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A climate-smart Michigan foodshed is being uplifted

A collaborative effort to strengthen local supply chains in the Great Lakes will continue despite federal funding uncertainty.

James DeDecker is the director of Michigan State University’s Upper Peninsula Research and Extension Center.

“We’re looking to provide farmers opportunity to diversify their cropping systems, to increase the resiliency and the profitability of their farm operations, and just cracking open new markets,” he says.

He tells Brownfield research on high-quality grains lays the foundation for a more localized market.

“It comes down to the varieties that we’re producing for a food use and then how we’re producing them in terms of the production system inputs in particular, that results in a final product quality that is acceptable to the industry that we’re targeting,” he explains.

DeDecker says MSU’s grain quality lab also provides analysis for samples in Michigan and crops across the U.S. to verify food-grade specifications are being met.

In 2022,  Star of the West Milling Co. and 10 other partners were awarded nearly $5 million as part of a USDA Climate Smart Commodity grant to grow climate-smart food markets for wheat, dry beans, food-grade soybeans, and oats in Michigan.

DeDecker says a robust network of supporters and funders in the state plans to build off of the grant to enhance value chains moving forward.

Brownfield interviewed DeDecker during Tuesday’s Food-Grade Grain Field Day at MSU’s Kellogg Biological Station.