Milling & Baking News - March 27, 2007 - 27

Food Ingredient Solutions

Harvest and certify
Last year ended with a record 2.3
million acres of organic cropland and
1.7 million acres of organic rangeland
and pasture in the U.S. But many believe this is not enough to keep up
with demands.
There are myriad obstacles preventing farmers from adopting organic procedures, and the O.T.A.
hopes this will change.
"O.T.A. proposed a comprehensive
plan to integrate organic production
28 / March 27, 2007

Milling & Baking News

Donning the U.S.D.A. organic label
means these crackers must consist of
at least 95% organically produced ingredients.

into U.S.D.A.'s many programs,"
Ms. Wilcox said. "Organic farmers
need access to the same resources
that conventional farmers receive
from U.S.D.A." This includes market
data and price collection efforts that
will bring information about organic
agriculture and trade closer to parity
with information given to conventional farmers.
For example, each week the
U.S.D.A. publishes the wholesale
prices of a long list of commodities,
fruits and vegetables, but only those
conventionally grown. The same is
true for imports and exports.
"Such information, considered basic for today's savvy farm businesses,
is not available to growers of organic
crops, the vast majority of whom are
small, family-run operations," Ms.
Wilcox said.
Many suppliers of organic ingredients to the baking industry have
taken it upon themselves to collect
this data to help ensure a consistent
supply of raw materials.
"We source materials directly with
growers and their cooperatives to
ensure enough raw materials are produced to meet our customer needs,"
said Brad Rush, organics program
manager, Briess Malt & Ingredients
Co., Chilton, Wis. "We are continuing
to establish new relationships with
growers to meet customers' demands.
In addition, we also will assist growers in becoming certified organic so
we can improve the amount of organic
crops produced and available to us."
Briess has been certified organic for
16 years.
"We have a very good understand-

BACK TO NATURE, A DIVISION OF KRAFT FOODS INC.

flavors, organic-compliant techniques are used to extract and
concentrate the flavor from the
natural ingredients. These organic
flavors are then
compounded to increase their potency and complement
the inherent flavors
of food ingredients.
This allows bakers
to highlight and
intensify specific
flavor notes or profiles such as 'juicy'
blueberries in every bite."
One of the greatest limitations when
formulating with organic flavors is
availability.
"While all flavors can be created
organically, many may not have yet
been done," Mr. Eckert said. "The SuperNatural collection is derived from
and processed with non-synthetic
materials. These natural flavors help
bakers develop all-natural products
that meet the specifications of many
natural foods stores." They also may
be used in foods labeled "organic" or
"made with organic ingredients," because an organic version of the flavor
is not available.
To overcome this supply issue, bakers must communicate their needs to
vendors, who in turn communicate
with organic farmers. An understanding of farm cycles is important.
"Bakers should make commitments for products before harvest
and allow for processing time to ensure that supply meets the need," Mr.
Eckert said. "Many organic-certified
fruits may not be planted without a
prearranged contract."

ing of what's required as well as great
relationships with our growers," Mr.
Rush said. "For example, all of the
Briess facilities have organic changeover procedures in place that use a
variety of cleaning practices. This is
standard operating procedure when
it comes to producing organics. To
complete the process, we purge our
dry handling systems with enough
organic materials to adequately eliminate cross-contact contamination
with conventional materials."
Briess produces a wide variety of
ingredients in both conventional and
organic form that may be used in baking and snack food applications.
"Some of the products we produce
are malted barley flours, which can
be used by baking companies as a
natural dough or flavor improver,"
Mr. Rush said. "Other products we
offer in both organic and conventional form are BriesSweet Tapioca
and BriesSweet Brown Rice Syrups.
These have applications in snack
mixes, nutritional bars and other
grain-based products."
Mr. Rush said the No. 1 difference
between organic and conventional
materials is cost. So many more resources go into producing organic
ingredients; it's inevitable that they
cost more. For example, just keeping
track of organic raw materials and
segregating them from farm to table
requires additional time and money.
"We have a fully integrated crop
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Milling & Baking News - March 27, 2007

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