Identity Preserved Soybean Production and Export: Craig Tomera from Grain Millers and Aaron Lorenz, University of Minnesota
Good day and welcome to the University of Minnesota podcast Minnesota CropCast. I'm your host Dave Nicolai, Extension Educator in Field Crops with University of Minnesota. I'm here today along with our co host Doctor. Seth Nave, University of Minnesota Extension soybean specialist at the University Minnesota Agronomy Department and Seth we have some really exciting special guests today with us in the studio, not only our co worker Doctor. Aaron Lorenz, University of Minnesota soybean breeder in Department of Agronomy and a special guest that's with us today, Craig Tamara, he is from the Grain Millers organization, he is an identity preserved crop specialist and we're gonna start off today with Craig and talk a little bit about the soybean specialty market and what's going on in Minnesota.
Speaker 1:But first I think Craig we want to talk a little bit about yourself, where you're from, what you've been doing up until this point in time and how you do what you do in terms of working in with the Grain Millers organization.
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, thank you for having me here today and let me talk to you a little bit about what we do at Grain Millers. Originally, I'm from Illinois. That's where I cut my teeth in in agriculture. I've received my bachelor's degree from Illinois State University and my master's degree from the University of Illinois. Then in 1993, moved my family up to Jackson, Minnesota, worked for Pioneer Hybrid Seeds in their soybean division, and also a few years later moved to Olivia, Minnesota and started the precision soy business up in that area.
Speaker 2:That's kinda where I got introduced to or reintroduced, I think, to non GMO, especially soybean production and organic seed production, eventually taking a job with a company here in Saint Paul that dealt with those two products. And then in 02/2011, I had the good fortune to come to work for Grain Millers and lead their specialty soybean department.
Speaker 1:So in your role at Grain Millers at in situation, you work with farmers and what parts of the state and in what emphasis you I think you do some basics in the agronomics. Are you involved in contracts, establishment of fields here in terms of identity preserved overseas markets? Where do you fit into this whole process?
Speaker 2:The short answer is yes to all those. Recently, I've been giving been given more opportunity to work with our customers overseas. The first eight or nine years of my work with grain millers, I worked exclusively with our growers in contract production, doing the grower contracts with them, offering agronomic advice, and did a lot of field scouting over those years. In fact, I still do that quite a bit. Also working with our production location in Saint Peter, Minnesota.
Speaker 2:The last couple of years, I've also had the opportunity to begin working a lot closer with our overseas customers on what their needs are, introducing new soybeans and new product lines to them, and building the business from that side.
Speaker 1:Can you tell our audience when we talk about the term identity preserved, what exactly does that mean that's different than what Aaron would be involved with in of his soybean breeding, but I think he is also involved with identity preserve. But let's get your definition, and then we'll get a a little background from Aaron as well.
Speaker 2:Well, many companies like Gray Millers that that work with specialty soybeans and their customers overseas, they're they're looking for a a particular type of soybean and the intrinsics that that soybean offers for the products they make, whether it's a miso or tofu or natto or soy milk. And they want the beans that they receive from us to be uniform with those intrinsic properties, which would be protein and oil, sugars, and maybe a few other things. So working with Identity Preserved, we're basically telling them that we can keep those varieties the same across all the deliveries to them. You know, they're they're gonna want a a specific soybean variety so that we have to show that we can keep that variety separate from all other soybean varieties that run through our plant. And if they're gonna get variety a from us, it's gonna be a consistent variety a from start to finish.
Speaker 3:So we hear a lot about traceability now. It's it's I think traceability seems to be more of a new term than than IP, but there's quite a bit of overlap in those two definitions. So do you have any thoughts on helping us separate those two things? I know IP gives a significant amount of traceability that you wouldn't have with a bulk commodity kind of an export situation, but it may not your IP definition may not have the full level of maybe traceability that some people are maybe thinking about as as the ideal or the optimal traceability standards. Or maybe you could maybe you just speak broadly on traceability.
Speaker 2:Well, since my work started at Grain Millers, we've been very heavily involved in identity preserved production. We offer four or five different soybean varieties to our customers, and we keep them 100% separate at all times from farmer's bin to our bins into the packaged goods that that go overseas. And there was quite a lot of, checking and paperwork that went with that every year. Now as we're getting into more of the traceability, the sustainability, part of of agriculture that's come about here in the last three or four or five years, We're taking extra steps to show or be able to show our customers who can show their customers, you know, exactly where that product came from, you know, where it was grown, how it was grown, how it was stored, how it was delivered, how it was handled. And we can basically do that from packaged goods all the way back to the farm.
Speaker 3:Is it fair to say that your definition of IP probably differs by companies and what they provide in terms of service and that and that that may be part of what differentiates you from other companies, but also differentiates maybe different shades of of IP. We talk about things like IMO, grains, or things like that where we have, you know, kind of bulk commodities that are maybe cleaned and and exported out of regions as as something that would be close to an IP type market, but maybe not fit the same definition as as what you're doing. Is it is it fair to say that there's some there's some difference across both the individual markets in terms of the the the individual type of of soybean or other grains, and then also by by company, how you might differentiate or how you might define what IP is?
Speaker 2:There is leniency or or maybe that's not the right word. Differences between companies on what their IP practices are. There is a basic understanding and a basic information need for identity preservation that all companies follow and all of their companies request. Some go to the next level and offer extra information, some don't. It just kind of depends what market they're working in.
Speaker 2:Can you
Speaker 1:tell us a little bit about the the customer type? Who are the customers? And let's just talk about in Asia and and other areas. I think that people might be familiar with or names. And what kind of volume soybean export is there from Minnesota or from the Upper Midwest?
Speaker 2:Well, all of them are are food companies, food ingredient companies, and we're supplying them a food ingredient number one. That's at Grain Millers, that's what we like to to tell our growers. We're we're not buying grain from you. We're not delivering grain to our customers. We're we're buying food ingredients because everything is for human consumption.
Speaker 2:Volume wise, our particular location in Saint Peter, we can do between twenty and twenty five thousand metric tons of soybeans a year just depending on on package size and container availability and things like that. And there's there's probably, you know, just here in the Upper Midwest, there's probably four or five other companies that are very similar to us, equal volume or maybe even more volume. And then across the Midwest, there's there's a handful more also.
Speaker 1:Now we talked a little bit earlier before we started with the the program, and I saw your presentation the other day, Craig down in Lafayette. One of the things is how is the soybeans that you're contracting with different than the Roundup ready soybeans that's across the landscape? In other words, what type of soybeans do you want and what don't you want, so to speak, conventional herbicides, but can give us a little brief agronomic sketch here?
Speaker 2:Well, all of the food grade soybeans that we handle at Grain Millers are what we call a clear or white hilum soybean, non gmo soybean, whether they're grown non gmo quote conventional or if they're grown in an organic situation, and we handle both. The main difference, I think, between the GMO soybean and and the non GMO food grade soybean are the intrinsic values, the protein and oil contents, the type of protein that's in the bean, the type of sugar that's in the bean. It's all they've all been developed and bred for this special food grade market. And a lot of the food grade beans will have much higher protein, different types of sugar concentrations. There are a lot of times a lot larger size soybean than the than the GMO soybean is.
Speaker 2:So there there is quite a difference there.
Speaker 1:Sourcing the seed for the farmers. And Aaron is here to talk a little bit about the University Minnesota efforts. Where do farmers derive these soybeans from or the grain millers your recommendations? And I know Aaron, the University of Minnesota has been involved in some of these identity preserved processes for quite some time. I mean, how far back does it go?
Speaker 1:Yeah,
Speaker 4:excuse me. Yeah, that's right. So just backing way up here, the program here for a long time, I'm basically the third soybean breeder here, started with Gene Lambert and then Jim Orf, I led the program all the way through the 1980s, 90s and and 2000s and, you know, originally they would develop a lot of public varieties that were widely grown by farmers in the landscape but then at the during the advent of Roundup Ready technology, in the mid nineteen nineties, a lot of the efforts switched towards these these, food type soybean varieties. Jim, you know, found a niche for that in the program.
Speaker 1:A lot of the the the a lot a lot of
Speaker 4:the commodity type varieties out there in landscape right now are developed by the private companies and that's perfectly fine. So we need to find those niches where where we can work in where there's maybe not as much private investment. And this has this has been one of those areas, historically. And so, there have been a number of very, widely used and valuable, food grade soybean varieties that have come out of the program ranging from applications in soy milk and tofu, also a food product known as natto, is consumed in Japan and and Korea and other types of soybeans as well. And so I've I've tried to continue those efforts, myself these last few years after I I took over the program from Jim.
Speaker 4:And we you know we put varying levels of efforts into these different types of of markets depending on what kind of private activity there is in any sort of
Speaker 1:market type. Do you sense that market continue and your program in this particular area and demand?
Speaker 4:I think yeah for for certain types, yeah. Again it depends on what what varieties are out there in the landscape from the private sector and where we can see that there there are specific needs for new varieties that are not being met by the private sector. We're interested in in continuing some of that work. Have one one aspect we have here or one I should say asset we have here at the University of Minnesota is we have a great NIR lab to measure the quality of these soybeans coming off of our breeding plots. So that's been a big advantage to continuing these efforts.
Speaker 3:I would just like to chime in here that, know, I spend November a week in November every year in North Asia talking with buyers. And we primarily meet with with commodity type soybean buyers, but we also meet with food type soybean buyers when we're there. And these these trips are sponsored by the US Soybean Export Council. But the number one concern that the Japanese have for us every year is not about the weather and about, you know, availability of certain varieties. They're actually most interested in the future supply of non GM soybeans.
Speaker 3:So I just want to mention this is that from their standpoint, they only hear about the new varieties from Bayer or Corteva that come out with GM traits because, you know, those are, you know, 90% of our market or more. And so that really weighs heavy in in the in terms of the news market that they hear. But but an individual tofu maker in Tokyo is really, really concerned about future, know, supply genetics. So it's really important for us to communicate that there are still breeders like you and private breeders that are working on non GM, and that it's important for us to let them know that we haven't forgotten about them. It's just that they get a little bit swallowed up in the whole massive commodity type soybean system that we've got that's the global leader in soybean production is primarily for feed use in terms of the meal and oil for, you know, food and industrial uses.
Speaker 3:So I just wanna mention that that there is there is a perception that that we're not continuing this work, but I think the reality is that it's continuing in proportion with with the demand for those food types.
Speaker 1:You know, Craig, certainly there there's challenges in in growing soybeans all the way across the board in Minnesota whether they're conventional, non gmo, etcetera. What are some of the things that that you need to do to reward growers or entice farmers to be a part of this process? Maybe I don't know what you want to mention economically here but sustainability. There are some other things that they have to do. I know that on the weed side, I was just part of a meeting here in Minneapolis this last week in North Central Weed Science meetings and there's a number of the major crop protection companies talking about you know no pre herbicides and mixes especially on the amaranthus and we've got concerns on waterhemp, palmer amaranthus, etcetera.
Speaker 1:But trying to take care of some of these weed problems you know in the absence of glyphosate or the or the use of that in in that situation with that. But it's it's a fine balance, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yes. It is. Non GMO production brings its own challenges, I guess I would call it. Weed control definitely is one of them, especially with the amount of resistant weeds that we're we're battling now, but we're also battling that in in GMO production too. We gotta remember that.
Speaker 2:It's just not a non GMO organic issue. I mean, I walk fields daily, weekly, you know, over all these years, and and I've seen some tremendous looking fields as far as weed control goes both in non GMO organic and in GMO production, and I've seen some very terrible fields of all three too. So, as far as controlling weeds and tackling the the the resistance that we're we're dealing with here these last few years, we we have to, you know, attack it across all production, number one. We work very hard, like with Aaron and other seed breeders and seed companies, to look at non GMO food grade varieties or organic food grade varieties of soybeans that offer good yield, good disease resistance, in some cases, you know, insect resistance, and also will give us the needed protein and oil, characteristics that we need for our growers. So soybean research, seed research, soybean seed testing, research plots is a very high priority at grain millers.
Speaker 2:We we have our own, research trial down by LeSour. I've been doing that for twelve years. We've, worked with the universities. We work with other seed companies in their trials. We started working last year with the first trials here in Minnesota so that we can give our growers all kinds of data to show them that, you know, under normal growing conditions or the growing conditions of that year, the varieties that we want them to grow will be competitive with conventional GMO varieties.
Speaker 2:And to me, it's it's kinda like sustainability. I mentioned this to you earlier. You know, a lot of people are wanting to get a third or fourth crop into their rotation every year to help build soils and increase the sustainability of their farmland. And I look at non GMO production or food grade production kinda as a rotation in a grower's marketing plan. He may not do it a %, but it gives him another market to play in.
Speaker 2:It gives him another market to hedge his bet a little bit in instead of just the cash grain market.
Speaker 3:I'd I'd like to come back. I think we need to talk about contracting and and where you see the the best opportunities and what farmers might what other farmers might be interested in it. But I want to slide back to the first question here about selecting these varieties. A core to this question is what are these things going to yield, right? So farmers want to know how what the yields are going to be because ultimately they'll be paid by their production.
Speaker 3:So bringing it back to Aaron a little bit, kind of explain the challenge that you have in your breeding program. Because Craig went through, in about ten seconds, he went through all the quality parameters, all the disease resistance things, the non GM, and the fact that he also wants it to yield equal to conventional elite varieties. So tell us a little bit about your breeding program and how that's kind of set up. Can you breed for natto and tofu at the same time and then just make some changes in seed size at the very end? Are these completely different programs?
Speaker 3:How do you bring in disease resistance? And how are you doing all this stuff so that you can provide everything that Craig's looking for?
Speaker 4:Good question. There's a lot there to unpack here, so let me see. I mean, wouldn't say they're necessarily separate programs. Let's just say we have maybe for demonstration purposes here a basic yield program, soy milk variety program and maybe a natto program. They're mostly separate, but basically when we when we make a cross, we identify the reason why that parent was chosen in a cross whether it has high yield or maybe adequate seed size for a natto market or high protein or something like that and then we know what the parents are chosen for and as we develop progenies from that cross, then we can see whether or not those traits are being inherited and combined with good yield.
Speaker 4:So we have an idea in mind when we make a cross basically based on the parent choice. And most of the time, especially at least in the natto market, the vast majority of times we're making good natto by natto crosses. We're trying to work more on SCN resistance. To get good SCN resistance into natto market though, we have to sort of cross out of that market type into a high yielding SCN resistant type, and then maybe cross back to a natto parent again and again and then do careful selections for seed size and seed quality in those early generations to try to steer, try to try to get that good yield and SCN resistance and steer that seed quality back towards a natto type. It's a little bit of iterative.
Speaker 4:When you want to introduce a new trait into a market type, it's very iterative and there's a lot of selection that goes on before you can get that back into a natto type. But then most of our crosses again would be natto by natto, as long as there's enough genetic differences between those parents, can still make incremental gains. Similar for the tofu types and the soy milk types as well. I mean, we like to have that trait of a clear white hilum, as Craig described it, fixed in those breeding populations. We like to have protein fixed, but sometimes we want to cross outside that market type to bring in some high yield genetics and then we have to make sure we steer those progenies back towards that food type profile.
Speaker 4:So that's the best I can do with that complex questions. It's kind of an art within the breeding program figuring all that out.
Speaker 1:So Craig, is there an intermediate step here obviously when Aaron has a variety and it gets the breeder seed there's a small amount or limited amount. How do you how do you go about increasing like we have the Minnesota crop improvement on on conventional varieties and so forth but you get enough that can go out to farmers through, you know, breeder seed, etcetera. But what's walk us through shortly here. What's what's the process? And Aaron says sets the bag on the table and said here, it's done now.
Speaker 1:Now you we need more for your for the the farmers. What how does that work? How does that happen?
Speaker 2:Well, first, you know, I I ask Aaron and a lot of the other breeders and seed companies to let me know what they have in the pipeline. And if I can take a look at it a year or two early in in my research trials, That way I have, with their permission, of course, samples I can send to my customers to see if it's something that they would be interested in. And then I bring that information back to Erin and the other breeders, and we either say, no. It's not gonna work or, yeah, we'd like to see it develop a little bit more. You know?
Speaker 2:And, you know, once he gets it out of the experimental stage, then we we have to look for growers to increase that seed. And that's something we haven't done a lot at Grain Millers was grow seed, but we are starting to do more and more of it every year now. And and we're our particular location at Saint Peter is 100% non GMO, so we don't have to worry about any type of cross contamination with GMO varieties that some of the big seed companies have have issues with once in a while. So it's it's you know, from the time he gives me an experimental line to the time we have enough to to to grow a few hundred acres of it, it might be a a three year period. Okay.
Speaker 3:So, you know, this question about quality versus quantity. So yield yield potential of these varieties versus the quality characteristics that you're dealing with. So I'm assuming that your first question is regarding the the customer, Right? That your customer is is who you're selling this product to. So you have to fulfill their needs first, and then you probably need something that yields well.
Speaker 3:Is that is that a fair linear way of thinking about this?
Speaker 2:For the most part, occasionally, it goes the other way. We just stumble across one that, you know, yields well and does well for the customer. You know, yielding in comparison to GMO, maybe, you know, it's not gonna be even, Steven, so to speak, but, that's where our marketing, on grower contracts come in then. You know, we we offer premiums to the growers to grow these varieties because we know there might, you know especially with the higher protein varieties, there's gonna be a little bit of a yield dip probably, but not always as bad as some people think either. Over the last, two or three years, I've seen non GMO high protein varieties get into the 70 bushel range.
Speaker 2:And, you know, you that's that's really good. But I've also years like this, you know, depending upon where the rainfall is, you know, the yields are down in the thirties, but so are the conventional beans too. So we like strong yielders as strong as we can get them, but, you know, it's the intrinsic properties that our customers are buying, not the yield.
Speaker 3:So as long as we're on this contracting question, I think it's it's worth and I'll come back to Aaron in just a second. But the contracting question, I think, is really interesting, and I think there's a lot of farmers maybe listening that that aren't in this business that wonder, if this would be an opportunity for them. So what where is the reluctance among farmers that you approach that maybe aren't IP growers now? Is it primarily this question about what's the yield potential of these varieties? How much am I giving up?
Speaker 3:I mean, of course, they like the premiums. What so the premium is the driver, obviously. What other things can you provide them? You you give them some evidence that these varieties are gonna yield well. What other kind of marketing angles do you have with these farmers in terms of encouraging them to produce it?
Speaker 3:Is it based on, you know, marketing timing and delivery kinds of questions, or is it the herbicides that they might use on their existing farmer? Or what what do you think are the kind of the the angles that you use?
Speaker 2:Of course, yield is important, but and and premiums are important. The marketing, you know, our our we don't our marketing is over the Chicago Board of Trade, so they're they're getting an advantage over the local markets there in addition to their premium. Herbicides or seed costs sometimes are lower, especially on seed cost. Herbicides, depending upon where they're at with their weed control program, could could be a little bit less. Sometimes they're a little bit more.
Speaker 2:I'll be honest. We do a lot with our crop science division to be out in the fields as often as we need to be with our growers. You know, our goal is to help them succeed in doing this. And that means being out there planting time and being out there and and helping them weed scout and and timing of of herbicide applications will be there. I've ridden a lot of combines in the fall to make sure that they're harvesting them at the right moisture.
Speaker 2:They're not getting a lot of cracked beans or dirty seed coat staining, which has been a challenge, not so much the last two years, but I remember a few years back, we had some pretty rainy falls, and keeping those seed coats clean was, touch and go for a while. And it's a very stable market. We have had a little bit up and down here since since COVID, but, year in and year out, that market is always there. It's a market that they can rely on. And like I said earlier, it gives them another, another tool in the toolbox for their marketing program.
Speaker 1:You know, we spend, Seth, quite a bit of time talking about, and you do when you're overseas, foreign material and keeping that reduced down. So that's obviously a big emphasis here. It's not only weed seed, sounds like it's everything else in in terms of that. But I can imagine food food grade quality soybeans, know, avoiding as much of that for material as we conventionally think about being docked and so forth is an overriding consideration I I imagine.
Speaker 2:Well, we encourage our growers to to to bring us as clean a product as they can. Our equipment at Saint Peter basically can clean the soybeans to better the number one grade, and that's what we deliver overseas. So getting them to that point is a con isn't a concern. It's the amount of shrink that we might lose to get them to that point. So we try to reward our growers, and make the contracts look rewarding so that they deliver us as high a quality of product as they can.
Speaker 2:You're gonna have years where we get those, you know, 30 mile an hour winds blowing all September, and all of a sudden their soybeans are down to 8%, where you're gonna have a few more splits then. We we just physically can't do anything about that. But, you know, in normal years, there's you know, we we go to a lot of education expense to help them set combines, let them know what what can damage soybeans both, you know, mechanically in in in the bin and and in in moving soybeans so that when they come to the plant, that shrink loss for us isn't as great as it can be.
Speaker 3:So maybe you can help us visualize what, you know, this better than number one looks like for you. So tell us what what a what a ideal what what is the soy what do the soybeans look like when they leave your facility and head out towards the port?
Speaker 2:Basically, if you open up a bag of soybeans, you're just gonna see whole round, very clean soybeans. We do have some parameters that we can keep them under, which are all, like I said, better than number one grade. We have to provide a COA following FGIS guidelines for grading to our customers, but usually it's less than 1% splits, FM nil. Off color soybeans are less than a half a percent. Hopefully, no black hilums.
Speaker 2:No dirty seed coats, because, you know, the dirt on the seed coat can't be washed off. Color sorters can take so much of it out, but they can't take all of it out.
Speaker 3:And you and you run all of your soybeans over a color sorter then?
Speaker 2:Yeah. All of our soybeans come in. They go through an air screen cleaner to get the large FM and splits out. Then they go through a destoner, which takes out rocks and soil pads. Then they go over a a Japanese invented machine called a roll sorter, and that that sorts them by shape.
Speaker 2:Certain soybeans, as you know, are are very round. Some are more of a football shaped. So depending upon what that variety is, we can make sure we can keep that shape uniform throughout. And then finally, they go over a five channel color sorter to get out off colors, anything that makes it through the other equipment, glass, metal objects, dirt. But, basically, when they go in the bag, I like to say they look like pearls.
Speaker 3:Aaron, you had a comment earlier and we we ran over you. I don't know if it's relevant anymore, if there's something you want to come back to.
Speaker 4:Well, yeah, I guess the conversation has kind of moved on, I would just add that from a breeding standpoint, it is definitely more difficult to breed for all these traits, protein, seed integrity, roundness, white hyaline, all that kind of stuff. And and that on top of yield is is harder to to breed for all those plus yield than just yield alone. But I've still been impressed over the years to see how well these things actually do when compared to their GM counterparts that have basically just been bred for yield and defensive traits. I've been really impressed. And the other thing I was gonna add is that it's really critical that, you know, the relationship between the breeder and the company, in this case Grain Millers, starts early on in that process so that we can get those samples into the hands of the potential manufacturers and so we know what's acceptable and we can continue to move through the pipeline.
Speaker 4:Because what happens often in our program is that if we wait till something gets to the end of the pipeline, we hand it off to the potential the potential users. They may test it for multiple years, run it through their plant multiple years, make the product for multiple years and they come back to us many years later and say that, hey, that thing worked out. Where is that? And we just don't keep large quantities of seeds sitting around our warehouse all the time. And so, you know, if you wanted to work with a plant breeder such as myself in developing a specific product, I'd really like to start those those relationships early on.
Speaker 2:I I can echo that, and we can go back to identity preservation a little bit with this too is a lot of our customers wanna see samples of a new variety for two to three years so they can measure the stability of the intrinsic factors from year in and year out. So they wanna make sure, number one, that they're getting the same variety every year, and then they measure, you know, the protein, oil, sugar content, thing like that, over that three year period in their cook tests. And if it if it stays stable, then they might give us the go ahead. That's why we have to keep in touch with Erin because as many of us know, you know, soybean the lifespan of a soybean variety might be four or five years. And if no interest is shown, it might be shorter than that.
Speaker 2:So we gotta let them know that, well, we're still interested. You know, keep it going. Keep it going. We also have to tell our customers that, you you only got so long to make a decision here. If because for seed companies, if if the seed isn't gonna sell, they're not gonna continue it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's really tricky business that you're in. I I I I just marvel at, you know, the risk management that you have to deal with because you've got a customer that's basically a very, very traditional type customer that deals with with a food product and this consistency in what they receive. And you're producing a biological material for them. It's a food ingredient, as you say.
Speaker 3:But the reality is their products are so dependent, especially the Asian food or the Asian soy soy foods are mostly soybeans. So they the quality of that soybean has an impact on the the final product and has their name on it. And so when I've talked to these folks over time, they'd they'd all like to buy a Vinton soybean or something that hasn't been grown for forty years, if they could get ahold of it because that's what they used to use. But you're in this challenge of selling them something that may be even better. But certainly from a production standpoint, it helps on your end.
Speaker 3:The other challenge that I see from the outside is that you have variable yields every year in terms of your production. You do not know what next year, what 2024 is going to bring for yields, yet you need to contract those acres so that you can fulfill an existing contract. So you've got a tough business, and I can see where it's a challenge dealing with with these things day in and day out.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We sit down about this time every year with our customers to see what they want, and and then we start talking to with our growers and our management staff to decide, you know, how much extra do we wanna produce to hedge, you know, weather issues. And and that's where it becomes a little bit more difficult.
Speaker 1:When we started the podcast today, and in fact, before we started actually to do this recording, we were talking a little bit about grain millers. Obviously our topic today has been soybeans but that's not all of what grain millers is involved with. Maybe just give us a brief sketch of of Grain Millers or some other crops potentially involved here in Minnesota. Certainly there are Wisconsin and out West. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?
Speaker 2:Sure. Grain Millers has has been a company since 1986, so we're finishing up our thirty seventh year as a company. Our main business is oat milling and small grain milling. That's that's what got the company started back in 1986. Currently, we're the largest organic oat processor in the world, and we probably contract grow anywhere from 25 to 30% of all conventional oats grown in North America.
Speaker 2:Oats is a is a is a very, very big product for us. We we we process it into many different forms for many different companies, and I'm sure if you've used oats or eaten oats, drank oats now, here in The United States, it's probably tied back to grain millers somehow. We also mill a lot of other small grains, oats being course number one, different wheats, millet at times, barley, rye, triticale, sometimes sorghum. We do have a a let me back up here a little bit. Our our oat locations are, Eugene, Oregon.
Speaker 2:That's where the company started in 1986. We have a large oatmeal in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, which is also a gluten free flagship oatmeal is down in Saint Ansgar, Iowa, just south of Austin, Minnesota. It's probably the most, highly technical oatmeal in the country. And then we have a corn division. We have a dry corn mill in Marion, Indiana, which is just south and west of Wayne, Indiana.
Speaker 2:They they mill organic and non GMO, food grade corn for many different companies there. We have a flax cleaning plant in, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. We also have a flax mill in Newton, Wisconsin, which is just north of Sheboygan along Lake Michigan. And then, of course, we have our our Saint Peter location. We do organic and non GMO soybeans there.
Speaker 2:We also are starting to clean some organic and non GMO corn. We don't process it there, but we clean it and size it, and we provide that food ingredient to the snack food industry. A lot of it gets made into masa products, corn chips, tortillas. Some of it goes into snack bars, and we even have one customer that actually pops it and makes a a snack like a popped corn kernel. Not a corn nut, but a corn kernel.
Speaker 2:It's popped, and he flavors it, and he sells that here in Minnesota. We also do some work for the, I guess, the grocery store industry. We bring in a lot of lentils, pearl barley. We we clean and package that. Some of that gets repackaged into the one pound bags, but a lot of it goes into the bulk food bins at the grocery stores.
Speaker 2:We also have an import division. We bring in a lot of products that can't be grown in The United States. They're not they're just not grown here, such as quinoa, chia, some of the amaranths, some specialty beans that we get for different customers. And one of our largest products that comes in is organic sugarcane alcohol. It comes in from South America mainly, and it gets used in a lot of products, soap products and and products that they they'll put a fragrance in, oils, and things like that.
Speaker 2:So we're we're well diversified. You know, we've we've got a lot of things going on. Again, even though Grain is in our name, we're we're a food ingredient company, and it's it's just it's real exciting knowing that we're where your product's going and what it's being used for. And that's that's one thing, you know, you mentioned earlier why do growers wanna do this for soybeans? They like to know where their product's going, you know, not just to a crush market or into animal feed.
Speaker 2:It's they'd like to know that they're providing food for somebody.
Speaker 1:Very good. Well, thank you very much. It was this has been very helpful to understand some of the basics when we talk about the opportunity for farmers to diversify, be sustainable here in Minnesota. With that take advantage of the research and the resources here at the University of Minnesota that are coming out of Aaron's program here and how that transcends for private companies such as grain millers and so forth to help with that process and growers. So we'd like to thank again Aaron for stopping by here University Minnesota soybean breeder at the Department of Agronomy.
Speaker 1:Craig Tamera with Grain Millers and primarily out of the St. Peter location and in the Twin Cities area and of course Seth Nave, my co host here for the University of Minnesota podcast Minnesota CropCast. So this is Dave Nicolai. Thank you for listening today and we'll talk to you next time.
