Newfield NY planted a combined 2.1 acres of intermediate wheatgrass and 2.2 acres of perennial cereal rye as part of our on-farm research trials.
• On August 30, 2017, a farmer in Trumansburg NY planted 19 acres of intermediate wheatgrass.
• In August 2018, Ernst Conservation Seeds (Meadville, PA) planted 4 acres of intermediate wheatgrass with an oat nurse crop on their land.
• In August 2018, a farmer in Altamont NY planted four 1/3 acre paddocks of intermediate wheatgrass over which to rotate livestock.
• In September 2018, a farmer in Shelbourne, VT planted 8 acres of intermediate wheatgrass.
• In September 2018, a farmer in Harvard, IL planted two acres of intermediate wheatgrass as a filter strip and adjacent to waterways, and 1.5 acres as a pasture. 
• In the future, we will be collaborating with the field crops production manager at the Hudson Valley Farm Hub (Kingston, NY) to grow acreage of intermediate wheatgrass at their facility.

These 20 farmers document perennial grain crops on 400 acres by submitting completed verification information to project staff, and staff document the entry of 150 tons of perennial grain into the northeast market.

• On August 30, 2019, the 4 acre field at Ernst Conservation Seeds was harvested using a Gleaner K combine. They cleaned and dehulled the grain, which resulted in a total of 230 lbs.
• On September 21, 2019, the first sale related to this project of a product made from intermediate wheatgrass grain occurred. A baker with the Wide Awake bakery offered samples of 25% and 15% intermediate wheatgrass bread at the Geneva, NY Farmer’s Market. Eight pan loaves were sold, for $7 each. The baker said costumers “seemed to prefer it over regular whole wheat for sure.”