Wheat Stories straight from California farms – Sagouspe Farms, Los Banos, CA
Claudia Carter, MS
Executive Director | Cereal Scientist | Founder of Wheat2School | Woo | Problem Solver | ??
It was a nice hot day in June 2017 when I visited my friend Corky Sherwood from Sherwood Grains in Los Banos, CA. Corky planned for me an entire day to learn about Los Banos agricultural region. In Corky's fashion, he shared every story he remembered about wheat, and I truly enjoyed the wheat history education of Los Banos. One takeaway from my visit was that wheat production in the region had significantly declined, as is the case in most regions in California. Today in Los Banos you find crops like almonds, walnuts, cherries, cotton, among other crops.
However, this story I am going to tell you is about wheat grown by an almond producer I visited, Jean P. “Skip” Sagouspe III. In November 2016, one of Skip’s almond orchards reached ~23 years since it was planted. After Skip consulted with Corky, he decided to incorporate chipped almond trees into the soil prior to planting his wheat in the Fall of 2016.
Note about this approach:?According to Mike Curry of Johnson Farms, “it is anticipated that about 40,000 acres of almond trees will be pulled annually given current planting rates” and “He says organic matter incorporation from the previous orchard has increased the soil’s water-holding capacity and biological activity in the soil which promotes strong root growth. There are also potential savings on water and nutrients”. from Western FarmPress in 2017, and most recently article by Cecilia Parsons).?In addition, there is a study by UC Davis reporting similar outcomes. Take home message from the study is:
Their results found that, compared with burn treatments, whole orchard recycling can:
Back to my story: To grow his wheat, Skip applied only TWO #irrigation cycles, one at an early stage and another later in the season. During our conversation, he made it clear to me that water was an expensive commodity, therefore, water use efficiency was key for his wheat crop. He also decided NOT to apply any #nitrogen, leaving the field without applied synthetic fertilizer. Growing his wheat with no added nitrogen and with only two irrigations were two important aspects of his #soil #conservation efforts, he added.
Growing his wheat with no added nitrogen and with only two irrigations were two important aspects of his #soil #conservation efforts, he added.
Do you already have some questions? Yes, I did too.
Before I tell you how our discussion went after that, please allow me to give you some perspective and context. I started to work for California wheat producers in 2014 as their Lab Director, and later in 2016 as their Executive Director. I can humbly say that at the time I was in my learning phase about California wheat production practices. Hence, my na?ve and uneducated observation I made to Skip was that his wheat management practices might not yield a “good protein level” suitable for bread baking. He planted one of our Hard Red Winter varieties: WB9229.
Little did I know this would spark my curiosity. This became the start point of my journey to understand the intersections of wheat production management practices, wheat variety selection, and wheat baking quality and performance.
I then asked him to please document his crop growing progress and to take photos (The cover of my post shows the photos he sent me of his crop progress from green, wheat maturing, to the fully matured ready to be harvested wheat). I also asked him to please save and ship to our wheat quality testing lab a few samples of his wheat crop after harvest. With Corky’s help, I received the wheat in early July, 2017.
I bet you are curious (as I was back then), how was the Wheat Quality of Skip’s wheat?
To my surprise at that time, the wheat quality was EXCELLENT!
The wheat Protein Content was 13.5% (at 12% moisture basis), moisture content was 8%, test weight was > 65 lbs/bu. Most importantly, flour quality was excellent for bread baking, with high water absorption (> 66%), and high dough stability (> 20 min). As we always say, the final baked product tells us the full quality story. His wheat had a final baked product of > 1000 cc bread loaf volume (loaf volume higher than 900 cc is desired for our pup loaf).
Skip allowed me to share this information with the wheat industry and with our wheat producers who might want to try this approach as a soil conservation and wheat management practice. It is important to use a recommended wheat variety, so if you are wondering which are our California Wheat Preferred varieties, check out our list here.
California wheat production might continue to decline, however, I argue that wheat will continue to be a critical crop in California Agricultural practices. Wheat plays an important role in crop rotation, in soil conservation, water efficiency usage, and in other regenerative agriculture efforts we aim to achieve.
It is also important to recognize that California wheat production is versatile and offers flexibility to farmers. Wheat can be harvested as green chopped or hay for animal feed, or it can be taken to full maturity to grain ending up at one of our flour mills. (California is one of the largest wheat milling state by capacity).
For those interested in reading more information about the complete this Wheat Quality results, please see below:
The complete wheat quality testing of this sample:
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