High Quality Wheat Production with Claudia Carter

Wheat producers get paid for quality based on protein content, test weight and sprouting number. Bakers care about the quality of protein, not just the content, and it is expensive for them to overcome poor protein quality. In this interview, Claudia Carter describes the wheat characteristics that are actually worth a premium to bakers.

Welcome back to the Regenerative Agriculture Podcast. Very delighted today to host Claudia Carter, who is the California Wheat Commissioner. Claudia and I have had several very interesting conversations recently around grain quality. Many of you know that I'm very passionate about producing healthy, high quality, nutritious food for people. And of course, we desire as producers to also be compensated for producing a high quality product and even for the quality of product that we produce today. We've had several quite interesting conversations with Claudia around what defines quality, how do we measure quality, what is the quality that is important to millers, to bakers, and of course, what are the nutritional parameters that are important for us as consumers as well. So, Claudia, welcome. I've been looking forward to this conversation. Thank you for being here. Can you tell us a bit about the journey and the pathway that has brought you to your work as California Wheat Commissioner?

Hi John, thank you for having me and the opportunity to discuss this important topic with your audience. So, yeah, I actually came to the United States, I'm from Ecuador originally and I went to study food science at North Dakota State University. And I, after I graduated from, you know, with my undergraduate as a food scientist, I did my master's degree in cereal science. And that's where really I learned a lot. I learned a lot more about grains specifically. I work with Durham and understanding durum wheat and what makes high quality durum wheat for pasta manufacturers. And that's where all of my journey began, with understanding more about wheat quality and what it takes to produce, you know, a high quality crop that will make a good product. Then California Wheat Commission as the lab director and then I was promoted to be the executive director two years later once I joined here. And since then I have been working for producers in California.

What is the scope of the work that you're doing there at the Wheat Commission?

Yeah, so there are two major missions that we work on as part of the California Wheat Commission. So under the research, we have a partnership with the University of California, Davis, where we have our wheat breeder, Dr. Jorge Dukovsky was breeding to improve not only, you know, the yield and also have this resistance added to the genetic background of the varieties, but also to improve the quality and definitely working on biofortification of some of our wheat Varieties. So that's what Dr. Dukovsky concentrates on. And then we also found as part of the research, Dr. Mark Lundy, who is our small grains specialist, he's our agronomist who takes all the varieties and plants, those across California to see how they perform in different environments. And then he will be testing yield, performance, persistence. And then all, you know, besides the research that we do is market development and market development. Something unique on how we do it here in California is that among all the 17 week commissions that United States have, California Weed Commission is the only one that has a weed quality research lab on site. So we can process all those samples that we get from the research side from UC Davis and process them here for testing for quality, you know, for bread, tortillas, pastas, you name it. We can make any product here.

So you've mentioned a couple of words. That one word in particular that I don't hear very often, the word biofortification. So in the agricultural community, particularly in the fruit and vegetable production community, it's common to hear conversations around nutrient density. And I think the, the idea of producing biofortified foods where we actually are breeding for a specific nutritional profile is not something that is widely discussed. Can you tell me a bit more about your efforts and what your objectives are in that area?

Yes, I'll tell you what you know from Dr. Dukovsky perspective, but also a little bit from my perspective. So Dr. Dukovsky as part of this industry is asked by many people, in this case, let's say the growers develop varieties that are, you know, are going to be resilient. But then also he's been asked things from the millers and from the bakers, hey, develop varieties that have these quality parameters. Right. And one of the things that the millers have always asked, we want less mineral. As you know, minerals are going to affect the white flour performance for certain products. So Dr. Dukovsky said to me one time, why do we want that? Because we want to keep high minerals, high nutritious wheat. So with that being said, Dr. Dukovsky's efforts and became one of his, you know, project back, you know, about 10 years ago and have some wheat that is biofortified, meaning that has higher sink or higher in this case a variety that we are currently develop or I'm sorry, it will be commercially available. It's half that has high carotenoid pigments. So that means, you know, you have high lutein, which at the end will help, you know, it will be good for your eyes. So it's something that it became some sort of a passion for Dr. Dukovsky to develop varieties that are going to be better for you. You know, he knew that we need to have morality in our food, and why would I follow that? And I think he was right. You know, I think he is developing those varieties that in the long run, and as you see people demand, you know, people asking for healthier products, I think we're on the right track. And anything that Dr. Lukovsky does, he does communicate with us. And in a way, we say that that's along the mission and the things that we would like to see being produced here in California.

I find it interesting that the parameters that the Millers are looking for, as in less ash and a smaller mineral content, is in some ways in direct conflict with the quality that we should really value collectively as consumers and as society. And I wonder about other areas of possible conflict. What are the differences in the protein value, gluten content? What is the story behind gluten?

So protein content. How can I. Okay, so we understand protein content and protein quality are completely different. Okay. Just because you have a high protein content, that doesn't mean that you have actually good protein. Bread quality. Protein quality. And there is a research that came out from one of my professors from. From NDSU, Dr. Shimch, that proves that varieties that were bred or having in our system for so many years and the new varieties, the gluten structure hasn't changed. So. And people think that the gluten that used to be in varieties that they will call heritage wheat varieties. So the right thing to say about gluten is that gluten is actually the protein in wheat, is actually two proteins, I.e. gluten and gliadin, that when you have it in the grain, make that grain into. Produce it into flour, and you add water to it without even mixing. Then gluten structure and matrix starts to form disulfide bonds that come together. And that's when we can tell and say, okay, a gluten structure or matrix has been formed. So when people are studying if something has changed in the protein, in the gluten structure, really what we're studying is the gliadin and the glutenin, which each of those proteins provide a specific type of structure and quality to the bread that you're making. So one will provide you. In this case, the glutannins will provide what we call an elasticity type of component, which is resistance to expand. And then the gliadins are going to provide what we call extensibility to produce the gluten structure that are going to help to maintain a nice loaf of bread that will entrap those gas bubbles through the fermentation process. So when we talk about gluten, that really is what it is. It's a protein. It provides a structure to the bread. It also is going to provide a protein nutritious factor that we need to have.

So thinking about gluten versus gliadin from a growing from an agronomic perspective, what can growers and agronomists do to produce not just higher protein content, but also a higher protein quality? And I think actually there's another question almost comes before that, which is what defines protein quality? You said that protein quantity and quality are two very different things. Are we looking for a balance between gluten and gliadin?

Correct. So the proteins that you have in the grain for wheat, 80% which are glutenins and gliadins and about 20% are what we call the non gluten forming proteins which are lumens, globulins and tritosines. Right. So you do have certain balance between the gliadins and the glutenins that it's part of its genetic background. So this is where genetics are very, very important in the we produce, which we have to make sure to understand that only 30% of the polyplane by the genetic part and then 70% is everything else that we don't control. Right. Which is only or some could control. I guess if you're in the desert producing a crop where you can control how you manage your crop, but most of the weed that is grown is the dry land crop. And then you know, you don't control that part of how much water you're going to get or how much water you're not going to get yet. The part that the producer can control, which is management. Okay. And this is not my area of expertise, however I have heard and listened enough Dr. Lundy when he explains that management and nitrogen application for example, and the timing of nitrogen application is so important to produce not only that high protein content but also the deposition of the protein that is going to affect that protein quality. So and everything else that you have, the sulfur, is it magnesium, is it all those. And you don't want to have a deficit of these key component elements that the crop is going to need to to that protein deposition. But 30%, and this is something to me very important for the grower to understand that 30% is explained by genetics. So having a good genetic Background that comes with that variety that you're planting is key, you know, of course, as well as your management and then your environment that you're having.

How have genetics shifted and changed over the last few decades? Are genetics really being optimized for the optimal protein quality instead of just protein quantity?

I would say in general, most of the research, you know, the breeding research programs, they pay up to protein content. However, yield potential continues being a very, very important part of the breeding program because at the end of the day, the grower gets paid on yield and the protein content. They're trying to make it as good as possible, but they do want to see high yield. So frosting quality in California in the breeding program. Yes, I will say, you know, we have been heavily investing in that. And also the way I hear Dr. Bukovsky describe this is that they have tools now that they can utilize and breed varieties in a much faster way than they used to be able to do it, you know, in 20, 30 years ago. So it has changed. Yes, because technology has advanced so you can do things quicker, faster. There is a lot of things to understand about the wheat genome because it's, you know, it's just huge. But we have done advancements to understand what are the areas in the glutanning part, for example, that are the high molecular weight that we might be able to concentrate on, that gives elasticity and how can we come to be breathing for quality, high quality, high elastic weeds that are going to be stronger, for example. And that's something that Dr. Dukovsky here at breeding program has been, you know, doing and developing.

I find it very encouraging that protein quality is only 30% genetics and is 70% environment. Obviously you could, we could perceive that as being a double edged sword. But if 70% of protein quality is determined by management and determined by the plant's environment, that actually means that we have a significant influence over quality. And I think in, in growers that we have worked with, we've certainly observed that timing of nitrogen application, as you mentioned, but also magnesium, sulfur, molybdenum, all of the, all of the enzyme cofactors that are needed for protein synthesis and for the nitrate and ammonia metabolism within the plant are very important. And certainly from a plant health perspective, they give us much greater degrees of pest resistance and overall plant vigor and they generally translate to increased yield as well. And I heard you mention some of those minerals in the way that they correspond to quality. Is that also because of the protein synthesis and enzyme cofactor pathways?

You know, you're getting into an area that is not my expertise. But the way I hear our agronomists speaking is that, you know, all those other, you know, elements that you are, you know, feeding your plant are going to definitely influence at the end of the day, the overall quality you get from that crop. And not just that, I mean, yield potential. Right. And what you just say, like certain times, you know, maybe the disease resistance and that to be a healthy crop. Right? That what you just what you just described.

Claudia, you have an interesting perspective in that you speak not only with growers and agronomists, but also with the millers and the bakers. And one of the questions that I often wonder about is how are the interests of and the desires of the millers and the growers aligned or misaligned.

One of those areas. So I have seen a lack of communication and why I have become a pretty big advocate of bring every single player to the table. I have reached out to millers and say, we're here to help you. Come and tell us what do you want? What do you need? And the same thing, the farmer, the farmers say, I want a miller to come and see what I do on my farm. I want a baker to come and see what I do. You know, and the other way around is the truth. The miller wants to, you know, hopefully talk to the farmer and say, okay, let me learn. You know, the farmer is saying, I want to learn from you and why my quality affects you. So they want different things. And that's the problem because the market, how it is a structure, you know, I say, what. What does the farmer care about in the weed market? Well, they care about what cropping content they reach. The test weight example. And then another factor that is right now being affected up in the Midwest, they're being discounted on falling numbers, which basically is, you know, sprout damage because of the rains that they have late rains up in, you know, North Dakota, Montana. So, and it's a factor then because of the issues, then they're being discounted. So, and then the elevator is going to care pretty much the same three things. Protein content, test weight and poly number. But then the miller and the baker, oh, my goodness, they, they do have to care about a lot about the quality. They do want a high stability perinograph stability that is going to perform very well in the mixer. And they want, you know, some of them want flavor. The other ones want high absorption. So you have a list that is, you know, so long for these other people on the supply chain that doesn't really match with what the farmer's looking at and what the elevator is looking at. Yet I always say, but you're demanding that from the farmer and yet you're discounting a lot on the farm. And when they do something right, you don't give them that incentive. And that premium and that disconnect is really becoming a little bit more of a, of an issue right now. Baker wants to clean that label up, wants to have less ingredients, and they cannot find a good quality wheat. So it's a major issue, I would say, in an industry as a whole.

I'd love for you to expand on that last comment just a little bit because we, I think many growers, many producers are beginning to, in their own personal life, really understand the importance of personal health and buying food that you can actually understand all the, and pronounce all the ingredients on the label. So when wheat is poor quality, are millers and bakers, do they need to add more ingredients to the recipe? And how does wheat quality change what goes into bread?

Oh, yeah. So if you are able to control what you're getting for wheat and you're able to hand pick varieties and regions and areas where you want to get your wheat from, to mill it, to give it to a baker, you're going to be a leader in this industry. The current market doesn't really work much that way, I mean, because they're segregating based on protein content. Right. So, okay, so let's say you have a lower quality, a much, you know, shorter mix time for a flour that the bakery is using. Okay. And when you're putting that into a machine, because big bakeries, you know, they're not hand making the bread. They have machines that pretty much it's all automatic. They put the flour, the ingredients come, they get dumped, they get mixed, it goes through a pipe and goes through the next level. So when you are working in such an ultimate type of system, you want to make sure that you have a mix of dough that is not going to be sticking to your pipes or sticking to your machine, because then you have a big issue. So what you have to add to that mix of ingredients are extra of that mix of, you know, of the blend is extra ingredients that are going to help you to keep things together. And often to compensate for quality, what bakers have to add is an ingredient that's called Vita Wheat gluten. So Vita wheat gluten is it's basically protein isolate. So it's a protein that gets extracted from the wheat. And then that protein can be added to the blend so you can have a more consistent type of flour from batch to batch to batch. So the problem is that that ingredient is expensive. So I say if you have a flour that you like and it's okay quality, you're paying about 17 cents a pound. Well, then you need to pay about a dollar per pound for vita wheat gluten. That's very expensive. And if you have to add more of that ingredient, rather than having a high quality flour, that perhaps you, you're paying a premium for it. Let's say you're paying a premium. Instead of 17 cents, you're paying, you know, 25 to 30 cents. You're still saving money because you are going to have a much more even consistent flour quality than having to add those ingredients such as vitamin gluten.

This seems to me like it would be a really big deal for millers and for bakers to desire to have. Essentially, if I'm understanding you correctly, you're describing that when you have really high quality wheat, you don't need to add the expensive ingredients and of course produce higher quality wheat and be compensated for that. So from your perspective, you have a very strategic viewpoint. Where is the disconnect coming from the.

Supply chain and how our industry has been working for years and the resistance to change? Okay, our system is not set up for the way I just described to you. You know, however the bakers want to have that. Yet, you know, the people who goes from the farmer all the way to the baker just haven't figured out yet how to make that happen for a customer who is demanding that. So I will tell you, the impediments that we have is how we deal with from the crop from its harvested to the point that it gets sent to the bakery. Everybody in between hasn't changed. And it's really difficult for them to change in a system that set up for many years it has been working, which is mainly getting paid by protein content and how big of your kernels are and you haven't seen, you know, sprout damage. And I just told you. But let me give you an example of an industry. I was in Spain two years ago and I went to visit a farmer there, a wheat farmer in Spain. And you know, they had a wheat field there. And I asked, I'm always very curious how other growers, other parts of the world are growing and marketing their wheat. So I asked this grower and I say, so how did you sell this wheat and what did you get from that wheat? So he pull out his cell phone and show me. And he goes, well, first I have to harvest it. After I harvest it, I have to send it to a weed quality lab. And as he pull out his phone, his cell phone, he showed me a spreadsheet where he has the data that he gets. He gets moisture content, protein content. Very few people might know what it is, which is an albiograph data and that algo graph data. What really tells you in short term is quality of the wheat gives you a W value, which is the overall work of that dough when it got into the machine. And the higher the W value, I mean, more likely the better the quality. And he told me, he said, if my W value is higher than 200, I get paid a premium for it. And I was in shock. I was like, I never really had a producer really telling me something like dough quality and that they get paid a premium for that quality quality.

So.

And that doesn't happen in the U.S. unfortunately, because you don't have the buyer telling the producer, I'm going to pay you on quality.

It seems to me, though, from what you expressed earlier, that the buyers, I mean, it would make sense that they would have a desire to do that. It would be economically worthwhile. They would have an incentive to do that if the supply chain were capable of delivering that.

Absolutely. Mm. Yes.

We've touched on a number of different subjects that all connect together, but I think before we unravel them further, there is something that I know many people would like me to ask, and that is when we consider protein quality, gluten versus gliadin, and these various compounds, there's a lot of discussion, and I would almost say bordering on a fad around gluten sensitivity. Some of it certainly is real. Some of it is questionable whether it's real. But from your perspective, you mentioned earlier the differences between heritage grains and the more modern grain varieties, if I'm understanding correctly, then essentially you're saying that gluten is present even in the heritage grains, but there are differences in quality. What's really going on?

So the structure or the genetic part of the structure of those two gliadins and glutenins, and the genetic makeup of those lines are different. This is what I read, this is what I hear. And so let's go back to what I told you before, which is very important. As we explained to you, new tendons provide elasticity. And if you talk about elasticity, to put it in a way that, you know, everybody will understand what I mean, it's a resistance to the formation. So if you take a rubber band that is very strong and you stretch it and you let it go, it's going back to its original place. Well, that's the elasticity. Now, tannin that provides that component. The gliadins provide what I call, what we call extensibility. And it's basically the ability of something to stretch. Right? So when you see the quality differences between the heritage grains, you are going to have a much higher influence. The gliadin, which are the ones that have that extensibility, so they're going to be stickier, okay. They're not going to have that springing back that elasticity gluten is provide. This is just talking from quality perspective and the way I see it, or we see it in the lab, okay. In contrast with the newer varieties that have been bred for having that stronger, much more elastic type of, you know, a strength, then the glutamins are going to dominate and certain parts of the tennis because we're providing, allowing elasticity as part of that. Again, this is part of the genetic, you know, the 70% comes from other. Other things about management. We talk about that. So if we talk about the quality per se, of the differences between those two, you have the heritage grains that are a bit stickier and a bit more soft, rather than the ones that are newer ones that became to be higher elasticity. But also keep in mind that these newer varieties, modern varieties, are also being bred to be harder, okay? So you not only have a stronger quality, but also you have a harder kernel that when you break, it is going to be harder to break and that we call a hardness value. Whereas the other ones, the heritage, are much on the softer side, which really is what a lot of these heritage wheat have been or are like. One of the ones that many people understand and know, yet people have used it for bread baking. And that's the Sonora, which has been in California. And, you know, it came from, you know, from Mexico and was produced here long, long time ago. We still produce it. But that, that's the differences in what we see from the quality perspective on the heritage and the modern wheat.

When growers want to test their wheat quality similar to the farmer that you met in Spain, where can farmers in North America send their wheat today to get tested, to be analyzed for quality as you're describing it.

So we have, I mean, the California Wheat Commission has a fee for service lab. So we have some producers from California that take their wheat here and then we test it for quality here, and they are the ones very progressive growers that we have working directly with us, who are working customers directly, and they're the ones looking for that quality data. Right. The other labs that I know is the weed marketing center up in Portland. You have the Great Plains lab in Kansas, and then you have the one up in North Dakota that's called the Northern Crops Institute. So those are the main labs that I know that test with quality and that producers can send their samples to.

And are there different types of parameters that can be measured? Are there any specific requests that growers should ask for or just a simple wheat quality assay will give them the type of information that you're talking about?

Yes, you can look at how basic quality data. One of the most widely known quality tests that anybody will ask you is the phrenograph. The farnograph will give you stability and it's absorption and stability. What that means is how long can I mix my dough before it starts breaking down and becoming sticky? The longer the stability is, the stronger that weed is. So it's like very good and the shorter, the weaker that is. So it's a pretty straightforward test. And the other component that that test gives you is absorption. And absorption, as we all know, is important for a baker because higher absorption means that the baker can push a little bit that hydration, add more water. Well, you know, adding water for the baker is a plus because water cheap. So then they will be able to understand, like how much more water I can add to this product. So I would say for enograft is the quality testing that I will encourage growers to go for. And of course, protein content, just to have an idea on protein content. It will be also good to have.

One of the questions that's circulating in my mind. We work with a number of growers in Kansas and in the Northwest who are very passionate about the work that they're doing. They desire to produce healthier, higher quality grains. What can they do to help resolve the pipeline challenges, the supply chain challenges? Is it possible in today's world to connect directly with bakers and shepherd your grain throughout the entire process? What can growers begin thinking about or begin doing differently to really be compensated for quality that they're producing?

So I would say the way that we have been working with here in California, and I think it will work until we get up. The point is that the producers themselves have a good connection with a Miller baker that we directly to. And honestly, it's more like setting that not new business model for grain buying and selling. Setting that model as almost like a case study. You know, I have been doing it with this mill and this baker, and it's working. Oftentimes when you start developing programs like that, they start very small, which is what we're seeing here in California. We're starting very small, where we have a producer who said, here in Sacramento area, one of my producers at Chills From Silt Farm said, hey, you know, I want to be able to market my own grain. So what did he do then? He set up his own cleaning facility, grain cleaning facility, packaging and storage. So now he has had a great success story where he is selling directly to a manufacturer. Then he's also selling it directly to a mill in LA who is buying directly his Triti Kelly, for example. So having those additional components of his processing for the farmer, it's a key part of moving that needle into the right direction. Also, growers, what they can do is if they have a storage ability, they can also start, you know, testing their quality and then storing their weed by quality. But of course, you know, they need to know, so where am I going to sell these? So where am I going to sow? That's the part that we're missing is like, how can we connect that grower with somebody who wants that? So it's a difficult situation for many growers, but there are some growers who are already starting to make those changes at the farm level. You know, as well as making the connection, going to trade shows, talking to and being in front of the line saying, I'm producing these. Do you want it? Do you need it? Because I don't want to go and build with anybody else or my elevator. I want to build directly with you. So being out there, learning directly from their customers and what they need and starting to make those connections are very, very critical. That's what I would say that they can start doing. And what I have seen, the other thing that I've seen growers here in California and other places is setting up their own mill. So I have currently two growers who have set their own cleaning facility. And also they're going to put a mill, they're going to start milling in smaller batches, but they're going to be selling their own flour very soon.

I think this, what you're describing, really speaks to one of the foundational challenges that we need to growers. And this is certainly true of wheat as well as the other crops have really become commodity producers. They're producing commodities and they are allowing others to add value and to extract a Lot of the value from the commodity that they're producing. And so bringing back those roles that have been delegated to people referred to as middlemen and adding that additional value can be one way of adding a lot of value to a farming enterprise as a whole.

Yes, absolutely. Yep. And some of those producers are starting to realize that I have to do it myself because, you know, they have told me I have gone knocking the doors and, you know, zero response. So then I had to invest on my own facility. I want to be able to tell a story. Why am I doing this? And the other component of the story of grains is let's produce healthy products, which to me is whole grain products. I don't want to tell you not to, but I want to tell you why you should be eating whole grain bread products because they're so good for you and for your health. When you ask me about that question and the people who are avoiding gluten, it's fine. You know, everybody can, can have their own choices. I have my own choices. But I will tell them, I say try to have a good whole grain bread, a good whole grain cracker. You're going to fall in love again with grains and with gluten because they add flavor, they add nutrition and you are not going to walk away from those. Unfortunately, those products, there are some in the market, but not widely, I would say developed or produced in the US you can find outstanding whole grain, 100% whole grain products in Germany, in Italy, in, you know, in France. You know, they are good quality products. But yet I think we're lacking here in the US to have more 100% whole grain products.

Let's talk about whole grain just a little bit because I think this is also an important conversation. It's a very familiar one for me because I grew up in a family where we made our own bread and it was all. We actually milled our own grain. It was 100% whole. Whole grain. And what is the, what's the relative nutritional value of bran versus white flour that has had the bran removed from it?

So, okay, let's talk about what does the wheat have? The wheat has bran germ and then the sperm endosperm is mainly basically the starch and then the gluten forming protein and then the bran. You have insoluble fiber and you know, vitamins and minerals. Very, very important, mainly the fats, but also some other important vitamins. So when you are eating 100% whole grain as part of the whole thing. Yes. You're adding that Portion, one of the key portions, I would say, which is fiber. You want to eat more whole grains because of that insoluble fiber, that we should be eating more in our diet, but also those vitamins and minerals that come with it. Now, I was at a meeting recently and I heard from some of the experts in nutrition of the whole grains that, yes, whole grains will provide you all that. Yet we should still, even whole grain flour should still be fortified with these other, you know, vitamins, fortified, because it will be very important to continue having that as part of, you know, a healthy program that the US Is encouraging. So, yes, you're adding a lot more nutrition with whole grain, that white flour. But still there is some sort of a unique perspective that. But we still should be fortifying that whole grain flour in the US which we do for the white flour, because you're stripping really literally all those nutrients that it's getting out from the brand. And the white flour is purely starch with some of that protein, that is the gluten. So, and then they have to fortify it and start fortifying it, which was a big major advantage in our health in the US when they started doing that.

So there are advantages today to fortifying grains, as you described, and to an earlier part of our conversation where you described how historically, I understood it correctly, breeding efforts historically and even today are attempting to produce a low ash, low mineral content grain. So one of the questions that I think would arise from that is how does the nutrient level and mineral and vitamin level of more modern varieties compare with those that were not particularly bred for a low ash content?

In general, what we have seen in the lab, heritage varieties, older varieties, tend to have a higher mineral ash content than some of the. Some of them, not all of them, but some of the newer varieties, when we are even talking about the whole grain. So there is more, I would say, I guess mineral concentrated. And just speaking as a hypothesis, you know, not that I have done any research on it, but I, you know, by fact, we have done that testing and we know that there are differences in mineral content. Keep in mind that the varieties that are red today are red, or mainly for the milling and baking industry that exists, which is mainly white flour. And what really we have come to try to do is try to be able to do as efficient as possible in the roller milling system, to detach, to take away, to rip off the brand. And by doing so, we're making sure that there is zero contamination from the brand, which has most of that mineral content and the ash Content came from the ash, from the bran, that it basically doesn't contaminate the endosperm, which is what we're using for making the white flour. So then that has also been the case that we're able, I mean, in the modern wheat, you're able to mill it to have a much more efficient milling capacity. So you have higher flour yield without having too much of that contamination from the brands. And that really is what I would say the difference is that you cannot perhaps accomplish well with your heritage varieties that are smaller kernels, more pinch kernels. So through the milling process, efficiency is not as good. But as I said, if our goal and our goal should be to feed and have more whole grain flowers, at the end of the day, you do want to have those varieties that contain that higher minerals that are good for you.

Wonderful. Claudia, what are some resources that you would recommend if growers, producers, agronomists, want to follow up and to learn more about quality and how to connect directly with bakers? Are there any resources that you would recommend for them to look at?

We put some things in our website so I can recommend them to go to our website, which is the Californiawee.org website. So there is also resources from the universities. I would say the Washington State University has wonderful resources on quality that they put into their website. North Dakota State University and Kansas State University. So those will be the other, you know, places where they will have information about quality. And I would say there is also these. The Wheat Goods Council or the Whole Grain. I went blank on that name. But it's a whole grain console. I think it is called two where they can find information about wheat and wheat quality and nutrition information as well.

Very good. Are there any other things that growers should be thinking about? What is the question that I should have been asking?

You know, I would say, are they. I mean, growers are doing, and I know by fact they're doing the best they can to produce, you know, in the area, how they can produce it. So the question will be, should we adjust and change the ways that we're farming today? And this is a difficult one that might give me an advantage in a way to continue protecting the soil. I mean, I have heard some of our growers who are changing, let's say, to no till here in our area and they're changing to other things like cover crops. So I would say encourage the growers to ask the question. And I don't want to, you know, as I say, I don't tell them what to do. But yet I want to have them and challenge them to ask the question, is it what we're doing? Is it, is it what we should be continue doing? Or are there other ways that we can keep producing a high quality, high nutritious crop that will provide me an advantage, an advantage to the soil and to the way I'm farming?

Yeah, I think that's certainly the agronomic focus is one that we speak about primarily here on the podcast and on our webinars, is how do we develop agricultural systems and soil and crop management systems that enhance biology and that produce healthier and higher quality crops and more nutritious food? And that, of course, ranges from using cover crops to using biological inoculants and a completely different set of management practices in many different cases.

Yeah. And also, do I have to be looking for new partners? I think, you know, just fighting that status quo. Keep looking for other outlets there. There are companies out there that are looking for farmers who are going to be partnering with them. And this is what I say. I say look at your farmer as your partner, and the farmer will look at that industry and that person working for that industry also as a partner. We gotta help each other. I think collaboration is going to continue being very, very important. But also I tell them, knowledge sharing, let's share the knowledge. And that's something the producers do very good. They share knowledge with their fellow growers, they tell them what they're doing. Yet in other areas of our supply chain, we lack. We don't want to share what we know, and that shouldn't be that way.

Yeah, I certainly observed that as well very clearly. Claudia, this has been a wonderful conversation. I'm sure that our listeners will enjoy it very much as well. Thank you for being here and I look forward to having more discussions in the future.

Thank you, John. I appreciate it. Thank you for the opportunity.

The team at AEA and I are dedicated to bringing this show to you because we believe that knowledge and information is, is the foundation of successful regenerative systems. At aea, we believe that growing better quality food and making more money from your crops is possible. And since 2006, we've worked with leading professional growers to help them do just that. At aea, we don't guess. We test, we analyze, and we provide recommendations based on scientific data, knowledge and experience. We've developed products that are uniquely positioned to help growers make more money with regenerative agriculture. If you are a professional grower who believes in testing instead of guessing, someone who believes in a better more regenerative way to grow. Visit advancingecoag.com and contact us to see if AEA is right for you. Thank you for listening and we look forward to working with you.

Sa.