Is gluten bad for you? If you have celiac disease, the answer is definitely YES. Gluten does make you sick and you need to avoid it. You should avoid our products. We use the same machinery to handle and process all our products, including wheat and soybeans.
However, man has been eating wheat for thousands of years without issues. But modern wheat normally sold in this country today differs from what man has been eating in past millennia in a number of ways.
1) Roundup (Glyphosate) has become the most widely used herbicide in the world. And it’s also used in small grains (wheat, oats, etc.) as a desiccant. Meaning it’s sprayed directly on the seed just days before harvest to speed the harvest process and make it more efficient. It’s also used as a harvest aid. Essentially the same process, but is used to kill green weeds in the fields that slow the harvest (combining) process. Since it is sprayed so close to harvest, there is no time for the glyphosate to break down in the field. It’s also sprayed directly on the seed heads, where it is easily absorbed. This increased use by the industry has left more glyphosate in our food, especially small grains like wheat and oats. Monsanto was well aware of this increased usage, asked for, and got the EPA to increase the legal levels of glyphosate allowed in food in 2013.
2) Granary insects have been a problem in stored grain for thousands of years, until the past century. Today, most all grains are treated with an insecticide to kill granary insects. In conventional agriculture the common product recommended is STORICIDE II. One active ingredient in this is Chlorpyrifos. A widely used organophosphate insecticide that in this case is sprayed directly on the grain you will eventually eat. It’s required that farmers cover even extremely small amounts of any chlopyrifos left exposed in their fields. (It has been responsible for large numbers of birds killed after eating just a few grains of it.) It has been linked to neurologic damage, especially in kids and to ADHD and many other disorders. And yet is sprayed directly on most all conventional food grains, admittedly in small amounts.
3) The wheat varieties grown today differ from those grown even a century ago. During WWII, the U.S. built factories to manufacture explosives for the war, as well as factories to make the raw materials for these. One product needed to make explosives was a usable nitrogen which was produced in the form of ammonia (NH3) rather cheaply. After the war, with excess manufacturing capacity to make ammonia, agriculture started using it. For many crops, nitrogen is the limiting nutrient for growth. The green revolution that occurred after WWII was mostly accomplished by maintaining higher than natural nitrogen concentrations in the soils and developing crop varieties that could take advantage of this and yield more pounds of grain per acre. Many traits were changed in the wheat to allow it to tolerate higher nitrogen soil concentrations. Some intentionally and some inadvertently.
We are trying to go back and find these old food grain varieties and raise them with the soil fertility levels that were common more than a century ago. We also raise them organically, without glyphosate (or any synthetic chemicals) and without any granary insecticides. We are also looking for the varieties that tasted great, from an era where farmers grew the crops they fed their own families.
Currently, only our HRW (Turkey Red Wheat) wheat is an heirloom variety. Both our SRW and HRS wheat varieties were released AFTER World War II. We are currently experimenting with and increasing other heirloom wheat varieties, but not offering them for sale yet.
All our milling corns, popcorn, oats and buckwheat varieites are old heirlooms.
Concerning organic: Products listed on our website as organic are certified organic by Oregon Tilth. A couple of the wheats and buckwheat are listed as transitional organic, which means they were grown with organic practices on ground in a three year transition to being certified organic. (As I am able to bring some of my kids back to farm with me, we are slowing growing and adding more acreage to our farm).
A comment on news stories about glyphosate (Roundup) being found in organic crops:
WE NEVER spray any crop on our farm with glyphosate. It's strictly forbidden by organic rules. And I watch and report any time I observe evidence of drift on our organic fields. But I would be a blind idealist if I guaranteed you that all our crops were always perfectly clean.
I think it's appalling that glyphosate was ever approved by the EPA to be used as a desiccant or harvest aid in conventional small grain (oats and wheat) fields. (This is the practice of spraying glyphosate directly on seed heads in the fields just prior to harvest, thus guaranteeing that the weeds are dead and the entire crop is ready to harvest) I'm glad there has been an uproar against this practice. While it's still legal, hopefully consumer pressure will put a practical end to it. However, all the testing has exposed a little known fact in the organic world as well. There is so much glyphosate used in the world today that it's in everything, including rainwater and air. I farm on flat open praire, with nothing to stop the wind for miles and lots of conventional neighboring farms nearby. Even if I could watch 24/7 all the spraying that occurs (which I can't), I can't keep the rain off my fields. And the glyphosate detection levels are getting better every year and are now easily down to parts per billion (ppb). (1 bbp in equal to 1 drop of water in a semi tanker, or 1 second in almost 32 years.) Also, while most of my neighboring conventional farmers are great, none are happy that I switched to organic farming, since the penalties for drifting onto an organic farm are severe compared to drifting onto a conventional farm. The other year one neighbor had to weed an adjacent field by hand (something I haven't seen a conventional farmer to in 30 years), because the weather conditions were never favorable enough to legally allow him to spray. Other neighbors are not so great or willing to strictly follow the drift laws. Some have taken up a crusade against organic farming, and are continually trying to end it in the area. It's a constant fight to stay in business and provide you with a chemical free product. And while I'll do the best I can, hopefully you can appreciate the reality of the world we live in. While I'm sure my crops will have MUCH less glyphosate than most conventional grains (and probably usually be below detection levels), I can't guarantee it will always test perfectly clean. Especially as detection methods impove and are able to find lower concentrations. (Side note: Even the grains sold as certified glyphosate free are usually only tested once per year per farm.)