At the OCIA/OGI Meeting in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma Farm Reporter Maci Carter had the chance to visit with the president of Farm Strategy, Andrew Hoelscher.
“We at Farm Strategy build ingredient-based supply chains, so we work with those downstream-based customers, the mills, and the bakers, and we figure out what quality wheat is worth to them, and how do we drive that value all the way back down to the producer and the seedsman to improve the industry overall,” Hoelscher said.
Farm Strategy conducts multiple bakery trails, Hoelscher said, with goals stemming from removing additives, improving bread quality, and more. Hoelscher said that Dr. Brett Carver, regents professor, and wheat genetics chair in the Oklahoma State University Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, has played a significant role in these trials.
“What Dr. Carver has developed is definitely driving value in the industry and building good supply chains in the future,” Hoelscher said.
One of Hoelscher’s talking points at the meeting was a cost-stack regarding the wheat industry.
Looking into a producer’s ability to produce grain, Hoelscher said the producer is typically paid per pound. Other parts of the supply chain add value to that product, Hoelscher added.
“As we build out that cost-stack, that additive market that is currently added to our flour that we produce on the farm is of tremendous value at about 29 billion dollars globally,” Hoelscher said. “So, if we can take some of that value and push it back down to the production system, so we are providing via an ingredient, something that eliminates additives from them, then we become a clean label source. We become additive reduction sources. We become that supplier of choice to build the long-term supply chain that is needed.”
Hoelscher said one of the biggest issues right now in the supply chain is communication.
“Historically, the seedsman has sold a seed that is based upon yield to a farmer, and that farmer can do with it whatever he wants,” Hoelscher said. “With these unique genetics that drive value at the end-use, we have to be able to control where that wheat goes to, and we have to make sure the person downstream from us is very good at how they store it and that they are very clear on how they are going to use it or not use it and that they are going to pay us for the value that is created by it.”
Hoelscher also talked about the collaboration between OSU and Kansas State on wheat genetics. Currently, OSU’s Brett Carver is working on a wheat variety that is a high-protein soft wheat that acts like a hard wheat.
“In general, soft wheats hold the protein looser than hard wheats,” Hoelscher said. “The ability to take a soft wheat and separate the starch from the protein or something like that has potential when you look at maybe some plant-based protein stuff; maybe there are some functionality pieces that are out there, so utilizing that difference to figure out how we create value with it.”
