Although I am a lover of Fairbanks, I am not particularly in love with mid-October Fairbanks. Fall’s yellow, shimmering leaves are now browning and dissolving underfoot, and my garden is crisped with old tomato vines and a few intrepid kale leaves, still reaching for the weakening sun.
On a recent chilly afternoon, I enjoyed lunch in my University of Alaska Fairbanks office: some of my late-season kale, black beans — origin Fred Meyer — and seasoned barley couscous from 100 miles down the road in Delta Junction.
I later walked down the hill toward and through the still-colorful oasis of Georgeson Botanical Garden. I was on my way to meet with Jodie Anderson, director of UAF’s Institute of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Extension, to learn about Alaska’s food system. After we settled into the garden office, Anderson opened our conversation with the story of Sunshine barley.
After 16 years of research, UAF released a new, hulless barley variety in 2009. Bryce Wrigley, a Delta Junction farmer, took a gamble on Sunshine. He purchased the high-producing variety and a mill with the dream of strengthening food security in Alaska. Wrigley and his family now run the Alaska Flour Company, which sells barley-based products — my couscous! — to dozens of outlets across Alaska and the world via their online store.
The success of Wrigley’s investment is a shining example of the Alaska agricultural research-to-consumer pipeline: A productive grain is developed in-state; a farmer grows, processes and sells the crop to consumers; and not a single food-bearing barge from Seattle is implicated.
Wrigley knew that to truly close the loop on local food, growing barley wasn’t enough. It required post-harvest processing — the mill. It also required storage of the grain, research and development, packaging, marketing, and distribution, a pipeline that every Alaska grain and vegetable must travel through to make it to a store near us.
Anderson illustrated that challenging journey for me using the humble “Alaska Grown” potato.
Along with barley, potatoes have been part of the Fairbanks Experiment Farm story since its beginning. In 1906, 32 varieties of potatoes were planted in the freshly cleared fields between the university and the future site of the Chena Pump Plaza strip mall, and variety trials have continued since. The UAF Cooperative Extension Service currently touts 46 Alaska-friendly potato varieties — Sangre 11, Mrs. Moehrle’s Yellow Flesh, MaineStay and Alasclear among them.
“There is no reason that we should buy a potato that wasn’t grown in Alaska,” Anderson said. “We have enough land, and we certainly can do it.
“However,” Anderson cautioned, “we don’t have enough storage. There’s that. We don’t have any processing. There’s also that. So there’s your gap.”
According to Anderson, once a hardy Alaska potato is harvested, it needs to be babied a bit before getting packaged into one of those “Alaska Grown” bags. It needs to be stored cold but not too cold, and kept at a specific humidity to prevent rot or shriveling.
Depending on where it’s needed, a potato might be transported across our vast state, often at subfreezing temperatures. Planes freight produce where roads don’t reach but are often up against delays, reroutes and extreme weather conditions.
With potatoes, we’ve figured out the “Alaska Grown,” but we’ve not yet built the “Alaska Stored,” the “Alaska Packed” and the “Alaska Distributed.”
Although large-scale post-harvest handling and distribution are still a dream for the future, an increasing number of small-scale farmers are digging in to feed their communities. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Alaska has around 1,200 farms, up from 686 in 2007 and 990 in 2017. Small farms may use farmers’ markets — 65 are operating in the state — and community-supported agriculture programs as farm-to-table conduits. But stories like the Wrigleys’ — where one family finds success in a full-scale operation, from barley seed to statewide sales — remain rare.
“Alaskans love ‘Alaska Grown,’” Anderson said. “They get it. We just can’t do it farm by farm. There has to be something bigger.”
Since the late 1970s, the University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute has provided the Alaska Science Forum column free in cooperation with the UAF research community. Sara Wilbur is a communications coordinator for the Geophysical Institute public information office.
