Reviving a Love for Grain: Insights from GrAiNZ 2023
GrAiNZ is an annual gathering of farmers, millers, bakers and brewers that are reviving a love of grain. It’s all about bringing together the people working to regenerate our food and farming systems to connect, share knowledge and collaborate.
Over the course of the two days, we hung out in the lecture halls to hear a diverse range of talks and panel discussions on all things grain. It should be noted that there was an incredible program of hands-on baking workshops running alongside this, which we couldn’t attend and therefore don’t cover here.
Special thanks to the GrAiNZ team for inviting us to be a part of this. These are the key learnings we took away.
Relationship and Reciprocity
Topher Boehm from Wildflower Brewing, likened a resilient food system to a healthy immune system — able to weather challenges and adapt. A resilient food system is one built on knowledge sharing, collaboration and mutual support. This is what GrAiNZ is all about. Operating in this sphere is busy and sometimes isolating work. This opportunity to connect is crucial. Topher highlighted that close relationships keep you in the business. Whether with your suppliers, customers or industry peers, relationships are key.
Many regenerative food and farming businesses are operating on the edge of viability. Robert Pekin from Food Connect noted that this is a result of operating true cost business in a capitalist system. So when things inevitably get hard, relationships keep you accountable. They can be the difference between persevering and giving up.
Regeneration from Soil to Stomach
GrAiNZ kicked off with two foundational talks highlighting what this movement is working toward - Matthew Evans’ keynote on soil health and a panel discussion on regenerative food and farming systems. The panel discussion was facilitated by Sustainable Table and featured panellists Topher Boem from Wildflower Brewing, Steve Walter from Burrum Biodynamics, Courtney Young from Woodstock Flour and Robert Pekin from Food Connect.
Regeneration found its way into many other conversations across the two days. Emily Salkeld from Teurong Farm explored the diversity and resilience of population wheat, and why getting seeds out of temperature controlled conditions and into the field is vital to producing climate adapted seed.
Robert Pekin and Jade Miles from Sustainable Table both talked about the fact that regenerating food and farming is going to take all of us. We all have a role to play. There was an overall sense that we need to lay aside judgement and preconceived ideas to support each other to build better and fairer systems.
Despite having the knowledge and best intentions, Matthew Evans from Fat Pig Farm and writer of the book Soil admitted, "We're not saints.” Though he has seen a great transformation on his farm, the learning process has been long, and there are still parts of the farm where soil is eroding. It was a humble reminder to aim for progress over perfection.
Along the same lines, Adam Rivett from Milawa Bread spoke about their incremental transition towards more sustainable practices. They plan and work towards milestones that they can focus on one by one, such as milling all of the wholegrain flour they use in their bread making.
In her wrap up speech, Tammi Jonas from AFSA offered the observation that this year’s event saw a shift away from educating consumers to focus on the work of rebuilding systems.
Support is Needed
Before Sustainable Table launched into a panel discussion on regenerative food and farming systems, we did a quick poll of the room to get a gauge on what kind of support this community needed:
Roughly 90% of the room were in need of funding, in the form of:
- Infrastructure 90%
- Marketing 80%
- Education 50%
- Business development support 50%
- Operational capacity 30%
Roughly 80% of the room were in need of other support, in the form of:
- Technical skill building 30%
- Online resources for education of consumers 80%
- In person connectivity 90%
Some of the infrastructure needs that surfaced over the event included storage appropriate for organic grain and grain cleaning equipment. Thomas Moritz, from The Oven at Cheshunt noted that in good years, many farmers don’t have access to storage facilities to keep their surplus grain.
Emily Salkeld talked about Denmark's CERERE cereal diversity and Italy’s Solibam diverse wheat breeding projects, which highlighted the potential of public investment to speed up innovation and create systems change. The European Union contributed €1.9 and €6 million to these projects respectively.
The Cost of Living Crisis
In the panel discussion on diversity, an important and topical question was raised – how can we make good bread more affordable to a diverse customer base? The discussion was facilitated by journalist Dani Valent and featured panellists Maaryasha Werdiger from Zelda Bakery, Gab Moore from Sailors Grave Brewing, Emily Salkeld from Teurong Farm, PHD scholar and fermented food specialist Dr Miin Chan and Courtney Young from Woodstock Flour.
While it was clear that most felt that good bread should not be a luxury, the panel agreed that it’s hard to keep prices down. For that to become a reality for more regenerative bakers, we need to see systemic change. Food and farming businesses adopting regenerative practices have higher costs than their conventional or industrial counterparts. This includes higher ingredient and labour costs, since this approach is often more labour intensive. And we all agree people should be paid fairly, right?
Emily offered that there were other ways practitioners could show generosity in their community, such as knowledge sharing and education.
And while we often think small is better with relation to food and farming systems, Miin made an important point—we need diversity of scale in our food and farming production systems if we’re going to feed everyone.
Waste and Food Insecurity
This year we saw waste and food insecurity brought to the forefront of the GrAiNZ program by two food relief charities. Matt Preston, representing SecondBite, highlighted the sheer waste problem that bread creates. Bread is one of the four most wasted foods in Australia, with almost half of every loaf purchased going to waste. You can find more Australian food waste statistics here.
Lana, the co-founder of FeedMe Bellarine, revealed that some bakery policies factored in hundreds of kilos of bread waste each day just so they could keep their shelves presentable and full.
The audience was keen to explore how waste could be avoided in our businesses. Louise Ritchie from Silvercreek Sourdough talked about her no-waste model that involves educating customers to pre-order their bread. Miek Paulus from Ket Baker freezes any leftover bread and sells it at a discount—though there was agreement amongst the audience that ideally consumers would accept paying full price given that the quality of the bread is not compromised by freezing.
Meanwhile, FeedMe Bellarine did an incredible job of cooking delicious feasts for the GrAiNZ crowd, prepared entirely from donated food waste. Lana’s talk was the last before GrAiNZ wrapped up. The room was in complete awe of the work her team does — delivering food relief with a focus on human connection and a dignified experience.
Resources
GrAiNZ youtube channel with event recordings.
Panel image source: Burrum Biodynamics.