Posted on 10/17/2023 8:44:11 AM PDT by ProtectOurFreedom
Last month I attended a meeting of the Virginia Grain Producer’s Association to learn more about how the vast majority of grain is produced. I had the pleasure of being accompanied by three other CGA members, and, inevitably, the topic of scale came up. The VGPA farmers think in thousands of acres; CGA producers may be working with 100 or less. One of the challenges of building up a regional food system of any sort is balancing supply with demand. So the calculators came out and numbers were crunched, and it made me realize I don’t have a good handle on how many buyers are needed to support the farmers we already have in our network, let alone new farmers. Plus, purely selfishly, I’ve always wanted to figure out how many acres of grain is required to support my little bakery.
There are a few factors that play into this calculation. First, how many bushels per acre will a farmer harvest? This depends on the type of grain, the farmer’s skill, growing practices, and Mother Nature. If we assume we are talking about wheat that is grown sustainably in an average year in the Mid-Atlantic, 40 bushels per acre seems to be a reasonable place to start. (The U.S. average in 2021 was around 52 bushels per acre). Second, there are harvest and cleaning losses. I have no idea how much is lost (which means you can look for a future post on this topic!) but I’ll be conservative and say 10% is lost. Third, the standard weight of a bushel of wheat is 60 pounds, or 27 kg.
At the mill, the grade of flour determines how many kg of flour you get from each kg of grain. If you have an excellent mill, you can get close to 100% conversion of grain to flour, called “extraction” in the trade. If you sift out some of the larger particles for a finer grade flour, you have losses. 80% extraction is common in a lot of bakeries, including mine. At this point, we can figure out how many pounds of flour a farmer can expect per acre.
40 bu/acre x 60 lb/bu x 0.9 harvest yield x 0.8 extraction = about 1,700 pounds flour
This goes up to about 2,100 pounds if the flour is not sifted (that is, there are no milling losses).
Additional factors at the bakery are the amount of flour in a loaf of bread, and the number of loaves baked in a year. At my bakery, most loaves use about 400 g of flour, or 0.9 pounds. We are tiny, and only operate 10 months (or 43 weeks) out of the year. But let’s say we have a great year and make 300 loaves per week during that time. My bakery then uses:
300 loaves/ wk x 43 weeks x 0.9 lb/loaf = 11,600 lb flour.
That means about 6.7 acres of wheat (11,600 lb flour / 1,700 lb flour/acre) will support my bakery for a year.
I am not sure what I was expecting, but seeing this tiny amount of land supporting a bakery that employs three full-time people triggers all kinds of thoughts and feelings. But one obvious implication is that the CGA network can absorb a lot more buyers. One hundred acres of wheat can produce 3700 loaves of bread a week. Because our farmers use sustainable practices, they only grow wheat once every three years, so with good soil health practices, you would need three 100 acre farms to produce that much. But still. That’s a lot of bread.
How many acres of grain will support your baking or processing activities?
I don’t. Just flour, water, salt and starter (which is just flour and water) — the bread lasts about a week in the fridge. Have not had any mold or spoilage problem.
Agreed — avoid chemicals by home baking. I also make sure the flour has no additives and not been bleached.
I bought large plastic storage bags and bag clips on Amazon. They work really well. I squeeze out as much air as I can from the bag before clipping it shut. I have no idea if removing that air helps or not.
I've found that buying flour directly from the flour mill is best, but the shipping fees are horrendous - often as nearly much as the flour. I have Prime on Amazon and can get some flours shipped "free" (after buying Prime).
I just bought some flour at "Azure Market Organics Unbleached Bread Flour, Ultra-Unifine, Organic." The cool thing is their wheat comes from an Idaho farm not far down the road!
Azure Market Organics Unbleached Bread Flour Ultra-Unifine is made from heritage varieties of hard red wheat from our close friends at Jenkins Creek Ranch in Idaho. This heritage wheat has the highest concentration of protein of any flour you can find in the US. At 16 percent, it’s got plenty of gluten to make a light, deliciously crusty loaf every time. It is milled using our Unifine process, and then sifted to remove some of the bran, resulting in a light, white flour. This results in a finished product that has softer flavor notes, rises better and adds a little lightness to your artisan breads.They use a "Drop" shipment method where they load up a semi truck with orders all over the Northwest (maybe farther, too) and make a circuit. You pick a drop location (I have three within a couple miles) and then show up to pick up your order. I'm trying the Drop Ship for the first time and pick up my order next Sunday at a local church. I'm using "Judy's Drop" -- apparently anybody can sign up to be a drop "agent."
I first heard about "Azure Standard" from FRiend "Disambiguator." Then, independently, I learned bout the "Unifine" milling process which led me to find the Azure Standard flour.
Here's a good article on "Unifine" milling.
Why Azure Mill's Unifine Flours are Better for You
Here's another good article from Washington State University on the "Unifine" milling process and how it got from England to WSU:
The lost and found flourmill
Lastly, here's a good article about flour mills in Washington's Skagit Valley north of Seattle.
How Two Mills in the Pacific Northwest Are Revolutionizing the Business of Flour
Thanks for the info! Ill keep looking. I have Prime - didn’t think about buying flour that way.
You might be able to get the grain locally at a Coop, but if not here are a couple of sources. There are more.
Drive by English lesson! The word "Lady" has its source in the Anglo-Saxon hlaf+dieg, 'loaf-kneader' or 'loaf-deliverer' An Anglo-Saxon wife of a warlord. The term eventually becomes modern English lady. In Beowulf, Weoltheow is the hlafdig at Heorot. Also called a hlaefdieg, hladig, or cwen. (Queen!)
People who work physically hard, consume thousands of calories a day, especially in cold climates.
Working hard outside in weather lower than 57 degrees F, an average man needs to consume 4,500 calories a day.
According to a quick look online, a 1 lb loaf of bread is about 1200 calories.
Maruizio Leo runs a great blog called "The Perfect Loaf." His Beginners Sourdough Bread is fantastic. It doesn't require traditional kneading, just gentle "Stretch and Folds" over a period of time. You first mix just the flour and water and let it sit for an hour or so (an "autolyze"). Then you do the Stretch and Folds every 30 minutes for the first couple hours. After that, you let it proof at room temp for a while before moving it to the fridge for slower overnight proofing. You bake it the next morning. It's really good.
His blog is excellent. He's a smart guy and a good writer, plus whoever does his web presentations and videos is doing great production work.
I stopped making bread. It was too good. I ate too much of it.
I’m glad you like the whole Azure thing. They’re an amazing outfit.
I watch some farmer videos and see the work that goes into growing wheat and soybeans. One farm family in Nebraska makes about $465,000 from youtube videos selling ads and t-shirts, hats, mugs. Another in Minnesota makes $1.5 million doing the same. They are also farming youtube : )
Wow, astonishing.
I was watching some farming vids last year of young ladies on the farm. They were still in their teens working with dad and driving the biggest equipment.
The number of baking video authors on YT is astonishing. Lots are VERY good, many are so-so. The best have great graphics, excellent scripts, super video work. They make it look real easy. There are good baker vids from Germany, England, US, and Australia. All are “Amazon Affiliates” where, if you buy through a click on their links, they earn a commission fee.
Interesting calculations.
When people say they will just grow a garden should the SHTF and grocery stories shut down, you know they have never worked a garden in their entire life. It takes a lot of land and a lot of knowledge and very, very HARD work to produce garden products enough to make a dent in the amount of calories an adult person needs to consume each day. That hard clay soil covered by sod on the .8 acre ain’t gonna do it!
That brings to mind the NYT no-knead bread recipe that caused such a stir a few years ago:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/03/dining/no-knead-bread-recipes.html
It’s so easy that it feels like cheating and the results are pretty amazing.
“That hard clay soil covered by sod on the .8 acre ain’t gonna do it!”
Hey, you must live in our neighborhood!
If you don’t have clay, you have glacial moraine which is all rock and sand. A generous builder will provide you with a 1” skim of something they CALL “topsoil.”
Thanks for that article link! All my browsers were maxed out on NYT page reads and it still wouldn’t load after clearing cookies. Then I found the “Bypass Paywalls Chrome Clean” project on Github, downloaded it, installed it in Chrome and Voila! It worked.
It’s a great article. It’s a super summary of everything I’ve been doing. Thanks for providing that!
You are welcome!
Pocatello, ID can be a cold climate. Lowest on my property since 2000 was -27F. It's common to have a week near -15F in early December. It's a bit warm this year. We should be subfreezing for the last 2 weeks of October in preparation for the first snow accumulation on Oct 31.
Thanks! :)
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