Artisan Grains Marketing Solutions Roundtable: Creating Regional Markets for Artisan Grains
​
About the Roundtable
The Artisan Grains Marketing Solutions Roundtable (November 6, 2024) was hosted by the Northwest and Rocky Mountain Regional Food Business Center with assistance from WeCAN.
​
Growing markets for climate-resilient artisan grains requires working together — growers, processors, distributors, buyers. It can also mean building support and investment in processing, infrastructure, product development, marketing, and other things that could involve other partners—financial institutions, individual investors, economic developers, nonprofits, community groups, local governments and others.
​
The Marketing Solutions Roundtable provided a forum for participants from a six-state region (Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington and Wyoming) to exchange ideas, learn together and cultivate new connections for creating, expanding and diversifying markets for these crops, looking at what is working here and elsewhere that could be implemented, adapted and innovated to expand markets locally and regionally. Visit the Roundtable home page here.
Download the Artisan Grains Marketing Solutions Resource Guide
Artisan Grains Marketing Solutions Roundtable Video Recording
(click to play)
Event Recording & Slide Presentations
The Marketing Solutions Roundtable included:
-
A keynote by Dan Hobbs, long-time cooperative development specialist, organic farmer and entrepreneur, collaborative leader and ag innovator from Montezuma County, Colorado.
-
A slate of firsthand “solution stories” from our region and across the country, highlighting successful efforts involving different partners and market-building approaches. We learned about direct-to-consumer marketing, how networks and collaboratives are expanding local and regional markets, shared facilities like community mills, how end users create networks of growers to supply their needs and how growers grow niche markets for their grains-—all with behind-the-scenes insights into how to get started, maintain over time, learn and adapt.
-
Breakout rooms for peer exchange and networking, deeper dives into how to implement or adapt different approaches, and opportunities to connect with others in the same sub-region.​
Keynote Speaker, Dan Hobbs • View slide presentation
Dan Hobbs is a fifth generation Coloradan and a first-generation farmer. He worked with the Rocky Mountain Farmers Union as a rural cooperative development specialist for many years and grows certified organic heritage grains, legumes, open pollinated seeds, varietal garlic and chile peppers on 30 irrigated acres in McElmo Canyon, located in the Four Corners region. He and partner, Nanna Meyer, operate a vertically integrated enterprise that includes seed cleaning, milling and baking in Cortez, Colorado. Their business is Pueblo Seed and Food Company.
Brett Stevensen, Hillside Grain (owner, founder, miller, marketer) • View slide presentation
Hillside Grain, located on the family ranch in Idaho’s Wood River Valley, stone mills their family grown grain into fresh flour that is sold online, at local retail venues and direct to bakers and other buyers across the Intermountain West. Brett Stevensen, founder, and miller at Hillside Grain has a passion for regenerative agriculture, health, and community. Brett will told the story of how she started the mill, grew markets for her estate flour and, in 2022, expanded Hillside Grain to include an on-site bakery, Hillside Bread, closing the circle from seed to loaf.
Teddy Bensen, The Grain Shed (owner, founder, brewer) • View slide presentation
The Grain Shed is a worker-farmer owned cooperative business which established its first location in Spokane, Washington’s Perry District and is an example of a successful business structured around artisan grains and other Inland Northwest grown ingredients. The Grain Shed was purposefully designed as a neighborhood-sized brewery-bakery that uses landrace grains which are malted at LINC Malt in Spokane for brewing, and stone-milled then fermented in house for breads and pastries that are baked in a custom-built wood-fired oven.
The Grain Shed brew operation quickly outgrew its Perry location and moved into the Steam Plant restaurant in downtown Spokane, where beer made from artisan grains is produced and sold at multiple retail and restaurant venues including The Grain Shed Taproom in downtown Spokane, and their newest venture—Locos, located in Spokane’s Hillyard neighborhood. Key Grain Shed partners include Culture Breads, LINC Foods, LINC Malt and Palouse Heritage.
Angela Kora, Ethos Bakery (owner, founder, baker) and Jessica Moon, Moon Family Farm (owner, producer, marketer) • View Angela's slide presentation and Jessica's slide presentation
Ethos Bakery, located in Eastern Washington, partners with farmers across the region, including nearby Moon Family Farms, to bring locally produced grains with unique and delicious qualities into their wide variety of baked products. Over the past few years, Ethos scaled-up and installed a New American Stone Mill, increasing their production capacity and creating opportunities to sell local, fresh milled flour at the café, online and through local retail. Angela and Jessica will talk about their unique farm-bakery partnership and innovative ways they are growing markets and community around local grain, flour and bakery products.
​
Halee Wepking, Meadowlark Organics and Community Mill (owner, co-founder, organic farmer, miller and grain enthusiast) • View slide presentation
Halee and John Wepking co-founded Meadowlark Organics in 2015 and Meadowlark Community Mill in 2021. As part of their business model, they’ve built an entire supply chain from the farm up, creating many opportunities for other businesses and markets regionally and locally and pioneered their own “Grain Shares” program (Meadowlark’s version of a CSA). They are based in Wisconsin’s Driftless Region.
​
Special thanks to our organizing team!
From the Northwest & Rocky Mountain Regional Food Business Center:
Colette DePhelps, Tayler Reinman, Kate Wood (University of Idaho), Martha Sullins (Colorado State University)
​
From WeCAN:
Lorie Higgins & Elizabeth Sloan (University of Idaho), Michele Archie (The Harbinger Consultancy)