Will Fulwider 0:01
So what I’ll do is I’ll just say welcome to field notes. And then I’ll kind of prompt you for your joke Alyssa Sounds good. All right. Ready, folks?

Welcome to field notes. I believe Alyssa has a joke for us.

Alyssa Hartman 0:28
I’ve got a joke for you. This joke is courtesy of Henry Wepking of the Meadowlark organics and Meadowlark community. Mel, what is a dolphin’s favorite flower?

Will Fulwider 0:43
I have no idea.

Alyssa Hartman 0:45
All-porpoise

Will Fulwider 0:50
Yeah, is that original to him?

Michael Geissinger 0:54
That’s exactly the content we want. That is

Alyssa Hartman 0:57
the Henry Wepking original. That’s when you like animals and are raised on a grain farm that makes flour

Will Fulwider 1:04
We are ending the recording here. Thank you for joining field notes. That is everything for today. So thank you very much. Listen for that. Today we’re talking about differentiated markets for grain in Wisconsin, which I’m really excited to talk about. We’ve got two excellent people to speak on the subject. First is Willie Hughes, who farms organic and conventional grains and produces value added products in Rock County. And as well as Alyssa Hartman, the executive director of the artisan grain collaborative, which brings farmers, millers, bakers and others along the grain chain to build a regional grain shed. Thank you both for coming on today. Thank you.

Alyssa Hartman 1:42
Happy to be here.

Will Fulwider 1:43
Cool. Michael, you want to do your favorite thing of kicking us off?

Michael Geissinger 1:47
Or it’s a staple is kicking us off? So I’ll start with just kind of some introductions for all these. So Willie, if you want to start, can you kind of give us an overview of your farm and the sort of path that you took into tapping into the non commodity markets for your grain?

Willie Hughes 2:06
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Michael. And Will, for having me. Thanks, Alyssa, for joining. My name is Willie Hughes. I’m with W. Hughes farms general partnership. We are a sixth generation family farm. Living in Rock County, Wisconsin, we have been farming as a family contingently in southern Wisconsin since 1844. And for the past 30 years, which is roughly most of my living memory, we’ve been pretty much exclusively focused on identity preserved food grade, value added and or specialty seed grade markets. I have to admit that this is a little bit of the block of wood that I was cut from my dad, Randy has really been kind of his vision that’s, you know, informed some of the thoughts and the aspirations I have for the farm, maybe to my credit have taken you know, that one step farther and have, you know, began to sort of journey and word on you know, what, what does that vision look like, you know, for a farm and how do you, you know, how do you sustain that momentum? And how do you adjust to some of the challenges that we face today that are, you know, unique to this time period. We farm just under 5000 acres, pretty much all in Rock County. And we grow. As you said, We’re parallel production. So we have conventional and certified organic production. We grow row crops, small grains, and canning vegetables, things such as non GMO corn and soybeans, certified organic corn and soybeans. We do some conventional seed grade, small grains breeding we do organic seed, seed grade small grains breeding, organic seed corn, we’ve done conventional seed corn in the past, we service a lot of food grade markets with specialty crops such as black, black oil sunflowers, certified organic and conventional white sorghum, canning vegetables, I’m gonna list off all we do but we don’t grow all these all every year. Sweet corn, peas, lima beans, snap beans, we’ve done beets in the past textile beets. And there’s there’s a there’s a handful of other ones too that you know we’re experiment experimenting with and kind of dabbling with. I did some winter camelina seed grade production last year because I’m excited about the potential of of that. I’m involved a little bit with some Kernza production; playing around with some winter barley. The reason that I’ve that we’re so fortunate to have our hands in so many, so many pots is a little bit, just our geographic location, you know, rock counties, it’s a really special place in terms of agriculture. I don’t know if that gets it that’s quite, you know, as, as well understood Rock County as an agricultural. You know, producing county is kind of a powerhouse. We have a lot of local markets here, that I’m able to take advantage of like the Delong Company in Clinton that have a global presence in food grade, corn and soybean, non GMO corn and soybeans. And then to have, you know, vegetable canning companies like Seneca foods, their headquarters is here. There’s a ton of agribusiness, billions of dollars flow in and out of this county every year, so. So I’m really fortunate for that, I think on top of that, we’ve taken it maybe one step farther, and we’d like to say specialty is our specialty. So taking a value added product, such as a certified organic, small grain, and then establishing the networks and the partnerships to figure out, you know, what does it take to raise that for seed production, and who are the parties that are looking for, you know, good quality seed to be produced, that I think has kind of been maybe a little bit of the twist that I put on the, on the operation. And so last year, we had 14 or 15, identity preserved enterprises. There’s some overlap there, you know, non GMO soybeans and seed grade soybeans, and food grade soybeans are kind of all different enterprises that you have to segregate and keep track of, and, you know, different buyers that have different specs and qualifications, but it’s, it’s in the field, it’s visually almost indistinguishable. So there’s just a lot of a lot of logistics, a lot of communication, a lot of identity preservation, chain of custody type type issues that I think we’ve really focused on and we’ve we’ve got a lot of got a lot of SOPs written and got it, you know, standard operating procedures, and a lot of best practices. And we’ve we’ve kind of tried to cultivate a culture on the farm that incentivizes and encourages everyone to pay attention and take every load every acre, every opportunity as, as seriously and as and do as good of a job as we can. And once you get I think, to that point, then there’s a ton of opportunity, I think, for growers who want to diversify and specialize. Because there’s a little bit of a barrier to entry just with the learning curve. I just really love food grade production. I think growing food is a rewarding job. And it’s, it’s fun.

Michael Geissinger 8:06
I like that your specialty is our specialty. And the the note on growing food is definitely strikes a chord with me too. So definitely appreciate that overview. We also have a Alyssa with us who’s with the artisan grain collaborative, right. So how does your organization work with farmers like Willie, and others who maybe haven’t sunk their teeth as deep into the differentiated grain markets yet?

Alyssa Hartman 8:36
Yeah, thanks, Michael. The artisan grain collaborative is a regional network that works across the upper Midwest, we have about 200 farmer, processor end user, and other researcher and advocate partners that are working together on this effort of understanding what a regional food grade grain shed in this part of the world could look like and strengthening it actively. So Willie has been an incredibly involved part of this community. And we’re so grateful to get to work with him specifically, and other farmers like him. There are so many folks in the region there, I would say a small but mighty crew doing really interesting and unique and somewhat unusual, and maybe even upstream things to try to change the way that agriculture is happening in this part of the world. And farmers are absolutely a critical and first step in that process happening of making agriculture different. And we also really need processors and end users, the folks who are buying those products to be part of this charge as well. And we’re fortunate in this region of the country to have a growing crew of those folks as well. So mills, malt houses, bakers, chefs, brewers distillers, we need deep collaboration between folks that are growing and using higher value culinary grains, as we sometimes call them to make this system work. Willie can speak to this more throughout our conversation if he wishes to. But a lot of the types of crops that Willie described might not qualify for some of the typical protections or risk management strategies that things like corn and soy traditionally do. And when you grow corn and soy, generally speaking, you know that you have a number of different potential market outlets for those crops, you might already know where you’re going to sell them at the beginning of the season, or you can kind of play around and see what your options are. But for some of these other grains, and we work with a wide range of different crops that folks in the region are producing from small grains like wheat, rye, oats, and barley to specialty types of open pollinated or hybrid corns, to things like buckwheat and other kinds of lagoons, dry beans, etc. A lot of those crops, there’s not a ton of places yet to take those things at the end of the season. So it’s, it’s really critical if these things are new to a farm, to have a partnership with whoever is going to be purchasing that thing. To provide some security throughout the growing season, as farmers are purchasing seed that might be more expensive or a tougher to get a hold of, and taking care of the management of that crop, knowing that there’s someone on the other end, who’s excited to use it and share it with the community of eaters and drinkers is really critical. And we’re getting there. And also, that’s not a perfect picture yet, there’s still a lot of work that needs to be done to help make those connections. And even just examples of how those relationships can work. Because some of these things are new or novel. And, you know, we increasingly in this part of the world are facing different kinds of weather. And so there’s a lot of reasons why something that a farmer might be trying on their farm might not work. And it’s important that that culinary end user who wants to work with this crop is both excited about the thing and ready to share it with the world and also understands the real reasons why that might not happen, especially when you’re trying something new. So a lot of what the artisan grain collaborative does is brings together this community across what we call the grain value chain, from farmer to processor to end user to advocate in many cases, as well, to build relationships and understanding about the challenges and realities for the folks working in each part of this value chain. Because while I just spoke at a high level to some of the farmer challenges, there are also real challenges of using regional grains, in processing and in food businesses, especially for folks who have gotten very accustomed, understandably so to using highly stable products that don’t change Season to Season necessarily, because of the degree of mixing that the commodity system can do have really regular delivery schedules all coming on one truck with the rest of what they might order. So those are real challenges as well. And I’m sure we’ll speak to more of those. But it’s really important for this system to grow that there is understanding and empathy on either side of the equation, about what the issues are and space for problem solving and figuring out what some of the best practices or options could be to make these relationships stronger and work better in the future so that more of the people in our communities in the Upper Midwest are eating the things that we can grow in this region.

Willie Hughes 14:16
Oh, I think that’s spot on. Melissa, and you know, you touched on the Porton part for growers is to you know, assess, what is the what is the amount of risk on your farm that you are able to afford or what’s your tolerance for pain. And when when you find that line, I guess I would encourage you to to push it a little bit within reason. And so you know, knowing your cost of production, making sure that you’re you’re doing sound risk management as best you can. And then taking five or 10% of The houses money and and seeing what you can go do with it, I think is a really good strategy for growers who want to start to think about this relationships and, and developing relationships and look at it as a multi year, multi multi year partnership, rather than, you know, ensuring that you get every last load off the farm, send it hold your nose, and hope they don’t squawk at it. And so I think that that’s really important part for folks that are looking to grow food grade or different highly differentiated grains is to know what the customer needs, know their tolerances, know their specifications, or discount schedule, and then do as much work as you can to self police and make sure that that you can you can deliver that and if you can’t be upfront about it, communicate, and then, you know, hopefully rely on your network and your resources, you know, to kind of scramble at the last minute and make sure that everyone can be as happy as possible.

Will Fulwider 16:05
Right, I mean, I think, you know, holding these two things, almost almost intention, right, like the risk aspect of it, how much are you willing to take on and then this relationship, and out of those play off of each other, to try and move your way into this new market? is really interesting. And, you know, it’s, it’s hard, it’s really hard to be willing to take some risks, especially in a system that people have become very accustomed to, you know, being comfortable with being like, this is my standard, this is my SOP, I know, a standard operating procedure I harvest, throw it on the truck, and it goes to the elevator. And that’s that’s, you know,

Willie Hughes 16:45
yeah, as a farmer, there’s so much that’s out of our control, that having an appetite for more uncertainty and chaos, I think, is understandably just sometimes unpalatable. I mean, you can’t, you can’t expect everyone to, you know, to put themselves through that. I mean, mentally, it’s like, it can be really hard to, you know, stress and think about all this stuff, when there’s a pretty, you know, well established, you know, more more easily accessible markets available that don’t come with so much of the emotional baggage and worry so. So yeah, tension is a good, good word.

Alyssa Hartman 17:32
One thing to add to that, I think if you are a farmer listening to this, who is curious, just like with any challenging project, obviously, there’s different ways to tackle things in life. But you know, you can start small that you don’t need to go at this jumping headfirst. This is something I think that as a community, within artisan grain collaborative, we’re trying to encourage, you know, if you’re a farm, but this coming season, maybe you want to set aside 2% of your acres to trial, a couple of different things and see what they even look like in the field and get accustomed to working with them. And we’re sort of encouraging us a similar ethos for food business is to, you don’t need to overhaul your entire production to switch to 100% local grain in one season, some people will do that. And that’s great. And, you know, we’ll we’ll celebrate those cases, but there’s nothing to be ashamed about in starting where you can. And I think that in and of itself is an important risk management strategy. I think one of the things that Willie I love about your family’s operation, that you really exemplify that resilience in diversity, you have your hat in so many different baskets. And so when in a season one thing doesn’t work, you’re not sunk on that one thing. And also, that doesn’t come without its challenges of managing a lot of labor and a lot of different timing of different things. But I think as much as a community, we can try to keep moving toward greater diversity in all things. That’s a big part of the ticket of how we’re going to get to this different future for what our region’s landscape could look like.

Will Fulwider 19:27
Yeah, and if you try something, you know, at large scale right away and you burn out on it, then it was you know, it’s an example to other people that Oh, I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t go all in on it from the get go. So starting small is important not only for your own operation, but for you as an example to others too. And making sure that you can succeed little by little and build that. I kind of want to bring us down to the to the field level a little bit. You know, we’ve been talking about community and relationships and risk super important things to keep in mind as we try and like navigate this This pathway towards differentiated markets. But there’s a lot of different things from the production side of things that you have to be aware of as a farmer. And so I would kind of want to drill down on that and talk about like, what are some of the restrictions and productions? What are the changes that you have to make, at the farm level in producing food grade, get grains or differentiate grains for differentiated markets? And so Willie, I think this one’s for you.

Willie Hughes 20:25
I think there’s a lot of ways to answer that question. So I will maybe start with the simplest or the most, most accessible market that would that would easily, you know, plug into almost any grain farm would be something like non GMO soybeans. That’s a growing market. There’s a premium on that that’s based, you know, above the Chicago Board of Trade, commodity prices, if they tend to dip, you know, that premium becomes a larger and larger percentage of, of your earning potential. And so in terms of restrictions, you know, it’s pretty obvious, you’re, you’re not allowed to use traded seed, it’s non GMO, so you can’t genetically modify, that does come with an incredible side effect, which is you do not have broadleaf control in a broadleaf. You can’t, you can’t spray your problems away, like giant ragweed, I think that there’s certainly looking at your rotation, identifying fields that are a good suitable candidate is a great way to, you know, dip your toes in, you can start to look at some savings on the cost of seed and start to look at the premium and make your own judgment on if the, you know, potential yield drag from weed pressure is is enough that you can or is, you know, is that something that, you know, your farmer could take advantage of. And that, to me, I think is, that’s a really big chasm that is, is a glossed over a lot on what it takes to be, you know, to kind of plant the flag in the ground and say, we’re going to, we’re going to try to not to do this without GMOs. It’s a, it’s a really big lift. And it’s not for the faint of heart. Because, you know, you, I’ve been there where I’ve had my non GMO fields next to the neighbors, and boy, you know, it looks like they’re better farmers than me, maybe they probably are, but, but we’re doing everything by hand. And we’re, we’re thinking about our rotation, we’re thinking about our cultural practices, we’re funneling the dollars that would typically go into two and a half gallon jugs, we’re finally those into staff, and into technology and equipment, for us having half of the business and certified organic, we already need some equipment, and we already need some people. And so, you know, that capitalization ratio for us, we were, we’re just able to spread out that over more acres, by at being able to access you know, food grade markets. And so putting the, the altruistic aspects aside, you know, it’s, it’s a good way to, to generate more revenue, if you’re good at it. And if you’re not, it’s a great way to flame out and, and lick your wounds, which we do, you know, we have, every year there’s a farmer too, that that shits the bed. So sorry. It’s just part of the, the territory, you said the word restrictions, so I’ll go back to that. There’s a lot of restrictions in terms of chemistry and in terms of, you know, residuals that, you know, you have to have a good agronomist on staff. If you’re planning on putting vegetables in a field, you have to know what you apply the year before. And you have to be open and honest about it. You cannot by any stretch of the imagination, try to use a prohibited substance use something off label, be sneaky, do whatever and then expect that, you know, you’re going to be able to continue to access these markets, you have to play by the rules, and the rules of the game are that it’s an incredibly difficult thing to sustain. And there’s not one single silver bullet. So you’re gonna have to constantly innovate and you’re gonna have to constantly this is if you’re kind of all in, you’re going to have to constantly you know, improve your your rotation. I mean, that’s where it really comes down to and that’s why we’re, I think so invested in it. looking at, you know, different opportunities and making sure that you know, we’re one of the first farms in the area to look at anything, even if it’s just on a two or three acre, you know, trial scale just just to make sure that you know, when there’s an opportunity for something like Saf, you know, sustainable airline fuel or something, and maybe a cover crops such as winter, camelina could play that. And winter Catalina has some, you know, some some good weed suppression and maybe is a little bit less residue to deal with than cereal rye, you know, you kind of have to, you’re constantly looking for all these little pieces to this puzzle and trying to figure out, you know how you can, I can do that. Yeah,

Alyssa Hartman 25:42
just want to highlight something that Willie has mentioned several times. And it’s definitely not as fun as the field part. But it really is so critical to understand your cost of production. And I think depending on how folks maybe have been running their operations that can be so challenging in various ways. I think one of the big opportunities in this space of foodgrade grains is around becoming the person that decides what you’re selling something for, versus having to take a price. And the only way that you can do that is by knowing how much it costs you to grow that thing. And so just cannot state enough how important that is. And if you’re not sure where to get started on that there are some resources. And one great place to reach out to, is the food Finance Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Andy Larsen, in particular, is fantastic, and loves to talk with farmers and start to walk through how to start to set some of the stuff up if it’s not something that you’ve been thinking about quite this way on your farm. And just another thing to flag for some of these alternative grain crops, there’s not pricing information that you can find on the Chicago Board of Trade, for example. So it’s even more important to know what it costs you to produce, because there’s not an equation to back into necessarily in the same way.

Michael Geissinger 27:12
Now, I wanted to kind of ask, you know, what are the some of the critical infrastructure that’s needed for these markets? Is it possible for a farm to get the infrastructure set up for them? So maybe like in that small grain sort of space, or I realized some of the bigger you know, soybean, or corn for food grade grain, it’s probably a little bit different. But I was curious, you know, is it possible for farmers to be making that investment? Is it more of a coop format to make in the making the investment if you have a group of farmers interested in someone to pose that question?

Alyssa Hartman 27:48
I’ll just add one word to start. And then Willie, maybe you can fill out the rest. Storage, I think is a really critical place to begin having storage on Farm gives you so many opportunities, even just in terms of timing of when you want to market something. And I will call out just one USDA program, the farm storage facility loan program is a great one to look at for low interest loans on on for on farm storage investment. What else really?

Willie Hughes 28:20
Yeah, no, that’s, that’s, that’s right. I mean, you know, critical infrastructure for farmers, I would, I would echo that sentiment that. You know, having having a post harvest handling plan, even if it’s not on your farm is critical. Having it on your farm is going to give you a lot of flexibility. And so I would say that that’s definitely a a piece to the puzzle. That being said, we don’t have a big elevator on our farm. We have some cone bottom bins, we’ve got some some trucks and some buggies. And we do just a tremendous amount of upfront dialogue and coordinating to get a lot of a lot of our product to market. You know, in terms of in terms of inner infrastructure needed to participate in some of these markets. I always want to be cautious of you know, the the allure of like new shiny toys and and equipment, even though it’s so fun to talk about and think about. I think that it really does start back with those cultural practices, your rotation, and just having a post harvest handling plan. If you’ve got that nailed down, you can get your foot in the door. With that being said, there are I feel a lot of new technologies and new strategies out there that farmers need to start to think about if they want to be if they want to get serious about This and to me, that comes with, it starts with increasing your uniformity and your management. So I’m kind of talking out of both sides of my mouth here a little bit, but you do want to take a small portion of your, your farm and you want to have a research and development, you know, spot. With that being said, there’s there’s incredible incredible efficiencies with scale. And so once you’re really comfortable to tee up and do something, I would encourage you to make it worth your while, you know, go and this is if again, assess your risk tolerance. Once you’re comfortable with that once you have an opportunity in front of you that you feel you can do a good job with. Once you’ve done your homework on how you can de risk it as much as you can. And you’re at the plate, you’re ready to go. You have to standardize your process. You’ve got to get everybody on board. You have to have everybody on staff know Hey, this is the food grade field or this is the this is the specialty crop. When we harvest it’s all hands on deck, the combines the belts, the buggies, everything needs to be swept out if it’s organic, we need our clean out logs. We need our field records. Like you got to get all these pieces in place that if you if you’re not thinking about that now in February and March, it just slips through your fingers because all of a sudden your hair’s on fire and there’s rain coming and it’s like it’s over. Like if you’re if you’re planning at that point it’s it’s over. repeatability is a big thing, you know, with with these markets, small grains not so much, which is why I love them because they’re from an agronomic point. If you get a good stand, it is a little bit like hitting the easy button. I mean, it’s just amazing what weed suppression and how many of your problems can go away with just a beautiful standard small grains. But if back to kind of row crop, vegetable world, if you’re making multiple field passes, you really should be looking at repeatability sharing lines and RTK between tractors thinking about your equipment sizing and spacing so that your traffic patterns are standard. Thinking about your headlands, you know what percentage of your field is your Headlands? Because that’s where all the traffic is, that’s what gets stomped down. You know, knowing how big of a loss leader or you know how much basically, you know, how bad is it going to be in the headlands and ways like simulated boundaries and things that you can do to minimize that. You know, there’s there’s new, there’s newer, newer equipment, there’s newer and newer strategies. I’m a big fan of a weed Zapper, I love my weed zapper I’ve been exploring with you know, on farm, we’ve been modifying our toolbar, and I can send some videos and stuff if you want to link to it. But it’s basically a copper rod right, it goes across, it’s a height differential. So it’s a big game a limbo, and anything that is above the height differential gets gets electrocuted, we’re now you know, went to the hardware store and got some tees and copper rod and cut it and made some drop rods. So now on like a 30 inch spacing, we’re zapping in between the row and you know, just playing with that working with some engineers and stuff to raise and lower the wings, you know, from the cab, so we don’t have to get out and adjust it. You know, just really being kind of a Holland for the inefficiencies and trying to you know, you know, sort of ferret those out and figure out you know, what, what is it about this certain acre or this sequence of passes or this certain plant date this certain strategy that works so well or, and why exactly 12 rows over Is it so bad, you know, and having the records and the data to go back and kind of tease that out? That’s big. And then you know, moving forward, I really don’t want to sound too like utopian, but I think that a lot of the vision and the the machine learning and and, and the new technology coming down the pipeline is going to be a total paradigm shift. Because, you know, historically, we’ve, we’ve sprayed non selectives, such as glyphosate out in the field. And we modified the food in order to be resistant to it. And that’s how we differentiated between the wheat and the crop as we modified the food. We have technology and we have vision and out there in the field that in you know high speed, incredibly precise manners can begin to differentiate the food between the weeds. We don’t need that anymore. We don’t need to do it that way. And so we can start to think about out, you know, could we could we use vision and technology with something akin to high caliber distilled vinegar? And can we go out there? And And someday could we achieve, you know, close to the same efficacy that we’ve had last 25 years? You know, I mean, resistance is knocking on the door anyway. So there’s going to be innovation, I think on all acres that are gonna go this way. I mean, you know, that that’s, that’s coming. And I like to think about what does that mean for specialty markets, food grade markets, it’s going to be really disruptive, and it’s going to be good, and it’s going to have its kind of complicated aspects to it, it might make some of the things I do a lot easier, which is good. And you know, and can be disruptive. And so, I feel, I feel more optimistic, I think, than I have in a long time about just the potential that’s there for innovation and what you know, this next generation of, of agriculture can look like it’s a really exciting time. And it’s coming at, you know, just the point where it seems like public awareness is finally coming around a little bit and starting to pick up on some of the nuance and some of the challenges. And so yeah, it’s, it’s it’s fun to think about it. You can’t get here fast enough, though.

Will Fulwider 36:31
I think this will be really, really informative for folks. So we really appreciate you both coming on talking with us today.

Willie Hughes 36:38
Yeah, thank you for having me. This was fun.

Alyssa Hartman 36:43
Always look forward to a chance to hang out with Willie.

Will Fulwider 37:00
Thanks for listening. This has been field notes from UW Madison extension. My name is Wil for wider regional crops educator for Dane and dodge counties. That was joined by my co host Michael geissinger. outreach specialists in Northwest Wisconsin for the nutrient and pest management program of UW Madison. A big thank you to Joe Ryan for creating our theme music and Abby Wilkymacky for a logo. If you have any questions about anything you’ve heard today, or about your farming practices in general, reach out to the extension agriculture educators serving your region

Transcribed by https://otter.ai