While wheat acreage in Oklahoma has been declining for decades, it is the sole crop on Bob Baker’s farm near Alva, where his great-grandfather first settled during the Oklahoma Land Run of 1893.
Rather than diversify crops, eight years ago Baker decided to add value by turning his wheat into a specialty crop.
While attending a board meeting of a local processing cooperative called Value Added Products, he heard a presentation by Kris Gosney, a farmer from Fairview and the state’s first to be organically certified. It struck him that the production practices she described weren’t all that different from what he was already doing.
“I’m almost organic, and I didn’t know it,” he recalled thinking to himself. “Plus, the price point caught my interest.”
At the time, organic wheat sold for two and a half times more than conventional wheat, although the price differential can vary.
Baker decided to forge ahead with the three-year certification process. Since then, he’s grown everything from Turkey red to Sonoran white to blue bearded durum on his 4 Generations Organic Farm. His customers include national brands like King Arthur Flour, large commercial mills like Panhandle Milling and home bakers who buy direct through an online store.
As a new growing season begins, he’s planting spring wheat for Barton Springs Mill near Austin, one of the country’s best known artisan mills.
Out of everything he’s grown so far, however, one variety stands out.
Butler’s Gold was developed by Oklahoma State University and named after legendary OSU sports figure, James Butler, a sprinter and Olympics qualifier in the 200-meter dash. Butler was on track to win the gold at the 1980 Olympics, when the U.S. decided to boycott the Moscow games following Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan.
Butler’s lightning speed, which allowed him to make up ground over short distances, inspired OSU’s wheat breeding team, led by Dr. Brett Carver, to name the variety in his honor.
Baker and other growers had the opportunity to meet the variety’s namesake in person at the joint annual meeting of the Oklahoma Crop Improvement Association and Oklahoma Genetics Inc. in mid-February, where Butler was a featured guest.
The variety was specifically developed to fit a short growing window following harvest of fall crops like cotton or grain sorghum. But late planting and quick growth have benefits that go beyond its use in double-crop systems, Baker said. In February, the Butler’s Gold on his farm was two to three inches shorter than earlier-planted wheat.
“That means the plants haven’t used up as much water or soil nutrients,” he said, an important consideration in a region where both rainfall and soil fertility are often limiting factors.
From a marketing standpoint, Baker likes sharing Butler’s story of humility and grace in the face of adversity. But he has other reasons to like the variety.
Butler’s Gold has a propensity to produce exceptionally large kernels, attractive to someone who sells wheat berries by the bag, the bucket and the tote.
Even more compelling, though, is the response he’s received from home bakers and commercial millers who’ve sampled the milled grain.
“They’ve told me it’s sweeter and tastes more alive in their mouth,” he said. “They also say they get more lift and better texture out of the flour.”
Quality creates value
Good grain quality is a given with OSU varieties. Dr. Carver, who holds the wheat genetics chair in agriculture at OSU, has long refused to release any variety that performs poorly at the mill, which could threaten the reputation of the region’s grain industry. Over the years, he’s challenged the notion that quality has an inverse relationship with yield potential or that increasing yield is the only way to add value to the crop.
He’s now in the process of releasing a new line with such super-strong, high-quality protein that fewer additives are needed to enhance the final product. He sees it as a value proposition for producers, so much so that he and other wheat industry leaders brought in a market consulting firm out of Kansas, Farm Strategy LLC, to explore the logistics involved in creating a dedicated supply chain.
“We’re not trying to extract value from the farm production side, we’re going after the value of the additives,” said Farm Strategy President Andrew Hoelscher at the annual meeting. “That’s what’s going on in our bakery trials now is that we’re building out what that value share is.”
The approach is generating excitement with a new generation of seed industry leaders.
Tyler Schnaithman, of Garber, and Colvin Null, of Hobart, both had the opportunity to take over multigenerational family farms. Many of their peers, however, are no longer actively engaged in production agriculture.
“Our generation continues to be further removed from the farm,” Schnaithman said. “They don’t always understand why we do certain things. But developing varieties like Dr. Carver has done, which are more desirable to the end user and actually have a benefit in terms of product quality, can really open the eye of the consumer to realize the value of what we do.”
“I’m excited to see where this project goes,” Null added. “Dr. Carver always keeps the interests of producers in mind but also the end consumer as well.”
Carver believes changes in consumer preferences will increasingly drive food companies to clean up their labels and seek out higher quality ingredients.
“The younger generations are the ones who read labels and really care about what’s in something and where it came from,” he said.
Baker sees that same trend unfolding, with many milling companies now creating signature flours traceable to the source.
“It’s the future,” he observed. “People want something with a personal connection that also improves their health.”
Growing organically
As one of only a handful of organically certified farmers in the state, Baker fertilizers his fields with composted chicken manure or fish emulsion made with chloride-free water from a local bottling company.
His sophisticated on-farm grain bins are equipped with a nitrogen injection system that displaces oxygen, a natural method of keeping bugs out of stored grain.
In recent years, he also installed a new loading dock at one of several warehouses he owns on the edge of Alva. The storage buildings are holdovers from a previous venture, a successful farm implement company he started in 1983 after designing an improved cultivator. He eventually sold that company, which has since gone out of business.
“The downside of all this is it does take some capital to get started,” he said.
These days 4 Generations Farm is busy shipping out flour made from Butler’s Gold, as well as whole berries and other products, to customers large and small across the U.S.
Despite a downturn in commodity prices in recent months, young growers like Schnaithman and Null are optimistic about the future, citing historically tight world wheat stocks and the need to feed a growing world.
Baker is optimistic too. Premium prices have allowed him to invest in his operation while focusing on the crop he knows best.
“Every year I continue to refine the process,” he said. “I’ve been able to do a lot of little things to improve my farm along the way.”
Article Courtesy of Candace Krebs, OK Genetics
