Local flour, at scale
When Woody Guthrie memorialized wheat fields in his 1940 classic, “This Land Is Your Land,” it was an image of the U.S. coming out of the Great Depression, of farmers rebuilding their land after the ecological collapse of the Dust Bowl.
Today, wheat farmers in the U.S. face a different kind of strain. Prices are at six-year lows, while fuel and fertilizer costs are rising. At the same time, extreme weather is making yields unpredictable and further shrinking already-tight margins.
This is compounded by the fact that the U.S. wheat system is built around standardized classes and industrial milling requirements. Because of the commodity structure, prices are determined in bulk, which gives individual farmers little control over what they’re paid.
Some smaller mills are trying to push back, including Cairnspring Mills, located in Washington’s Skagit Valley, about 70 miles north of Seattle.
Opened in 2017, Cairnspring works with about a dozen local farmers, many of whom had been growing wheat at a loss for years, according to CEO Kevin Morse. (The region is home to a wealth of crops, but he said wheat was largely grown to break disease cycles; farmers weren’t able to sell it for a profit.)
Today, the mill processes 7 million pounds of flour a year, bound for some of the most renowned bakeries on the West Coast.
