Sometimes you simply need to toast the innovators.
Jim Parejko, brewer and co-owner of LocAle Brewing Co., offered a toast to Montana Rasmussen, baker and co-owner of River Rock Bakery in Saint Peter. Both business leaders were featured at a Thursday event at Parejko’s Mankato establishment, promoting the use of alternative grain products in their goods.
“We need these innovators in our businesses,” said Brad Gordon, associate conservation director for Great River Greening, a St. Paul-based nonprofit organization dedicated to “land-based restoration work” and to “support sustainable agriculture partnerships.”
Billed as a “Beer, Bread & Biodiversity” gathering, entrepreneurs Parejko and Rasmussen teamed up with others to encourage regenerative agriculture and climate change. Thanks in part to a $2.5 million grant from Cargill to the Forever Green Initiative at the University of Minnesota, the partnership hopes to expand the markets for cover crops like Kernza and winter camelina.
Teaming up with Great River Greening and Ben Penner Farms, businesses like LocAle Brewing and River Rock Bakery also received grants from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture through its “Continuous Living Cover Crops” program.
Penner, a St. Peter area farmer who recently was hired on as Great River Greening’s regenerative agriculture specialist, said all are working to expand the markets for such cover crops as Kernza and winter camelina.
“All the research is there,” says Penner, who has specialized in planting Kernza, which has an extensive root system that may reach more than 10 feet. “It’s a great water quality story.”
A longtime alternative crop farmer, Penner was one of the first in the region to experiment with Kernza, which the University of Minnesota officially released in 2019. (Kernza is a trademarked grain developed by The Land Institute, a science-based research organization developing alternative agricultural practices.)
But Penner stressed that these collaborative efforts need to expand these respective grain markets for such new cover crops to become both more affordable and recognized as alternatives to traditional farming practices.
“I would really like to see a group of community leaders collaborate to raise awareness of the need for these cover crops,” Penner says.
For Rasmussen, the current Kernza market remains high, some five times the level of other grain options for her company’s bakery products. Because of that, she best promotes a 2% Kernza product in her sourdough breads. But she remains committed to using it.
“Kernza itself has a nutty, robust flavor to it compared to wheat,” she says.
That nutty flavor limits the volume of Kernza that is used in beverages marketed at LocAle, according to Parejko.
Cargill’s ongoing investments into cover crops continues, according to Anna Teeter, conservation agronomist at the mammoth global food corporation based in Wayzata. She stressed winter camelina is currently better suited for Cargill’s products and facilities because it’s an oil seed crop.
She added that Cargill is committed to developing 10 million acres of regenerative agriculture by 2030. She said winter camelina has benefits by adding a third crop to the traditional corn and soybean rotations.
Penner continues to push the benefits of all cover crops in his new regenerative agriculture position with Great River Greening.
“It’s honestly the markets and that supply chain issue (that needs to expand),” Penner says. “It’s not yet at that level for Kernza.”
But bringing attention to these benefits of alternative cover crops and helping to address water quality issues and the realities of climate change, highlighting such innovation by local businesses is critical, according to Penner.
“What Montana (Rasmussen of River Rock Bakery) is a great example of that.”