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| Many Midwest wheat farmers take their show to Wall Street |
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Imagine walking out of your Wall Street office, headed to another meeting with your phone to your ear, listening to someone talk – and you stumble upon a big red monster.
That’s what happened in Manhat-tan last week as the wheat fields of the Great Plains were moved to New York City’s South Street Seaport – all because the farmers of this great country wanted to show their city cousins how bread travels from a brown kernel in a Kansas wheat field to a soft food staple on their kitchen table.
The Urban Wheat Field Experience provided a window of how food is produced, and it was a huge success. With a big red International combine sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, it was difficult for passersby to ignore the farm-to-fork process. People from all walks of life and all corners of the world were exposed to farming.
The Wheat Foods Council partnered with wheat growers associations from coast to coast, along with milling companies, grain companies and cereal processors, to bring in a combine, flats of wheat in all different growth stages from green to almost amber, hand-crank flour mills and everything else it takes to make a loaf of bread.
Visitors were welcomed by growers, who led wheat field tours highlighting how, where and when wheat is grown, annual wheat production and consumption and wheat’s impact on food prices and the U.S. economy. Milling experts spoke to the process that turns the kernel into flour, the operation of a mill and invited people to hand-grind their own wheat flour.
Certified chefs conducted bread-baking demonstrations and explained flour’s transformation into the wheat foods eaten by millions of Americans each day. And, registered dietitians explained the nutritional properties of wheat foods and the differences between whole wheat and enriched wheat flour. Everything about wheat was covered in this event that demonstrated how much flour is produced from each bushel and how many loaves of bread could be made from that flour. Consumers saw exactly how it all worked.
When I heard about this, I was so proud of my agricultural community. There were people with so much passion sharing the farming story – they went to great lengths to get that combine in the middle of downtown New York. Volunteers left their farms during harvest simply to show the consumer what they do for a living.
As I listened to a Kansas wheat grower relate his encounters with city folk, I was amazed at his stories. He had excited mothers learning right along with their children about the milling process. He had restaurant owners fascinated and humbled at what they were learning about the food they serve.
And, one Wall Street banker was set on his heels by the Kansas farmer. The banker was lamenting the banking crisis and told the farmer he lost 25 percent of his income in one week. The farmer told him the price of corn dropped the week before and he lost at least 25 percent of his income … and, by the way, the hired hand back home had just called and reported the combine was broken down and they were waiting for parts to get it fixed.
That banker was speechless, and came to the realization that his assumption was all wrong – that farmers were making big money because of high commodity prices. My compliments go out to these folks who made this happen. Something that was just a neat idea three years ago is now impacting the lives of so many urban dwellers – who might otherwise go from the cradle to the grave and never learn that their bread doesn’t come from a shelf, and who learned about the human beings who work from before dawn to after dark making sure they have safe, wholesome, nutritious food for their dinner table.
For more information on this event, visit www.wheatfoods.org |
| 10/22/2008 |
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