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With the increasing number of huge industrial mills across the country, one of the most essential parts of our food system is also being industrialized: flour. Kevin Morse, CEO and co-founder of Cairnspring Mills, talks about his mission to bring organic flour into the mainstream market and the important role of community-rooted mills in achieving that goal. He joins Corinna Bellizzi to share how regenerative farming practices, healthy farmer relations, and sustainable food manufacturing are keys to producing nutrient-rich flour and bringing value back to local grain communities. Kevin also sheds light on how smallholder farmers are facing their toughest times right now due to the commodity system, trade wars, and the rapid corporate takeover.

About Kevin Morse:

As CEO and co-founder of Cairnspring Mills, Kevin Morse taps into his deep experience as a farmer, economic development leader, conservationist and community builder and applies his can-do spirit to build the mill from the ground up. Kevin recognized that building a new regional grain milling business would bring value back to the community and farmers and was a critical part of revitalizing the local food system. An incorrigible optimist deeply rooted in the beautiful Skagit Valley, Kevin is an outdoorsman, avid fisherman and an Italian who loves to cook and bake.

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-morse-6948a046/

Guest Website: https://cairnspring.com/

Guest Social: https://www.instagram.com/cairnspringmills/

Show Notes: Raw audio

• 02:59 – Rotating Cereal Grains For A Hundred Years
• 07:03 – How Industrial Mills Started To Kill Local Mills
• 10:08 – How Cairnspring Mills Are Doing Things Differently
• 13:14 – Shelf Life Difference Between Nutrient-Dense And All-Purpose Flour
• 16:11 – The Dangers Of Glyphosate In Flour Production
• 19:50 – Why Animals Are Naturally Attracted To Regenerative Land
• 21:17 – Importance Of Maintaining Close Relationships With Farmers
• 24:25 – How Cairnspring Mills Scales While Keeping Their Core Values Intact
• 29:44 – Why Smallholder Farmers Are Facing Their Toughest Times
• 38:04 – Promising Brands To Look Out For
• 40:12 – Why Flour Will Become The Next Big Thing In Mainstream
• 42:43 – Benefits Of Having A Huge Assortment of Flour
• 47:49 – Can Regional Grains Restore Soil Health And Reduce Carbon
• 51:34 – Using Synthetic Fertilizers On No-Till Soils
• 55:05 – How Food Shapes Kevin’s Leadership Approach
• 58:56 – Possibility Of The Reemergence Of Community-Rooted Regional Mills
• 01:02:25 – Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

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Fixing The Industrialization Of Flour With Kevin Morse

Welcome to Care More Be Better. I’m Corinna Bellizzi, a sustainability advocate, podcaster, and PhD student at Prescott College, where my research lies at the intersection of regenerative systems, communication and social change. 2026 will be Prescott College’s 60th anniversary. In celebration of this momentous occasion, I’ve selected them as my cause partner from now through 2026. I encourage each of you to check out the college, learn more about what makes them so unique and consider making a tax-deductible donation.

I’ll also be making a donation on behalf of every new subscriber to this show. Follow the show, join our eNewsletter and help us support a higher education institution that celebrates sustainability, diversity, and experiential education. Each week, this show explores stories of regeneration, resilience, and the remarkable people who work hard to restore systems that have been broken by industrialization and scale.

Our guest is doing just that, rebuilding one of the most essential parts of our food system, our flour. Kevin Morse is the CEO and Cofounder of Cairnspring Mills, a company leading the craft flour revolution. He’s a farmer, conservationist and community builder who’s bringing flavor, nutrition, and value back to local grain economies. It’s under his leadership that Cairnspring is proving that small-scale, community rooted milling can nourish people and planet alike.

In this episode, we’re going to talk about industrialization of our food systems, our flour, and what we’ve lost in the process. Also, how Kevin’s vision for the Blue Mountain Mill could make craft flour the next big regenerative movement. Grab your favorite loaf or pastry and let’s dive in.

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Kevin, welcome to the show.

Corinna, thank you for having me. It’s great to be here.

Rotating Cereal Grains For A Hundred Years

I’m so glad you could join me. One of the things I didn’t say is that I cover regenerative agriculture quite frequently and that also connects to my dissertation that I’m working on. I’m sure we’ll have a lot of fun. What I was hoping we could start off by is taking a journey back to your beginning. What inspired you to take on something as fundamental and often overlooked as the flour that we used to make our food?

I wish we had more than half an hour. What inspired me was several things. One is that Skagit Valley is my home. This is where we’re located. It’s about 70 miles North of Seattle. I’ve been involved in farming, conservation and economic development for over 30 years. One of our big pressing challenges in the valley, which has a very unique farming system. We farm over 80 crops of commercial significance here and we’re always looking at ways to add value and always looking for ways to stay viable for another 120 years. Cereal grains have been a rotation crop here. We’ve been regenerative before regenerative was a word. We’ve been rotating crops now for 100 years and mostly cereal grains.

Can you step for a moment and explain what cereal grains are for those that might not already know?

Things like wheat, oats, and barley. Those are cereal grains. We’ve been rotating them here for almost 100 years to break disease cycles and add organic matter back to the soil. For about 120 years, we’ve been losing money on it. That’s why wheat was identified as one of the ways to add value here. The idea honestly wasn’t mine, Corinna. This mill is the manifestation of this community’s interesting dreams and keeping viable agriculture here.

The port of Skagit, Dr. Jones and his team at WSU Breadlab, the farmers and the bakers all got together and decided this is what they wanted. I had the good fortune to raise my hand to be the entrepreneur. It intersects with all my values of clean food, community, viable agriculture, regenerative agriculture, and taking care of the environment and being a good steward. I was 50 at the time.

I’m over 60 now and I thought, “What a great opportunity if we can create a model that works here.” We, as you know, are still one of the biggest commodities in the world. Twenty-five percent of the average American’s daily calorie intake is of wheat products. If we could do something here, that could be replicated and inspire other communities. We could also have a significant impact.

Does your background in farming and conservation lead to the founding of Cairnspring?

That was a big part of it because it’s about values. We’re a value-based and community-based business. I always joke around that conservation, farming food, and the agriculture community are all wrapped up in the Cairnspring burrito. We’re not just about one thing. We’re about multiple impacts and multiple community needs. When it comes to flour and farming, you spoke to the industrialization of flour. What most people don’t realize is that we had 24,000 mills in the United States just a hundred years ago.

Now, we have about 186. I also saw the business opportunity here and everybody involved that flour could be the next crop revolution. There’s this great opportunity to inspire this new movement and treat flour and be like a blue bottle was for coffee or dogfish was for beer. It was both value-based and impact-based, and we saw the opportunity for a good business.

How Industrial Mills Started To Kill Local Mills

To your point, a century ago, 20,000 flour mills daughtered of America. Now, there are roughly ten companies that control 90% of the market. This speaks to the rapid industrialization of many of our industries in particular in food, but in almost every industry in this culture. What do you think caused this change? What happened to all those local mils? What did we lose along the way?

That’s a great question. Honestly in the beginning, there was a technology that was invented in Hungary called roller mills that made wheat milling much more efficient and faster. You could do it faster and cheaper in greater quantities.

Is that the rolled oats that you’re referring to?

That goes through a roller, too. You have two primary ways. There’s more, but there’s two primary ways to melt wheat and other grains, and that’s a stone mill, which has been around for thousands of years. Which is a set stone on a runner stone. They come together and crush the grain. The new invention was called a Roller Mill, which is big high-speed rollers for the grain funnel through the middle. They were able to break them up and process so much faster.

At the time, it was a revelation and that all said, you can take a product that wasn’t shelf stable because it was mostly whole grain. It stripped all of the nutrients and flavor out of it and end up with a white flour that could be shelf stable and sit on a shelf for three years and shipped around the world. The unintended consequences of that is, we have a product that is not very healthy and good for you. It ended up putting our farmers into the commodity system when you have an industry controlled by just ten companies.

We have a saying in farm country and I’m sure it holds true to other places. If you have multiple customers, you have a business. If you have one customer, they owe you. That’s the situation that the farmers are in being in the commodity system as their price. Takers and not price makers. The other impacts of those big industrial centralized mills and just to give you a sense, we will make seven and a half million pounds of flour in 2024, which sounds like a lot but that’s what one big mill can make in one day.

When you centralize an industry, when you centralize production, whether it’s flour or beef or coffee or beer. What you’re doing is you’re extracting value from where all those other mills were. You’re taking those jobs away. You’re limiting those jobs. You’re putting the farmers in the commodity system. Plus, you’re promoting an agriculture that’s heavily intensive in terms of tillage chemicals and practices that aren’t sustainable for people that planted.

When you centralize an industry, you extract value from the people and take their jobs away.

How Cairnspring Mills Are Doing Things Differently

You’ve said a couple of things so far that I want to comment on and get your take on. One of those is you’re taking a different approach. You also seem to allude to the fact that farmers try to do things as minimalistic as possible. They’re not trying to be wasteful. They’re not using more chemicals than they need to, at least given the knowledge that they have.

They’re not trying to use more men hours or more tillage given the knowledge that they have. What is so different about how Cairnspring takes an approach? If you could summarize quickly what those tenants of a more regenerative way to grow these cereal grains can be so that anyone reading can get that quick primer before we dive a little deeper.

Probably the quickest way for me to explain how different and what generative is compared to the big mills. Let’s do a quick comparison. Big mills set the price. There’s almost zero traceability. The system puts those farmers into the chemical intensive farming system. They’re basically buying a lot of low-quality and sometimes polluted grain, mixing it with a little bit of a good green and putting that on the market.

We’re taking a very different approach. All of our farmers use regenerative practices. We source directly with them. We pay them a premium above a commodity that we know is profitable. We mill it fresh the way we mill. Mill is the natural flavor and nutrition into the grain instead of extracting it then we sell it, as I said fresh to customers. It’s a much more lively, fragrant and flavorful product. I would also add that the other way we look at regenerative businesses is more than just farming practices. It’s how we treat our people. We pay our people above the average wage. We pay for our people’s health care insurance and their dependents. In terms of keeping value, we give them stock options. Their hard work gains them a return as well.

Shelf Life Difference Between Nutrient-Dense And All-Purpose Flour

I love everything I’m hearing and I’m so glad that our paths have crossed so I get to help tell the story. To your point, industrial flour but also industrial food production doesn’t necessarily put flavor and nutrition first. Instead, it tends to put shelf life first and that long tail of product availability so that you can have it on the shelf as long as possible. You can produce breads that have a longer shelf life. You can produce crackers that can seem fresh and longer but they just don’t have much taste other than whatever additives you’ve thrown in. What does it mean for, let’s say, the biodiversity, the flavor and the shelf life when you go to something that is much more whole grain and smaller production like this?

That’s a great question. What science is showing us is that grains and other products grown with general practices can be more nutrient dense. That soil health matters. If you take good care of the soil, it takes care of you and the planet. A side note, if you think about the industrial flour, how ironic it is and that the industrial flour making process strips all the natural flavor and nutrients out of the end product. Now we have to have enriched flour to replace that and oftentimes, those enrichments aren’t even what occur naturally in the grain.

You vitamin A and D in everything and maybe iron.

There’s folic acid instead of folate. Now, we’re learning that 60% of the US population can’t process like folic acids. Maybe that’s why people get upset stomachs when they’re eating enriched products. I’ve gone a little off course from your original question. Please guide me back on here and turn so I can stay focused.

You’re all on point. I’m just wondering what the difference in shelf life is between this nutrient dense wheat and something that you find in your all-purpose flour by Gold Medal brand, is an example because they’ve been around forever.

White flour can sit on a shelf or in a silo for three years. Our flour, if stored in a cool dry place, can be used and still have the nutrition and the properties for good baking for 6 to 12 months, depending on the flour. The whole grain has a shorter shelf life, but what we’re trying to do is help people change how they view flour. I don’t like things that have been sitting in my pantry for two years. Maybe unless it’s curd or good wine or something.

What we’re trying to show people is that fresh flour is amazing in terms of flavor and baking quality. People are getting used to buying it more frequently. Instead of saying, “I’ll just go get sacked flour that’s been in my pantry for twelve months.” That’s what we’re seeing. People are experiencing it differently. They’re seeing that difference. They want something that’s fresh to feed to their family. We’re changing our buying habits, too.

The Dangers Of Glyphosate In Flour Production

Something I’ve been thinking about for the past few years is how the biodiversity of our climate has shifted so much. Driving down I-5 or up I-5 towards Oregon and up into Washington. I used to have to literally stop at a gas station more frequently than I needed to for gas just to clean my windshield because of how many bugs I would hit. Now, with the way that we’re farming and with the rampant use of pesticides, we’re seeing a dramatic shift in reduction. Not only the biodiversity of bugs, but the number of bugs that we even see in our environment.

I kept a bin for flour and I was refilling it. I’m thinking about the fact that I don’t think I’ve seen weevils in my flour since I was a little girl. I started to think about the connection to glyphosate and how if you’re not buying organic flour. Perhaps there even remains enough glyphosate in some of these industrialized flours to keep the bugs out of that too. I don’t know if there’s truth to that, but perhaps you know. If you do, could you please share.

That is a complicated question and I don’t have a short answer to it, Corinna. What I can tell you is this. Glyphosate in particular as we all know it’s a carcinogen and is harmful. It’s been used over the past 30 years as a desiccant to harvest wheat.

I learned this a few years ago and every time somebody says it gives me the chills. It’s not even being used for the purpose it was created. It’s just being used as a tool so that the combine harvesters can attack the fields at once.

Both in dry and wet climates, which is crazy. What’s happening right before harvest, the wheat gets sprayed, then it gets harvested. That goes to the mill and comes to us. That’s why we see these immune system diseases emerging. At least science is leading that way, whether it’s crowns or others. Glyphosate is a dangerous product and that’s why we’re focused on regenerative to eliminate and reduce the use of that chemical and focusing more on organic.

With a bug issue, though, I want to get to that. I can’t say if that’s the reason specifically and why you haven’t seen weevils in white flour. There’s also technology called Impilatores, which the big mills have. It’s like a pinwheel that travels at high speed and all the flour passes through it. It breaks up any insect eggs and insects that might be in the flour.

That’s the newer technology that might be used that would prevent them. I remember it frequently and it’s not like I keep my flour for that long but neither did my mother. My mother was a baker. She baked constantly, so we had fresh apple turnovers which rimmed our entire pastures in fruit, we would have blackberry turnovers frozen for the whole winter. We actively used flour, and I can’t tell you how many times I saw beetles in my flour.

Why Animals Are Naturally Attracted To Regenerative Land

That could happen whether it’s coming for the mill or how you have it stored too. The story I like to share about regenerative farming, though, and again it’s just from our own experience. We have literally been on farms. I see it here in the Skagit Valley and over on the East side too, where it’s air dry. We have snow goose populations, swan populations, and duck populations here in the Skagit Valley and I literally watch them come back to the fields every year that have been in rotation with dairy cattle or in regenerative practices.

They were a little early to stop at the edge of a field without any fence or anything else. They can tell where the most nutrient dense grass is. We have a farmer in Ione, Oregon, where our team was out there. The same thing, he had elk in his fields, wildlife and pheasant. They were literally stopped at the edge of his fields. No fence. No ditches. No roads. They knew where the more nutrient dense food was and it was all ground. It was farmed regeneratively.

You’re talking about all the animals that stop in my pastures too, but we had horses. There was plenty of nutrient dense denseness coming on.

It’s amazing how the wildlife can sense that and respond to it. There’s wildlife showing up on these farms that they haven’t seen in these areas in decades and they’re finding the regenerative farms.

Wildlife can sense and respond to regenerative land. Many animals are showing up on these farms that have not been seen in decades.

Importance Of Maintaining Close Relationships With Farmers

When you work through local sourcing, small batch stone milling, direct farmer relationships. What does the process look like from field to back? How long does it take? How many are you able to work with? I just love to get a better view of what this looks like in practice.

In any given year, we could be working with anywhere from 12 to 18 farmers at least at this mill. When we open up the new Blue Mountain Mill, we’ll double or triple that. It’s quite an extensive process and it is different. The big mills buy off the commodity spot market. They could source from Kansas, Canada, or Kazakhstan or wherever the lowest price grains are coming from. We have to do projections a year and a half out and say, “In 2026 and 2027, how much flour are we going to make and what kinds?” Dave, Paul, myself and others will go out and look at our farmer base and see what they like to grow.

This time of year, for hard red winter wheat and a little bit later for spring wheat, write them a contract. We’re writing the contract directly with the grower to have not just what we think we need, but to go a little bit long in case something happens with the weather or pasture disease issue. That flour is harvested in July or August. Throughout the summer, we’re walking the fields. We’re watching the quality and testing the grain. We test the grain before harvest so the farmer knows that they’re on track where there is moisture. All the parameters are important for quality.

They harvest that grain in July or August and it goes into our silos all usually within about 2 to 3 weeks. It’s crazy. Our report grain managers don’t sleep for weeks. We mill that grain the following year or year and a half. It is a relationship with the farmers. We see them multiple times a year. We walk through fields. We’re always talking about what we could do in terms of the crops health and resilience.

One of the fun things we do is we have what’s called Toast Tuesdays once a month with the farmers, where they get to come in and beat us up on price. Talk about the crowds, the weather, talk about next year and then eat bread made with the flour that we made out of their grain. It’s very personal. I say we still work at the human scale, which is very important to us.

We’re not transactional-based. We’re relationship based-company and having that relationship with the farmers and just bringing value to them. They’re bringing value to us. They’re telling us what’s working, what’s not, how we might try to do things differently and always trying to stretch ourselves to learn and innovate more.

How Cairnspring Mills Scales While Keeping Their Core Values Intact

That’s a beautiful story of not only connecting with your farmers and the hands that work the fields, but also what it takes to strengthen community ties. Thank you for that. Now, as far as scaling regeneration. You mentioned the Blue Mountain Mill. The expansion is set to increase production twelve fold from 7 million to 110 million pounds annually. That’s huge. How do you scale without losing what makes Cairnspring so special?

We have to keep our soul and that’s all can be kept in place by staying true to the guardrails that we’ve established. We just can’t stray from our business model. We can’t stray from going direct to the farmer, from using regenerative practices or our milling process and our promise to our customer for quality. Those are some great parameters that are easy for us to follow and work with and always strive to be better.

From the outside looking in just with my business hat on. What I would say is you can probably help to create the economies of scale to produce finished products that will be more competitive in the marketplace without necessarily having to take the margin from the farmers. Do you believe that would be the case?

That is the case. There’s two things happening here. We put our business hats on. I went to business school and these hats are still on. It’s hard to remember sometimes but as we scale, one important thing about scaling and we thought a lot about how much we scale is related to those guardrails. We’re going to get more operating leverage and better unit economics. I’m still going to be able to achieve the same profit margin. This is going to give me the ability to be a little more aggressive in price. Hopefully capture not only more market share but be more accessible to more people.

Without having to pay the farmer less because that’s the important piece. Most farmers are paid $0.07 or $0.08 of what consumers pay for that food. They’re getting the least. They’re getting the scraps. Frankly, that’s a recipe for bankruptcy because you don’t have enough wiggle room for a bad crop season, which is going to happen with climate change. I’m sorry. We’re seeing it across the board. I would love for you to comment on that and get your perspective of how we can look at scaling these things. Perhaps not just at Cairnspring, but other mills and growers that are operating around the nation.

There’s a couple things that are core to our model. One is that promise to pay the farmer a fair and profitable price. It all starts with the farmer. If we don’t do that, we can’t do anything else we’re talking about. That is absolutely critical. What we’re doing in the marketplace through the different channels that we sell into, we’re creating a premium product that reflects the true cost to both the farmer and the company that’s not reflected in a lot of the commodity. Nobody takes into account the cost of the environment or human health and a lot of the commodity production.

The externalities from business school.

Our flour can cost double of what some of the other flours cost on the shelf in the grocery store. We’re always going to be 20% to 30% more expensive, even with a better operating leverage at the new bill. That’s what we need to be able to deliver our promise to the farmer, our staff, and our customers, and maintain the quality that we promise. The commodities race to the bottom and we’re trying to pull ourselves out of that. For other businesses, it’s about differentiation as we all know but it’s also about maintaining a premium quality product and not always trying to compete on price.

It’s crazy when people tell me, “You got to consider it.” We do look at price but what we’re doing is trying to race to the top and introduce people to a better product that’s better for them and the planet. A lot of this is timing. Our timing is great because that’s what people are looking for. They want to trust where their food comes from. They want to have positive impacts with their dollars. They want to feed their family clean and healthy food that’s not going to make them sick like the industrialized stuff we’ve been eating for the past years.

Timing is very important too and now is the right time. I would just say hold your ground and make sure you focus on quality and on impact. Flours is a $24 billion market and its best craft flours are estimated to be 700 million of that. There’s a tremendous opportunity for us to keep growing and grow that channel for sure.

Why Smallholder Farmers Are Facing Their Toughest Times

I’m curious, Kevin. If you could share your perspective when it comes to things like farm subsidies. Most of our governmental support goes towards crops that are animal feed crops like corn and soy. I wonder if there are the same available resources to farmers of these cereal grains and what impact that is having presently.

Most of the grain farmers in this country wouldn’t be here without crop insurance, honestly. Especially now, look at the commodity prices. They’re in the gutter. They’re about $1.50 to $2 a bushel below what it cost them to grow it. The way the farmers have been surviving, especially since Girl Butts and ‘70s, get bigger, get out that puts everybody in the commodity system. The only way they stay in business is because they buy crop insurance and they lose money on the crop and the government keeps involved. It doesn’t do anything to advance stewardship with the soil or healthy food or regenerative practices or more nutritious grains. It’s all about bulk production, and it doesn’t serve the farmer in the long term. It’s not a sustainable solution. I get choked up about this. I’m sorry.

There’s no need to apologize.

It’s tough times in farm country. I’ve lost friends to suicide. I have friends who’ve lost their fathers to suicide. I’ve seen more bankruptcies going on because these farmers are caught up in this commodity system. When you have an occurrence like we have now with the trade wars and the 80% or 90% of the grain growing in Washington organized exporting. They have no option. The banks won’t give them operating loans to plant grain in the next year and they can’t even get their crop insurance payments because the government’s closed.

We’re seeing more and more farms being bought up now by hedge funds, foreign corporations or foreign countries. The farmer is losing, especially the family farm. We’re trying to do our small part in creating this higher value in the domestic market that pulls the farmers out of the system because it’s a tragedy. Most people don’t know about it.

I don’t mean to go down a downward spiral, but our farmers have a higher suicide rate than our veterans. This is a serious problem. Not just from the farmer’s perspective, but our food’s system for perspective and how we maintain a healthy food supply and healthy soils for future generations. That’s why I have such a great team that’s so committed and we have such loyal customers because we are trying to change the system.

Farmers these days have a higher suicide rate than veterans.

It’s the knowledge loss and the life lost. I hate to make this all about politics, but there is a certain amount of jockeying going on. Farmers seem to be caught in the crosshairs in several ways. This is already the group that was hanging on by a thread. It becomes an act of activism frankly to seek out and buy these products that have grown more responsibly and an act of solidarity to stand with farmers to do just that, to seek out the products that might cost a little bit more. It’s because the living wage is paid.

I featured the founders of Lotus Foods on this show and I’m also including them in my PhD dissertation. They’re one of the brands that I’m looking deeply at. They are global advocates for smallholder farmers. They have spoken out to ensure that those small crop farmers can even create and qualify products that can be certified regenerative organic.

If they had not been there all along championing these individual farmers, then much larger growers and companies with more resources like Patagonia and some of the other companies. They were helping to build this thing together. It might have created a system that would have left out some of these smallholder farmers that couldn’t have necessarily brought them along for the ride.

It’s important as we think about our food systems and the things that we consume that we get thinking about regional buying. You’re talking about people that are growing wheat and other cereal grains within the United States and a specific territory like the Pacific Northwest. Probably into Idaho, Montana, down the road, Ohio, or whatever. You can get a lot of these resources from within 100 miles of your door and impact local communities and be supported. Instead of a global food system that is so disenfranchised and removed from us emotionally, somebody whose life you’re making a dramatic difference in.

That’s important. We, as Americans, consume too much, generally speaking. I am presently in a leaning phase, which means I dropped 11.6 pounds in the past month. Having to be real about what I consume and one of the things I’ve had to do is remove a lot of wheat from my diet. Why? It’s because so much of what is available, if you want to buy a pastry at a coffee shop or whatever, is made with the stuff that inflames my gut. It has glyphosate, all these other residues and toxins and things that my system doesn’t like.

When I consume it, I get achy joints. I have digestive distress. I almost get more cravings. It’s like my body’s trying to shield itself from this thing I’ve consumed and I’m finding the purifying process to be in this learning phase and to be more intentional about the foods I consume. I’m very grateful for the organic locally produced in California whole wheat flour I’m buying to make my sourdough bread with. We can all take a step in that direction. I’d encourage it.

I agree, and I’m so glad to hear you doing that. One of the reasons this is a for-profit business is because I believe in the power of markets. Our team believes in the power of markets to make change. That comes down to the consumer making different choices on where they spend their money. When it comes to food, whether it’s wheat, bananas, avocados, strawberries, or whatever. Go find your farmer. Go find your food co-op. Buy local foods. It has an amazing impact. If everybody does that instead of buying those other products from the other stores.

We have great potential to change the system. We believe and I believe. You asked me earlier. By rebuilding these local fruit systems, it’s one of the best ways to make our communities more healthy, prosperous, and resilient in the face of things like climate change or other global events. It’s a power buying food that holds lots of power and I don’t think the consumer or most people in this country understand how much power they have to change the system or what benefits them.

Promising Brands To Look Out For

It’s certainly true. I appreciate the work that you’ve put in, thus far. I’m very encouraged that you’re going to be able to scale this because it’s that powerful move that is going to make products like what we’re talking about more accessible. Now I have one brand that most people have probably seen on the market, which is Bob’s Red Mill. That company’s been around for a very long time. Bob died a few years ago. I think he was close to 100 years old. He was still going to trade shows with a marching band wearing his little straw hat and everything.

They are an employee-owned company. It’s a different approach to growing a business and I like their organic flour, but guess what? They have a lot of non-organic stuff, too. I don’t even know if they mill all of their own stuff, or if they use other mills. What examples can people go to find connection to Cairnspring? Are there other particular brands that they can look for?

Eighty percent of our flours is sold into the food service channel. There’s a few large production bakeries that use our flour like Tartine Bakery and Cadoro down in California, up here in Washington is the Essential Baking Company, Grand Central Bakery, and Macrina. Most of our customers are small to medium pizzeria, bakery, and restaurant. In Washington State, we have over 400 customers. We can certainly help people find where our flour and we’re in grocery stores. We’re only about 100 grocery stores now. That’s a tough channel. It’s more like a night fight than anything else.

Competitive for that shelf space.

The other ways were because these are grocery stores that wanted us there and we don’t have to pay a lot of the sliding fees and other things. You can find us in some grocery stores in Oregon, and Washington, and people can just come online. We sell it directly to the consumer. They can go on our website at Cairnspring.com and we can send the flours straight to your home.

Why Flour Will Become The Next Big Thing In Mainstream

We’ve seen craft beer and coffee become mainstream over the past years. Why do you think that flour is next?

It’s one of the last commodities to go that direction and that’s making some head weight beef with folks like Old Salt and Carman Ranch and others. Flours are so much part of everybody’s diet every day, whether it’s pancakes and cupcakes or sourdough bread and pizza. It’s so widely used. I mentioned earlier it’s 25% of the daily calorie intake for most Americans. What we’re seeing is from the professional baker to the home baker, they can tell the difference. It was amazing.

Flour is a part of everybody’s daily diet. It comprises 25% of the daily calorie intake for most Americans.

We talked about brain back, this middle infrastructure and these three systems make our community more resilient. During the pandemic when there wasn’t any flour on the shelves in the grocery store, we’re still open. We were running seven days a week because our supply chain was local. We still had the ability to produce.

We have 400 cars around the block every Friday selling 20,000 to 30,000 pounds of flour a day for their families. That was our first direct to consumer sales. Within days after people buy our flour, we’re getting emails and phone calls and people stopping by saying, “What are you guys doing? My pancakes never tasted so good. My bread never tasted so good. My family told me never to buy another type of flour and keep coming back to Cairnspring.”

I share that one from the resilience story because that’s a big part of what we’re doing here too. People like it when their food tastes better and then you layer on all the other impacts and values that come along with buying our products. I think there’s so much more room in the marketplace and we don’t intend to be the only company doing this. We’re hoping to help and inspire others. I just think about the growth potential, both what we’re seeing here now. I’m already getting inquiries to help with mills in Japan, Korea, Australia, the UK, and Spain. We’re in a great position at a great time where people are demanding this type of product.

Benefits Of Having A Huge Assortment Of Flour

I have been investigating kernza as a grain. I know that this is also connected to Patagonia, but the Land Institute is working on several projects to grow this perennial long route grain and has roots that are 10 feet long. Have you worked with kernza?

I have. Perennial grains are of real interest to us. There’s great flavor there. It grows year after year. You don’t have to combine it and replant it. There are some great grains coming out of the WSU Breadlab just around the corner. They are packed with tons of flavor and nutrients. It doesn’t have the baking quality or gluten strength to be used 100%. What we’re doing with, whether it’s perennial grains or rye or even whole grain flour is we’re trying to ease people into and say, “Take our organic Edison or organic expresso flour. Try putting in 10% kernza. It’ll give you a rich wonderful flavor that you can’t get with just regular flour.”

We’re trying to build consumer awareness and the consumer palette as well as their understanding of how to include it in what they bake. That’s going to be a long-term initiative for us. We just met and we were talking about some kernza and other specialty grains that once we free up some capacity here at this gadget mill and open Blue Mountain, we’re going to start doing more of that here.

I look at that very similarly to incorporating things like almond flour or coconut flour or something along those lines because I can never make my recipes turn out well if I use 100% of it. I tried making banana bread one time with only coconut flour and it was a complete failure. Basically, you tried to cut it and it just went mush everywhere. Learning those constraints or even just having simple tools to help people make the conversion is great.

I’m encouraged by kernza because of the fact that it does such a good job of sequestering carbon because of the fact that you don’t have to do things like plow it and turn up the soil to go ahead and put your new crop in place. It’s been crossbred with a lot of wheats to help make the wheat more hardy. It’s not gluten-free as the grain, which I also found interesting. It’s got some interesting characteristics too and its flavor is strong. Not strong in a bad way, but just more full like a wild rice versus a white rice.

I find it incredibly rich. It’s exciting the time we’re living in as we’re exploring these new grains. Think about the past hundred years. All the bakers had on this palette was chocolate and vanilla. Now, we have kernza, rye, and barley coming back. What we’re seeing is that wheat varieties can be like wine grapes. There’s terroir, flavor and color that are in them that are very different and distinguishable. Now, by offering these specialty grains and these non-commodity grains, the home baker, the professional baker has this palette with all these colors and flavors to choose from.

What we’re seeing and that’s why the bromance and the interests of the home bakers are growing so much is that they’re able to experiment in an event and the same thing holds true with the professional bakers as well. It’s a wonderful time to be alive and be a baker because we’re going to have more variety than previous generations for sure.

It seemed to me that by going broad and our assortment of flours just as one example. We would be more resilient in the face of supply chain disruptions and climate issues as well because perhaps one crop won’t grow as well this year but this other one does.

That’s why this distributed network of production and processing is important. Getting away from that centralized industrial model because it’s not resilient. Most people don’t know this but I think there’s 60,000 or 80,000 varieties of wheat. I was just talking to Kevin Murphy about this. It could grow in almost any climate on the planet except for maybe Antarctica. We have not been exposed to that diversity ever. Now, the market wants it and people are becoming more aware of not just why it tastes better or it’s better for you, but how important it is to our resilient food system.

Can Regional Grains Restore Soil Health And Reduce Carbon

I know that some argue that regenerative has become a buzzword, especially when it comes to grains. Do you think there’s real evidence that regional grains can meaningfully restore soil health and draw down carbon or is this more of an aspirational ideal that a measurable reality and part due to the need to till soil periodically?

It’s complicated. I do believe that through this regional model and sourcing, we can especially work at the human scale and its science based. There’s no real definition of regenerative yet but we follow several guidelines. One is that the practices have to be credible and verified by science because we work at a regional scale. I don’t know if everybody knows but it’s like this in Washington State. In Oregon, you have a wet green side of the state and dry-hot air side of the state. It’s very different soils and climates.

What working at this regional scale allows us to do because we’re working with every farmer and writing contracts for grains and farming practices that work for them is that we can tailor it to the soils and their needs to ensure we’re having the impact we want and also measure it. We have a soil health initiative and a sustainability manager that we’re out taking soil samples on all the farms. We’re seeing improvements in organic content and soil structure. This is a long-term project and then we’re partnering with conservation districts and land-grant universities to help with a lot of the science because we can’t do it all.

I think working at scale is a big part of the solution because a one-size-fits-all solution doesn’t work and lets people out. It doesn’t have the impacts that you want. I’m very optimistic about this and committed to it. It’s not hard if you try to find the resources in a different geography to help guide the way. Conservation districts have been around for years since the dust bowl and they said what’s called priority resource concerns that you scientifically validated.

I don’t want to get too geeky or jargony on you, but if an area needs more water retention and soils, more organic content. They’ve already measured that and set that as a priority. We look at those priority resources concerns and build our programs and work with the farmers around them. Plus, it gives us the opportunity to work with the farmers directly and understand what their needs and priorities are. That just doesn’t happen in the big commodity system. It’s like, big mills go out to bed or the farmers plant something on spec and then they don’t have any requirements unless they’re under national organic standards to farm or achieve any measurable soil benefits from their farming practices.

To your point then, it can be measured in the soil. You can measure how much carbon and how much life is underground. The microbiome of the soil itself is changing. I think that’s the takeaway.

Also, the structure. Stop me if you don’t want to get too geeky.

I think it’s good because I’ve heard it described like almost the soil itself is a honeycomb matrix.

Using Synthetic Fertilizers On No-Till Soils

It’s amazing. The use of enhancers fertilizer, synthetic fertilizers over time even on no-till soils and I won’t get into all the science. Basically, what it does is it creates the salt layer anywhere from 6 to 9 inches below the surface. When you plant a crop, those roots can’t penetrate the salt layer and get another 12 inches or a foot down in the soil to draw up all those nutrients. What we see through farmers using more regenerative practices and weaning themselves off of synthetic fertilizer using cover crops. They’re breaking through that salt layer.

They are also activating the natural biology and the soil biome as you just said. Now, these plant roots can get 12 inches, 16 inches, or 24 inches deep into the soil. Whereas before, they are hitting the salt layer and it would stomp their growth. They wouldn’t yield or produce the nutrient dense grains that were possible because of the soil structure and the poor oil.

To your point using those crop covers as a post to the industrialized MPK fertilizer, the synthetics. You have less runoff, so that also means less pollution. You have less cost of material inputs, the synthetic inputs. That’s also good. I’ve heard some of these inputs described as being petroleum products. I didn’t understand that going in but apparently, a lot of the fertilizers and pesticides are also petrol-based.

They are, especially synthetic fertilizer, which requires lots of natural gas to make it.

I had no idea before that one and I’m just like, “What? Why does this make sense? We want to put this on our food?”

The bigger, faster, and cheaper. It’s crazy. There’s natural products out there like urea, which could be used as a fertilizer instead of anhydrous. That does create the same thing or same issues with that salt layer of the soil. We have farmers using plant extracts mixed with molasses and applying micronutrients. A lot of it’s done again at the scale where they’re doing tons of SAP analysis in soil testing to see what the plant needs instead of going to the fertilizer company who are all doing very good after and saying, “Can you come out and check my soils? Tell me what I need.” That’s like they are writing their own checks.

They’re saying, “You need more of this. You have this thing going on. Add more of that. Let me sell more of the thing that you already buy from me or a different version of it.” The idea of being this salt layer. There is a certain point beyond which plants can’t grow in that soil anymore because they just get too late in with salts.

If they do, their yields are poor. The plant’s health is poor. They’re more susceptible to disease. It’s like, “My crop has a disease. Can you come and spray it with more pesticide or more fertilizer?” It’s a temporary fix. Maybe, but in the long-term, it’s just a race to the bottom.

How Food Shapes Kevin’s Leadership Approach

I know you’ve described yourself as an encourageable optimist who also loves to cook and bake. How is your Italian heritage? I also happen to be Italian. I’m a quarter Sicilian. The last name is by marriage but culturally, I would say I’m more Italian than anything. I’d love to know how food shapes the way you lead.

Growing up in my grandparent’s Italian deli and butcher shop. I was just showing some friends a picture of me at age seven in the butcher shop with a straw hat in April on making cube steaks. I still have all my fingers. Food has been the center of my culture and identity since I can remember. Growing up in an Italian family that revered community, local food, good quality food and growing your own food was just instilled in me at a very young age. Honestly, I’ve probably spent most of my life trying to recreate that Italian community model for not just people, but for food.

Everything I’ve done throughout my career, whether it was conservation or farming and even the economic development work I did. It was about rebuilding and contributing to the vitality of natural resource base systems and economies and industries. Keeping our farmers on the land, healthier soils, bringing fish back, and water quality for the oysters. At the end of the day, you get to celebrate that at the bonfire at the dinner. Know that you’ve been a part of something hopefully important for their community, but also for the health and wellbeing of your family and others.

What’s your favorite thing to bake with your own flour?

Honestly, it’s still the country loaf. I just love sourdough. I’ve got the recipe down. I know exactly where I need to starter to be to get it going. I’m trying to perfect my focaccia recipe, but I’m still not happy with it.

It could be a life-long effort.

It is, and that’s why you see people getting so into baking now because you are always learning. You can always innovate and learn something new. In this day and age where people sit in front of screens like we are now, they want something tactile and something they can taste and share.

I might have to ask you to send me some of your starter so I can try to make something on my own.

I can do that but I got to tell you, it’s very easy. One of the best books out there still are the Tartine books in terms of making your own starter and sourdough breads. There’s others that are out there that do everything from sourdough to Maurizio’s book and Ken Fortress’s book and Jen Latham’s book like baking for kids. There’s a tremendous amount of resources available to us now that the baking revolution has hit since COVID. I’m happy to share some but I would say use some local flour that you’re buying because it has the biology and the yeast from there. You’re also going to be incorporating the airborne yeast where you live. That will make you even more Italian because it’s hyperlocal.

Possibility Of The Reemergence Of Community-Rooted Regional Mills

Do you see a future where regional mills end up re-emerging across the country each one rooted in its local community and ecology?

I do. That’s what we’re working towards. It’s not just because that’s the dream and the vision of the team here. I see it because of all the inquiries and I always like to support. You’ve got Jennifer Lapidus down on Carolina ground. You’ve got maine grains and farmer direct Barton Springs Mills could pay mills down in your neck of the woods. It isn’t whether or not there’s a need or demand. Our biggest challenge oftentimes is it’s hard to find investments for infrastructure. It’s hard to compete with AI and tech companies 60 miles South in Seattle when I can offer a good return, but I’m not going to offer a 30X in three years. There’s other challenges to doing that.

However, there might be less risk in something that has food. I’m sorry. The thing about AI and what point are half of these ideas is just not going to work.

People are always going to need to eat. Climate change is real. Food systems and fruit desserts are farming. I came at this with a little bit of my previous background and economic development and critical infrastructure. I honestly think just like roads and water systems, regional food systems are critical infrastructure, both from a food safety and resilience and even national security standpoint. I’m hoping and what I’m seeing is more people are realizing that. It’s bringing in more private investment and the government can help with that, too.

The previous administration had food infrastructure grants which had a tremendous impact in this community and others where we’ve worked or have friends in the community. That is one of the big hurdles. I don’t think it’s insurmountable and the investors are starting to show up and where the government can play a role. I would love for them to play a positive role. The big thing is, the demands are pulling us forward and it’s a good business now.

It’s possible to rebuild our food system, too. Regional resilience is going to be an imperative. If we don’t adapt quickly enough to this need, then we could end up in trouble. I feel like we’re going to be pushed in that direction anyway and I encourage people to shop at your farmers markets, get to know your local fishmongers and get involved in your local food supply. I find it to be one of the most joyful things I do on a weekly basis just going to my farmers market. Which sadly only runs from May until basically Thanksgiving.

That just means that I’m going to have to drive out or get my CSA. I’ll drive out to the wharf to speak with my fish guy and get my fish from him. I’ll go down and pick up my CSA delivery or have it delivered if I can’t make it, but just doing those things. Even just getting a small portion of what you consume from your local area means a lot. It benefits and impacts your community directly.

Episode Wrap-up And Closing Words

I want to thank you so much for the work that you’re doing, Kevin, for sharing this story of regeneration and revival of an important aspect of our food and nutrition. It’s my belief that you’re not just milling flour. You’re helping us rediscover what real food can be when it’s connected to the place, the people, and the purpose which you’re guiding it.

Thank you so much for that summary. I couldn’t say it any better myself. Thank you for hosting this conversation and all the others and getting the word out there. It’s important at this time for the farmers and for all of our communities.

You can go to Cairnspring.com and while you’re there, explore the stories of the farmers and bakers who are part of this growing movement. Frankly, my audience will have enjoyed the transparency and the frank emotion with which you attack this conversation. I appreciate you and many people, especially those foodies out there who are going to want to share this episode. Now, it’s my belief that it’s together that we’re able to do things like regenerate earth one seed and one story at a time. When we care more, we can create a better planet for the people and for every grain and every seed that feeds us all, body and soul. Thank you.

Thank you, Corinna.

Important Links

• Kevin Morse on LinkedIn
• Cairnspring Mills
• WSU Breadlab
• Revolutionizing Rice With Caryl Levine & Ken Lee – Previous Episode
• Land Institute
• Jennifer Lapidus on LinkedIn