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PRIVATE 2019 www.gourmetnews.com n NOVEMBER 2019 n GOURMET NEWS P 8 Dryland Farmers Prosper with Organic Specialty Pulses By Lorrie Baumann Timeless Natural Food offers a gourmet line of heirloom certified-organic lentils, peas, chickpeas and specialty grains. Grown in Montana and its neighboring states, the pulses that Timeless offers in both retail packaging for specialty grocers and in 10- pound and 25-pound packages for foodser- vice use come from a group of organic farming pioneers on a mission to preserve Montana's family farms by rebuilding soils subjected to a century of industrial monocul- ture wheat production. "We are not alone on this planet, and we have an obligation for stewardship, not only to our fellow human beings, but also for the environment," says company co-Founder and President David Oien. "Through the business that my three friends and I have created, called Timeless Seeds and the brand name Timeless Natural Food, we really have been instrumental in supporting many other farm- ers around Montana to convert some or all of their acreage to certified organic production to allow their family farms to survive." Oien grew up on his family's wheat farm in north central Montana's Golden Triangle before heading off to college for a degree in philosophy and religious studies that still in- forms his farming mission today. After sev- eral years of working and traveling in Europe following his college graduation, he came back to the family farm in 1976 determined both to repay his parents for the upbringing and education they'd given him and to prac- tice a system of agriculture that's kinder to family farmers and to the land than conven- tional wheat farming. Today, Montana farmers like Oien inherit the state's history of dryland agriculture, which began with the 1877 Desert Land Act that drew settlers to homestead in arid lands across the American West. These new home- steaders relied on assurances from agricul- turists like Charles Dana Wilbur that "Rain follows the plow," and when the climate re- fused to obey those prognostications, the de- velopment of modern irrigation assisted by the Newlands Reclamation Act of 1902. With the newly opened land, irrigation proj- ects across the American West, improve- ments in farming technology, and the introduction of hard red winter wheat in the 1870s, American wheat production took off. The country's annual wheat production more than tripled in the 50 years between 1871 and 1921; increasing from about 250 million bushels during the period of 1869–1871 to more than 750 million bushels during the pe- riod of 1919–1921. Then came the Great Depression and the collapse of agricultural markets that led to the paradox of huge national grain surpluses and widespread hunger. The New Deal followed, with the Roosevelt Administration's Agricul- tural Adjustment Act, which paid farmers to fallow some of their acreage when the nation had a grain surplus. New Deal agricultural policies that controlled national grain sup- plies and stabilized markets remained in force until 1971, the beginning of Earl Butz's tenure as Secretary of Agriculture. Butz's policies, encapsulated in his decree that farm- ers needed to "Get big or get out," reversed the New Deal's protections for family farm- ers in favor of industrial agriculture, bigger equipment, more acreage. That was the farm- ing economy that Oien returned to in 1976. His father had resisted that temptation to get big even as neighbors around him were deciding that, presented with a choice that wasn't really a choice, they were getting out and putting their farms up for sale. "One of the pieces of wisdom he left me was that he'd rather have the neighbors than the neighbors' land," Oien said. "That meant we needed to make our small farm viable in a different way." Inspired by Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring," Frances Moore Lappe's "Diet for a Small Planet" and the connection between Earth and humanity explicated in "Black Elk Speaks," Oien set to work to convert the fam- ily farm to organic production just at the time Lappe and others were helping Americans understand that there might be a connection between what they were eating and their own health as well as the planet's. "My approach has always been, 'Get better and you can stay in.' For me, getting better meant converting the farm to organic production," he said. "Our farm is 260 cultivated acres, while the average farm in Montana is about 2,400 acres, nearly 10 times larger. There are some farms in my county that are 20,000 acres, so our farm is not only small – in a sense, it's obsolete. But on the other hand, converting it to organic and developing the infrastructure to process our crops has allowed the farm to survive another generation." Practicing organic agriculture meant find- ing a means of replenishing soil depleted by nitrogen-hungry wheat crops without the use of synthetic chemicals. "The challenge with monocropping, monoculture within a given field, is that it makes those crops more sus- ceptible to disease, to insects, and also re- quires input of chemical fertilizers. The crops that we grow, such as lentils, chickpeas and peas, are soil-building crops by their very nature," Oien said. "They're legumes that have the power to capture the atmos- pheric nitrogen and convert it into nitrogen in the soil that's accessible to crops." In 1987, Oien joined three fellow organic farmers: Bud Barta, Jim Barngrover and Tom Hastings, in a company called Timeless Seeds to introduce those leguminous crops to other farmers in the northern Great Plains and spread the gospel of organic production. Their experiments with pulses, the edible seeds of legumes like peas and lentils, coin- cided with the growth of the natural food in- dustry in the early 1990s that created a demand for organic grains and seeds, and Timeless Seeds capitalized on that demand to grow the infrastructure they needed to turn their raw crops into marketable organic food products. In 2001, the company created its Timeless Natural Food retail line of premium lentils, peas, chickpeas and heirloom grain. To supply that line, the company now works with about 50 certified organic family farms, primarily across Montana with a few in neighboring states as well. "We provide them the opportunity to grow crops that di- versify the cropping rotation and to grow crops that are higher value," Oien said. "I think one of the things that's most promising is that we are not only supporting these farms, but we're also having a greater and greater environmental impact across the northern Great Plains. As the market for high-quality plant-based protein grows, farmers can convert some or all of their land to certified organic production, and Timeless is part of the infrastructure to find or create high-value markets for family farms by dis- tributing to food retailers, restaurants and chefs, institutional food service and food manufacturers." Once Again Nut Butter Spreads Integrity By Lorrie Baumann Once Again Nut Butter has produced its line of nut and seed butters and honeys since 1976, when the company was founded by husband and wife Jeremy Thaler and Connie Potter after a friend suggested that they use the barrel roaster in which they'd been mak- ing granola to roast nuts for peanut butter. From there, a local museum in Nunda, New York, asked them to make an old-fashioned peanut butter that included the peanut skins. Thayler liked the result so much that he fig- ured he could sell it. That thought came naturally to the couple because they'd already been serial entrepre- neurs, which is why they named their new peanut butter company "Once Again," ac- cording to Gael Orr, who is the Marketing, Communications and Public Relations Man- ager for what's now an employee-owned en- terprise. "Once again, they were in business," she said. Thayler and Potter retired from the busi- ness in 2006, and it became 100 percent employee-owned at that time. Orr has worked for the com- pany for the past 10 years and says she'll probably retire from Once Again Nut But- ter when it's time for that to happen. "The company really cares about my family," she said. "They care about employees. They care about my voice." Over the years, the company's original old-fashioned peanut butter line has ex- pended to include a total of about 30 prod- ucts in about 80 SKUs comprising salted, unsalted, roasted, unroasted, stabilized and stir-style peanut butters as well as Almond, Hazelnut and Cashew Butters and Organic Seed Butter. The company acquired Dawes Hill Honey in 1992. Milk chocolate products were launched in 2018. Each of the products bears the image of Rocky Raccoon on its label. Rocky Raccoon was born as the company's mascot after a family of kit raccoons was found on the company's property in its early days. The company's employees cared for the raccoons until they were old enough to be released into the wild, and Rocky, named after a Bea- tles song, remains as a legacy of that time. The products are also gluten free, and all of the nut butters are certified by the Non-GMO Project. Specialty Private Label Products from Captain Foods Captain Foods is a 25 year old family busi- ness based in Edgewater, Florida. It is a gourmet food company that focuses on of- fering specialty private label products. Cap- tain Foods has established long lasting relationships with its clientele and is known as the "most trusted name for private label." The product line includes sea salt grinders, Himalayan salt grinders, black peppercorn grinders, specialty hot sauces, steak sauce, wing sauce and all natural seasoning blends. Captain Foods has established a competi- tive edge by offering low minimums, excel- lent pricing and superior products. Its products are just as good, if not better than your national brands. Captain Foods will save you money, and it'll be your brand proudly displayed on the label. Your restaurant has an image – your condiments should too. Five Benefits of Private Label 1. With private label, you essentially create your own unique image, which establishes a marketing iden- tity and promotes stronger cus- tomer recognition and loyalty. 2. Why pay for high priced brand names, when you can brand your own quality food products at a much more cost effective price. 3. Gourmet private label products are often more profitable than those of national brands because private label items are (usu- ally) more cost efficient to make. (It's a given that the lower your expenses, the higher your profits will be.) 4. The packaging and labels are tailored to meet the private label owner's specifications, includ- ing product name, description, company's logo and contact in- formation. 5. Private label branding is one way to separate yourself from competitors. One of the greatest attributes of private la- bels is that you inherently have an exclusive right to sell the products. For more information, contact National Sales Manager, Bryan Forand, at bryan@captain foods.com, call 800.749.5047 or go to www.privatelabelrestaurants.com.

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