Ask A Farmer

"Ask a FARMER."

It makes sense, doesn't it? If you need help with taxes, you go to an accountant. A broken leg requires a trip to the doctor. In a little legal snafu? A visit to a lawyer is probably in order. We pay professionals to use their expertise to help us out.

So it would seem to make sense to ask a farmer questions about farming. But in these days of quick internet solutions, it seems there are an awful lot of people who profess to be experts about farming and food production who have never planted a seed or prayed for rain to bring it up.

That's one reason our trip to the Kansas State Fair last week wasn't just about eating a Pronto Pup or ice cream under the grandstand, though we did that, too. As a Kansas Association of Wheat Growers board member, Randy spent four hours in the Kansas Wheat booth, hoping people would "Ask a Farmer."

Most people just wanted the free pencils and the recipe books from the National Festival of Breads. And that's OK. He was there to parcel those out, too. But he didn't have a single question about GMO wheat. (For the record, there is currently no GMO wheat on the market, despite what internet "experts" will profess.) He did come close to selling an "I love GLUTEN" t-shirt, but no one talked to him about the research into celiac-safe wheat, a project at the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center in Manhattan.

I refuse to give these so-called internet experts or TV doctors who profess to be farming and food production experts any additional traction by mentioning them by name. I will not mention the names of restaurants who tell us they are superior because they use only "organic, grass-fed beef, not raised with antibiotics."

But I was genuinely surprised yesterday when some people blamed a farmer for being a victim of a crime. It's a bizarre story to begin with, but on Tuesday night, a guy abandoned his vehicle and took a combine on a joy ride in Ellinwood, a little town 30 miles from here. After law enforcement officers shot 18 rounds of gunfire into the machine, the suspect finally surrendered. But that was after causing thousands of dollars of damage to private vehicles and police cars, power poles and other property, not to mention the totaling of a massive - and expensive - machine.

In her blog, Faith, Farming and Family yesterday, Caitlin wrote that people were actually blaming the farmer. Sure. Let's blame the farmer. We'll just add it to the regular diet of anti-farming rhetoric that's only a click away on the internet. If farming isn't happening with a horse and "heritage" seeds, it's big, bad "modern" agriculture, right?

That's one reason Randy spent four hours in a booth at the fair. When we went to a Master Farmer/Homemaker event later that day, some of our friends had worked in the Kansas Farm Bureau booth. We also have friends who spent time in Agri-Land in the Pride of Kansas building. There were corn, cotton, honey, soybean and beef producers scattered all through that building, waiting for consumers to ask them questions. Different people took their turns during the 10-day fair.  I have other friends who regularly open their farms and dairies to school groups.

Randy has served on a number of different agricultural boards since graduating from K-State. He believes it's important for producers to be involved on a state level in groups that may influence regulations. If producers aren't willing to get involved, regulations would likely be set by individuals or groups who don't have a personal stake or investment in agriculture. As he says, "If I'm not willing to serve myself, why would I expect others to make that investment of time and energy to make the industry better?" Groups like KAWG also work to connect producers with consumers, giving a name and a face to agriculture - if people will actually "Ask a FARMER."

And while I haven't served on state or local agricultural organizations, I try to do my part, too. Offering information via Kim's County Line is an attempt to put a face on modern-day agriculture. Consumers are increasingly interested in how their food is produced and what happens to it before it appears on grocery store shelves, where it is purchased for family tables across the country and the world. And that's great.

Through the blog, I try to inform consumers, who may not understand why our beef isn't totally grass-fed or why we use growth implants and vaccinations in our feeder calves. Through blog posts, readers could learn why we make the business decision to use herbicides, pesticides and fungicides on our grain crops, but still stress the safety of the food supply.

Sometimes, it may seem efforts to staff a Kansas Wheat booth or write another blog post are like going around and around on a carnival ride: You keep getting on the "horse," but you never get anywhere.

But, farmers are - by nature - optimists. So they keep showing up to try and talk to consumers. We keep writing blog posts, even when the number of "clicks" on those posts pale in comparison to the thousands of followers of those self-professed experts on food and health.

We hope for light to leak through those storm clouds of faulty public opinion.

It's what we do. Shedding light is always important.

Kansas: The Wheat State

The kids loved the bushel of wheat. The school janitor? Probably not so much.

There are approximately 1 million wheat kernels in a bushel of wheat (though we didn't personally count them, so don't hold me to it). But there were a few less in the tub by the end of Randy's presentation during Kansas Day festivities at Stafford Schools last week.

Teachers Denise Dickson and Natalie Clark organized a day full of activities celebrating Kansas wheat. My very own Kansas Association of Wheat Growers board member was glad to go to school to talk about the major crop on our farm.

It's fitting that wheat was the focus for the day, considering its history in the state. In the 1870s, the Russian-Germans brought hard red winter wheat, called Turkey Red, to Kansas. It was a strain that was particularly suited for the Great Plains and became the major export of the wheat belt of the central and western states. 

According to the Kansas Historical Society, the kind of wheat to plant was actually a subject of much debate in Kansas prior to the Russian-German arrival. Most natives preferred corn for its greater household use and as feed for livestock, especially pigs.

Land promoter T. C. Henry was one of the first to plant winter wheat on a large scale, in virtual plantation style, near Abilene in 1873. The question of which was to be the dominant grain for Kansas was actually being settled upon the Russian-German arrival, and the grasshoppers deserve some of the credit, since they wiped out the corn crop and most of the spring wheat. Only winter wheat was generally successful in 1874.  At the time the Volga Germans were settling down around Victoria, the Hays City Sentinel proclaimed that the question was now resolved: Winter wheat was the kind to plant.

Did you know that a bushel of wheat would make about 67 14-inch pizza crusts? It could make 192 large cinnamon rolls or 42 1.5-pound loaves of white bread. Americans eat close to 138 pounds of wheat flour a year.

We had some good guessers during the program.

The students also enjoyed picking a souvenir. We gave out lots of pencils. But, by our fourth group of students, we ran out of the postcards that had a little packet of wheat and instructions for growing it. Maybe we had some future farmers in the room.

Cutting-Edge Technology: More Than a Bread Knife

Pollinating wheat in the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center greenhouse. You can see construction on the west side of the K-State football stadium from the windows of the greenhouse.

Though the ribbon cutting for the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center (KWIC) involved a bread knife, it's not the only "cutting-edge" activity going on there.

I understand bread knives. I don't understand doubled haploids. And that's OK. That's why we Kansas wheat farmers have people working at KWIC who do understand complicated "stuff" like doubled haploids.

Wheat has been a basis of the human diet for thousands of years. Bread in one form or another is a basic food source all over the world. It seems simple - flour, water, yeast and a few assorted other ingredients.

But wheat is actually a very complex plant. A typical wheat variety is hexaploid: It has six copies of each gene, where most living things have two. Its 21 chromosomes contain a massive 16 billion base pairs of DNA, 40 times as much as rice, six times as much as maize and five times as much as people.

Mapping the wheat genome is complicated business because wheat is a complicated plant. It's one reason that work in wheat genetics has lagged behind other cereal grains. But KWIC will offer opportunities for researchers to learn more and put that knowledge to use.

Different stages of growth in grow rooms at KWIC

KWIC houses Heartland Plant Innovations, which is a farmer-owned plant science company created by the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers. HPI leases laboratory and greenhouse space in the KWIC to conduct their research on doubled haploids, which are genetically pure plant lines. Using doubled haploids cuts 4 to 6 years out of the normal 12-year development time for new wheat varieties that promise higher yields, disease resistance, drought resistance and other crop improvements.

When you visit a wheat research center, you may not expect to see corn plants growing in the greenhouse. But researchers are using corn to pollinate wheat and then are extracting the embryos. I don't understand much more than that. Let's get real: I don't understand that either.

Wheat plants are in the foreground, with corn plants at different stages of maturity growing in the background of the same greenhouse.

Soon, KWIC will be the home for a gene bank which will store genetics from the Wheat Genetics Resource Center at K-State. Since 1984, the WGRC has led a global effort in conserving and researching more than two dozen wild wheat and goatgrass species, including more than 12,000 strains. More than 30,000 samples from the collection of wild wheat relatives, genetic stocks and improved genetic resources have been distributed to scientists in 45 countries and 39 U.S. states.

Randy looks into a growth chamber which was sponsored by KFRM 550 AM radio. KFRM is the station for whom I do freelance reporting, giving a Central Kansas report Monday through Friday.

The process is complicated. That's why I was somewhat amused by one of the researchers' low-tech solutions on one table in the greenhouse. Yes, Styrofoam cups cover some of the smaller wheat plants. I didn't ask why.

Whether high tech (like doubled haploids) or low tech like Styrofoam cups, the work is important - not only for producers but also for the people of the world. By 2050, the world population will reach 9 billion. Improving today's wheat varieties will help meet the needs of a hungry and growing world.


While I don't understand doubled haploids, I do understand feeding hungry people. The KWIC also has a test kitchen, where Kansas Wheat and friends just finished testing recipes and selecting finalists for the National Festival of Breads, coming to Manhattan, June 20-22. You can come to Manhattan and watch them bake on June 22. Check out this recipe from the 2011 winner. The NFOB website has recipes from other winners and finalists.

The flour sponsor for the National Festival of Breads is King Arthur. But I had to take a photo of the "hometown" Hudson Cream Flour in the KWIC test kitchen, made by our Stafford County neighbors in Hudson.

Bread of Life: Kansas Wheat Innovation Center

An 8-foot-long "ribbon" of braided bread was the centerpiece for the dedication for the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center in Manhattan last Friday.

Basic bread is a pretty straightforward recipe: You combine flour, water, yeast and a few other ingredients.  When flour is mixed with water, the gluten swells to form a continuous network of fine strands. This network forms the structure of bread dough and makes it elastic and pliable.

Last Friday, the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center celebrated a new network and structure as it officially opened a new $10.3 million building. Just like gluten coming together in a series of fine strands, Kansas wheat farmers came together to invest in their future. The Kansas Wheat Innovation Center building has at its center the collaboration of Kansas wheat farmers - those strands of cooperation coming from each corner of the state. Through a voluntary penny-and-a-half Kansas wheat checkoff,  the Center was built to begin a new era for wheat variety research. It represents the single largest investment by wheat farmers in the nation. The Center was built on land owned by Kansas State University, but the Kansas Wheat Commission has a 50-year lease on the property.

The loaf of bread used on Friday was braided together. It was baked in one continuous piece in a large oven at the American Institute of Baking, also in Manhattan. Just like that braid strengthened the structure of the completed loaf, other collaborators have joined Kansas farmers in this endeavor to improve wheat and find new ways to feed a hungry world. On Friday, naming rights donors were recognized. The donors were many and varied: They included banks, insurance companies, a railroad, seed companies, agriculture cooperatives, media outlets, ag families and others.

In his remarks, Kansas Wheat Commissioner Ron Suppes, Dighton, held up a grain of wheat. If you were more than two rows back, you couldn't see the kernel. But, in some ways, that's the point. This little, bitty seed is pretty powerful. From a tiny little kernel, a wheat plant grows. With the right combination of soil, water, sunlight, temperature and time, the one kernel produces a plant with a lot of kernels.

When those kernels are harvested, they can help feed the world. That's a lot of power for one little seed.

And the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center represents a lot of power for the Kansas wheat industry, too.

“We are excited to share the story of how the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center will lead the way in new wheat research that gives Kansas wheat farmers the tools to produce high-yielding, high-quality wheat varieties that will continue to feed the world. The world population is expected to reach 9 billion people by 2050. The KWIC will play a big role in helping U.S. wheat farmers meet the population’s growing demand for food.”

Rich Randall

chairman of the Kansas Wheat Commission and farmer near Scott City

Tomorrow, more photos and more on the work that will be done at the Kansas Wheat Innovation Center. 

The Leaning Tower of Pizza

An average annual Kansas wheat harvest of 360 million bushels would make 23.5 BILLION large pizza crusts.

Yep, that's right ... 23,500,000,000 - with all those zeros.

A stack of 23.5 billion pizza boxes would be more than 740,000 miles high. That's three times the distance between the Earth and the moon.

That's a lot of pizza. But even a pizza box stack reaching toward the ceiling of the Pride of Kansas Building at the Kansas State Fair created a conversation starter.

And that's what Kansas Wheat was hoping to do. They wanted to start a conversation with people to tell them about the importance of wheat.

Randy was one of the wheat spokespersons at the booth last Friday. He's on the Kansas Association of Wheat Growers board, one arm of Kansas Wheat. The other is the Kansas Wheat Commission.

He handed out 2010 Kansas Wheat Commission recipe books to the masses. (A side note: Our son, Brent, helped layout and design the recipe books the past two years as a summer intern at Kansas Wheat.)

If you know Randy, you would guess that his favorite part was talking to kids who came by the booth.

At one stop, they could spin a Wheel-of-Fortune-like wheel. If they answered a wheat question correctly, they got a prize. Actually, I think they got a prize either way.

One prize they could choose was a Twizzlers licorice stick. I'll bet you didn't know that flour is the second item listed in the ingredient list. (Neither did I until I visited the Kansas Wheat booth!)

This little visitor also learned what a bushel of wheat looks like and how much it weighs (approximately 60 pounds.) She also knows that one bushel of wheat provides enough flour to produce about 42, 1.5-pound loaves of bread. One bushel of Kansas wheat also produces enough flour to make 67 Pizza Hut large pizza crusts (that's how high the stack was in the Pride of Kansas Building!)

I'm not sure what prize this little girl won, but I think when she left the booth, she knew a little more about Kansas wheat.

People could also choose a postcard with a little packet of wheat attached so they could grow their own little crop in an empty yogurt container or drinking cup.

One little boy kept coming back for more and more postcards. He told Randy he needed more so he could plant his own field of wheat. He was obviously a future farmer in the making.

Besides providing a Field of Dreams for one little boy, the postcards also shared these wheat facts:

• Wheat is the most consumed grain in America. It feeds people, animals and the economy around the globe.
• Wheat is grown annually in 42 of the 50 United States on 63.5 million acres of land.
• On average, Kansas farmers produce one-fifth of all the wheat grown in the U.S. That's more than any other state and why Kansas is called "The Wheat State."
• Americans eat nearly 138 pounds of wheat flour each year in baked goods, cereals, breads, crackers, pasta and tortillas.
  

Here is a recipe from this year's Kansas Wheat recipe book. I haven't tried these muffins yet, but Cindy Falk of the Kansas Wheat staff does test all the recipes. Enjoy!

Cracked Wheat Muffins

1 cup cracked wheat
1 cup skim milk
1 large egg, beaten
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/3 cup honey or 1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
3 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1/2 cup raisins or dried cranberries (opt.)

In a medium bowl, mix cracked wheat and milk. Cover; place in the refrigerator to soak overnight. Remove from refrigerator. Let sit 15 to 20 minutes.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Line 12 muffin cups with paper baking cups or spray with nonstick cooking spray.

In small bowl, whisk together egg, oil and honey. Whisk into cracked wheat mixture.

In medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder and salt. Stir cracked wheat mixture into flour mixture; stir just until dry ingredients are moistened.

Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake 23 to 25 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm.

Variation: Presoak 1/2 cup raisins or dried cranberries in 1/2 cup water 5 minutes. Drain well. Add raisins or cranberries in with wet ingredients.

Yield: 12 muffins. Each muffin (without raisins or cranberries): About 167 calories, 4 g protein, 26 g carbohydrate, 2 g dietary fiber, 5 g total fat (1 g saturated fat), 15 mg cholesterol, 31 mcg folate, 1 mg iron, 174 mg sodium.

If you want to learn more about Kansas Wheat, check out their website.