WINTER WHEAT

Virginia farmers grow some of our favorite foods

BY ALICE KEMP

Savory bread dipped in oil, soft biscuits slathered in gravy, and warm cookies fresh from the oven are all made with one versatile ingredient: wheat.

“The predominant type of wheat grown here is soft red winter wheat,” explained Robbie Longest, a Virginia Cooperative Extension agent in Essex County. “That’s pretty much the primary type producers grow in Virginia, with the exception of a few acres.”

There are six main classes of wheat grown across the U.S., and Virginia’s climate is ideal for two: soft red winter and hard red winter wheat. Unlike spring-planted wheats, winter varieties are unique for their long season. Typically planted in October and November and harvested in June and July, winter wheat needs to undergo a process called vernalization.

“It basically means temperatures need to get cold enough to initiate the reproductive process that ultimately produces the grain,” Longest explained.

While the bulk of wheat production is concentrated in eastern Virginia, Longest said, wheat fields can be found scattered throughout the state. Wheat is ranked 15th among the top crops in the commonwealth, and Virginia farmers harvested approximately 170,000 acres of the grain in 2022.

A soft red winter legacy

Grain has always been the family business on Keith Harris’ six-generation farm in Northumberland County.

“It’s a beautiful crop to raise,” said Harris, who grows 800 acres of soft red winter wheat. “When you sit back and look at it, see it blowing in the wind, it’s like the lines in that song about the amber waves of grain.”

Harris has grown wheat for nearly four decades, and during that time he’s seen a transition in Virginia’s wheat market.

“We’ve gone from raising wheat that’s been used for feed to it being used for flour,” he said.

That’s because milling companies like Ardent Mills in Culpeper and Mennel Milling in Roanoke will pay a higher price per bushel than what growers can earn if they sell wheat for animal feed. But flour wheat demands top quality, which means careful management to prevent diseases and pests throughout the growing season.

“When it hits 22% moisture, which is usually the second week of June here, the combines are running,” Harris said.

After harvest, the wheat is dried to an optimum 13% moisture before being transported to the mill for processing into flour for biscuits, cookies, crackers and pastries.

The hard winter wheat niche

While soft red winter wheat is the main grain of Virginia’s wheat production, retired Extension agent Paul Davis is trying to encourage interest in another kind.

“This year I’ve got 60 acres of hard red winter wheat,” said Davis, who has been growing wheat on his family’s New Kent County farm since 1990.

His foray into hard wheat began about 20 years ago as a member of the Virginia Identity Preserved Grain organization. He said the group wanted to cultivate a specialty small grain crop in Virginia to diversify marketing opportunities. After attempting to grow a few different wheat types, they found hard red winter was the one that liked Virginia’s climate.

And the flour mills want it. With a higher protein and gluten content than soft red winter wheat, the hard red winter variety is ideal for breads and rolls.

“You get a premium price on the hard red winter wheat,” Davis said. “It costs mills a whole lot to get it railed in here from Kansas, so they’re splitting some of that cost with the local farmers who grow it.”

Although it’s raised just like its soft red counterpart, hard red winter wheat has been slow to catch on in Virginia because it doesn’t compete with soft red winter’s high yield, Davis said. But with wheat breeding programs, he’s optimistic that new hard wheat varieties will improve—and more farmers will grow it.

“The mills would love to see us grow 10,000 to 20,000 acres of this hard wheat,” he said. “They want a lot more than what the local farmers are growing.”

animal agriculture a scapegoat for climate change?

BY NICOLE ZEMA

Perception is reality, and some assessments built on misinformation can perpetuate damaging beliefs.

In 2020, millions viewed Burger King’s colorful ad that asserted the “farts, burps and splatters” of methane produced by cows are a major contributor to climate-warming emissions. Children dressed as farmers and wearing gas masks in some frames, sang that adding lemongrass to cattle nutrition could cut those emissions by 33%.

The ad was pulled when agriculturalists presented context and decried the message that animal agriculture is a villain in the climate change narrative, said American Farm Bureau President Zippy Duvall.

“They offered up a magic ingredient, lemongrass, while overlooking the full recipe for agricultural sustainability and failing to bring key partners in agriculture to the table,” he said. Plus, he added, the ad disregarded how the very farmers the company depends on have adopted proven tools and practices shown to reduce emissions while increasing production.

Burger King owner, Restaurant Brands International, has since pledged to consult with industry experts in future farming-related marketing campaigns.

“And is it possible to further reduce greenhouse gases from cattle?” Duvall asked. “Yes,” he asserted.

Passing the smell test

Enteric fermentation is a natural part of the digestive process in ruminant animals like livestock. Microbes decompose and ferment food in the digestive tract, producing methane as a byproduct. And it does have some impact, though not at levels insinuated in the ad. While agriculture consistently represents just 10% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions when compared to other major economic sectors, enteric fermentation makes up a chunk of that contribution at 28%, according to a 2020 Environmental Protection Agency emissions inventory.

For more context—the U.S. currently produces 18% of the world’s beef with just 8% of the cattle, contributing 3% of overall greenhouse gases, Duvall added. And dairy cattle are thought to contribute less than 1% of total greenhouse gas emissions through enteric fermentation.

“This is a big reason we get so riled up when we’re misrepresented,” he said.

The largest source of U.S. agricultural emissions is soil management, which includes fertilizer applications or tillage practices, making up 50% of overall emissions.

However, the transportation sector has the biggest overall greenhouse gas impact in the U.S., contributing 27.2%, followed closely by electricity generation and other industries.

Methane-mitigating innovations

With the advancements in innovation and technology, EPA data shows agricultural emissions per capita have declined 20% since 1990.

That’s because farmers are doing their part, said Virginia Farm Bureau Federation President Wayne F. Pryor,

who farms in Goochland County.

“Agriculture is Virginia’s largest industry, and animal agriculture is the industry’s largest component,” he explained. “In addition to being a huge economic driver, the animal agriculture sector is making recognized advances to reduce its environmental impact.”

Robin White, an associate professor in the Virginia Tech School of Animal Sciences, explained that enteric methane emissions are an important target of the animal agriculture industry’s pledge to move toward carbon neutrality.

“Because molecules like methane and nitrous oxide have greater capacity to trap radiation and re-emit it back to earth, they have greater warming potential than less impactful greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide,” she said.

Though methane has greater warming potential, it has a shorter half-life, and is metabolized quickly in the atmosphere. Since other greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide “stick” in the atmosphere, landowners must implement best management practices to sequester carbon in the soil or trees to mitigate their warming effects.

“But if we can decrease the size of the atmospheric methane pool, we have an immediate positive impact on warming,” White said. “As we work toward climate change targets, this is one of our best strategies.”

To reduce those emissions, farmers can feed their animals methanemitigating diets, or optimize farm population dynamics to address whole-system efficiency.

“Animal agriculture in the U.S. also supplies roughly a quarter of the edible energy (calories) and nearly half of the edible protein available for consumption by Americans,” White added. “So keeping the nutritional benefits and limiting the environmental challenges presents a win-win.”