Climate change impacts farmers and global supply chains. Maine’s growing grain economy could help

This story is a part of our collection “Local weather Pushed: A deep dive into Maine’s response, one county at a time.”

Sean O’Donnell began rising grains about 10 years in the past at Rusted Rooster Farm, 45 minutes north of Skowhegan on the border of Somerset and Piscataquis counties. He started on a small scale, utilizing grains as a canopy crop planted in rotation with different crops to enhance the well being of the soil.

He and his spouse now develop about 150 acres of natural grains together with Pink Fife Wheat, Winter Rye, oats, and barley. That’s up from round 40 acres simply 5 years in the past. O’Donnell credit this progress, partially, to Maine’s burgeoning grain economic system.

“It is rising increasingly more. I do not assume I might do what I used to be doing 10 years in the past, and that credit score goes to the grain economic system,” O’Donnell stated.

However that regional grain economic system can be offering a buffer to excessive fluctuations in costs, crop failures and provide chain points linked to local weather change.

“As we get thrown increasingly more extreme climate, we have to learn to have a profitable crop in all situations, and having that assured market and respectable profitability is big to have that resilience,” O’Donnell stated.

Actually, it’s already been put to the take a look at by one other international disaster. Throughout the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, many customers in Maine turned to a neighborhood Skowhegan grist mill, Maine Grains, to fulfill their flour wants.

“Flour ran out of the cabinets at grocery shops from industrial milling places as a result of there was a lag in large mills’ capability to maintain up with client want and demand. That was a resilient second for us, even simply having the regional provide chain and infrastructure,” stated Amber Lambke, co-founder and proprietor of Maine Grains. Lambke and her enterprise companion Michael Scholz began the operation in 2012 after buying the previous jail in Skowhegan and changing it to a grist mill.

Maine Grains processes flour, oats, wheat berries, rye, cornmeal, buckwheat and extra, and the merchandise are bought all through the state and northeast. The grains are additionally used for native malting and distilling, animal feed, and seed markets.

“Maine was thought-about the breadbasket of New England within the 19^th century,” Lambke stated. And, she stated, Somerset County’s grain economic system has deep historic roots.

Somerset County was producing 239,000 bushels of wheat per yr at its peak in 1837, which was sufficient to feed greater than 100,000 individuals, Lambke stated.

“When you return to the late 1800s in Somerset County and central Maine, you had all types of grist mills dotting the countryside that have been taking domestically grown grain and milling them for [local use],” stated Tristan Noyes, government director of the Maine Grain Alliance, a nonprofit targeted on constructing the regional grain economic system throughout the state.

Grain farmers in Aroostook County have continued to develop grain for tons of of years, largely as cowl crops to help their extra profitable potato fields, however grain manufacturing in Somerset County and central Maine largely disappeared because the business centralized round large-scale manufacturing within the Midwest. The milling infrastructure was additionally misplaced over time, together with a lot of the information of develop grains, which the Maine Grain Alliance is now making an attempt to revive.

Lambke and others fashioned the Alliance in 2007 by beginning the Kneading Convention, an annual gathering of grain farmers, bakers, brewers, millers and the general public every summer season in Skowhegan.

The Somerset Grist Mill at Maine Grains is considered one of two native grist mills within the state which concentrate on processing natural grains; the opposite is Aurora Mills in Aroostook County

All informed, Maine grows about 50,000 acres of oats, barley and customary wheat yearly, in accordance with the USA Division of Agriculture’s most up-to-date census figures. A small, however rising, portion of that’s grown organically, Noyes stated. That’s helped create new markets and an rising demand for sustainable, domestically grown grains.

“What has been enabled by mills like Aurora Mills and Maine Grains in central Maine is that there isn’t a longer simply the one commodity market to which these grains will be bought, they are often bought into these native markets,” Noyes stated.

“Folks actually like the concept of consuming native. When you develop a neighborhood grain economic system, with relationships between farmers and processors, then you possibly can stabilize costs and supply some predictability for farmers when it comes to a worth and when it comes to quantity [that they can sell],” stated Ellen Mallory, a College of Maine Extension professor within the Faculty of Meals and Agriculture. She’s additionally on the board of Maine Grain Alliance and works with farmers to assist them meet the brand new financial alternatives with grain manufacturing.

Whereas massive agriculture manufacturing is extra environment friendly than some smaller scale operations, it tends to lack the power to adapt shortly to main international crises in the identical approach native markets can. As an example, the battle in Ukraine has impacted gasoline and fertilizer costs, disrupting meals provide chains.

“That’s a part of the downfall of contemporary ag and the provision chain issues we’re seeing. You’re getting much more worth by staying native since you’re supporting that resilience,” O’Donnell stated. “The bigger provide chain is gonna have its issues when it has its issues, which has been very obvious these previous couple of years.”

More and more financial resiliency, biodiversity, ecological well being and energy in rural communities are extra vital as extreme climate occasions associated to local weather change develop into commonplace.

There are already examples of how Maine’s regional grain economic system can help farmers amid uncertainty from a warming local weather, Noyes stated. He factors to winter grains, that are planted within the fall, go dormant through the winter beneath a layer of snowpack, till they develop once more early within the spring. A number of years in the past there was an uncharacteristic thaw in the course of the winter that killed a farmer’s whole grain crop. Higher storage gear might have helped in that state of affairs, Noyes stated.

“When you have the infrastructure and you’ve got some good years, then through the unhealthy years you might be able to hold your grain for longer durations of time and assist to mitigate that,” Noyes stated.

So, for the final two years, the Maine Grain Alliance has been a part of a $200,000 effort to assist the post-harvest grain dealing with wants of seven main farms throughout the state, together with Rusted Rooster Farm, by offering the required gear to correctly retailer and handle grains.

The Alliance can be pondering forward about what styles of grains could also be greatest suited to Maine’s future local weather by means of its Seed Restoration Program.

Richard Roberts of Soland, Maine leads this system. He crops small half or quarter acre plots round Somerset County and throughout the state.

“Final yr we had 40 totally different styles of grain rising in about 4.5 acres round Maine,” Roberts stated. He doesn’t want a lot house – he works with native farmers, using small plots on their land to develop out the varieties and see how they do in Maine’s local weather. Noyes stated making a biodiverse seed provide in Maine will higher safeguard the meals system in opposition to local weather change.

“The grain we’re getting from Scandinavia and Northern Europe has a local weather extra suited towards what seems to be like ours goes to develop into. It seems to be like it is going to be wetter right here,” Roberts stated.

He grows out the seed to commercially viable portions, and passes it alongside to bigger grain operations, like Rusted Rooster Farm, which permits Sean O’Donnell to diversify his companies.

“Once you’re diversified sufficient, [money] simply it manages to trickle in a method or one other,” O’Donnell stated.

“From an financial perspective of farms and farming, having a diversified operation buffers you in opposition to extremes,” Mallory stated.

She stated constructing out Maine’s grain varieties has additionally had a optimistic impression on rising natural grain manufacturing within the state and creating client curiosity and demand.

“The factor that the native meals motion has completed for sustainable agriculture and the position of agriculture in local weather change is that it is actually raised individuals’s curiosity ranges and their information,” Mallory stated.

The ability of Maine’s regional grain economic system, lies in neighborhood, connection and worth, Noyes stated. When the main target of buying grain is shifted from worth alone to a spread of things, together with flavor, sustainability, soil well being, and neighborhood wellbeing, client loyalty and engagement is strengthened. The better the curiosity and engagement in Maine’s grain economic system, the better the chances for adaptation.

“There’s the environmental and financial sustainability, however there is a neighborhood sustainability to this complete factor that is in all probability a very powerful half,” Noyes stated. “The people who find themselves a part of the regional grain economic system know each other, they’ve discovered from each other, they speak to at least one one other concerning the challenges that they face. When issues change for the great or the unhealthy, having these sturdy networks of individuals in place are one of many foundational elements of what’s going to make the way forward for the meals system sustainable.”