This New Crop Will Change Everything

Learning to spot fad ag

There’s a trap in the world of “food and farm system changemaking.” The trap is believing in the new fad crop.

I haven’t even been around that long, and I’ve seen many of these crops. From obscure wheat varieties that get big New York Times write-ups to “gamechanging” crops like hemp that win support in the public and private sectors alike. Some of these crops are new fangled, the result of advanced breeding or importing a rare species from overseas. Some are old, and that’s a selling point in itself.

“Oats,” people exclaim. “People have been growing oats in America for centuries, and we’re going to bring back the tradition to transform the American ag landscape. Just you wait.”

Source: Goodfon.com

No matter what the crop is, we hear the same things about it. “This is going to be The Next Big Thing.”

Inevitably, the new fad crop gets some big backers. A rich family office, some environmental groups, a food company or big farming group, some excellent press coverage. A few people here and there pour some money into some pilots and get some acres planted (usually somewhere between 50 and 5,000). And we hear from the promoters that this is just the tip of the iceberg.

“We’ve got momentum now,” they say. “We’re well on our way to having chestnut flour in every pantry in America.”

There’s usually about a three year window in which the new fad crop looks like it might actually go somewhere. And then the wheels fall off.

It’s usually because the promoters and backers rediscover things we knew all along.

They discover, as farmers (and the USDA) did decades ago, that oats are a commodity grain that are more finicky and less productive than corn and soybeans (and so less profitable), and American consumers don’t have an infinite appetite for them. Therefore, their price has a ceiling, and it's usually low enough that growing and harvesting oats doesn’t pencil out.

They discover that the vast majority of Americans aren’t desperate for another new flour, or a nut that’s tricky to open and unfamiliar (and therefore, totally inedible) to picky kids.

They discover that hemp might be a great fiber for making rope and some fabrics, but that there haven't been manufacturers trying to buy meaningful quantities of hemp in America for 100 years.

In short, the fad crops always come up against the reality that when you bring a new product to market, no matter how incredible a story you tell about sustainability, landscape diversity, benefits to farmers, even flavor or novelty– people just don’t care.

American consumers are fickle creatures, we like what we like, and we usually like it for irrational and arbitrary reasons.

“My mom used to buy this brand of peanut butter.”

“I started drinking this soda in college and never stopped.”

“I don’t know why, I just prefer white bread.”

Food in particular is a space where people don’t want “new,” at least not for long. What they want is great taste, low prices, and real and recognizable ingredients. Wheat, corn, eggs, milk, cane sugar. Love it or hate it, believe it or don’t. Diets aren’t invented or reinvented in a quarter or a year. They’re refined over decades and centuries, and not easily abandoned.

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In the last 100 years, there is literally only one new crop that has actually become a hit both on the farm and in the marketplace. It’s soybeans.

Soybeans weren’t introduced until after World War II, and one of the big reasons it was so popular is because unlike corn and cotton, it was a legume, and so it worked well in rotation with those two major U.S. crops. Notably, we don’t grow soybeans because the American consumer fell in love with tofu or edamame, but because it’s an oil seed and what’s left over can be used for livestock feed. In fact, by the time that soybeans became the second most planted crop in America, most consumers probably had no idea that they were widely planted at all.

Given what we know about soybeans, you’d think more fad crop folks would try to follow a similar path. In other words, you’d think more boosters would try to turn their fad crop into an industrial product, rather than a consumer one. I guess hemp did try to do that, and it still didn’t work. Go figure. There were a lot of factors that hampered the promise of hemp, not least of which being that fiber is a well-established and cut-throat market full of competition from both other parts of the ag industry (cotton, etc.) and the fossil industry (polyester, nylon, acrylic). That and that the CBD market is way smaller than all the proponents foretold (especially when THC is legal in half the country).

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The frustrating thing about seeing the many rises and falls of new fad crops is that they are mainly a distraction from the real work that needs to be done in the farm system.

See, the problem has never been the crops themselves. Corn is an astounding crop. It gets a bad rap, but it really is an excellent thing, as a plant and as a product. Honestly, I’d nominate corn as one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Soybeans, and its sibling legumes, are also good. Wheat is good. Even cotton, for all the blood soaked into its roots and fibers, is not a bad crop. Cattle, pigs, chickens, even milk cows are not bad, nor are the fruits, vegetables, and nuts we’re familiar with.

Any of these crops might be poorly suited for a given geography or climate, over-nourished, excessively confined, and forced to their productive maximum, and because of that, they might cause environmental harm. But that’s not because there’s something wrong with them. It’s us– the way we grow these crops– that are at fault. And new crops don’t do anything to change who we are, the incentives that exist to maximize profit, and the economic and social limitations that prevent us from seeking an alternative path. So go ahead, plug your new fad crop into the American farm system. If it survives, it will probably be because we figured out how to grow it, market it, move it, and waste it in all the same problematic ways we grow, market, move, and waste the crops we already grow. Except we’re going to waste more of the new fad crop probably, because nobody will know how to use it at first.

From my perspective, new fad crops are, well, just that, fads. They’re a momentary distraction, one that sucks up a bunch of time, attention, and resources, and more often than not, comes to nothing. One of the biggest impacts of new fad crops might well be the chilling effect they have on farmers, funders, even consumers. When you’ve seen enough fad crops, projects, and ingredients come and go, it makes sense to become increasingly suspicious of new ideas and bids to alter your current practices or preferences.

Anyway, this is just a note to inoculate you against the new fad crops. I mean, enjoy the fad if you want, but if you’re angling for real change, really improvements, don’t let The New Crops distract you.