Milling & Baking News - December 19, 2017 - 12

Business

Grain Craft partners with Indigo
Ag for i.p. milling wheat
CHATTANOOGA, TENN. - Grain
Craft and Indigo Ag, Inc. have signed
a supply agreement under which
Grain Craft in 2018 will purchase 1
million bus of identity preserved Indigo brand wheat. The companies
said the wheat will be sustainably produced and will meet enhanced baking
and milling quality standards.
Boston-based Indigo Ag, which
markets its wheat under the Indigo
brand, said it is contracting with hundreds of growers and paying them a
43c-a-bu premium over commodity
wheat. After harvest, the wheat will
be delivered to Grain Craft and milled
into flour for baking industry, food
service and pizza customers.
"At Grain Craft, we care about our
flour - the quality, the way it's produced and the farmers who produce
it," said Alan Koenig, chief supply
chain officer of Chattanooga-based
Grain Craft. "We are partnering with
Indigo to produce traceable and sustainable flour at scale. This is a new
way of doing business that's responsive to the needs of our customers."
Mr. Koenig noted that in the three
years since the creation of Grain Craft
through Milner Milling's acquisition
of Cereal Food Processors, the new
company has been working with

Kansas State University, the Kansas
Wheat Alliance and breeders to improve Kansas wheat quality.
"Indigo Ag has given us an avenue
toward growing approved varieties

to help improve milling and baking
qualities in Kansas," he said.
The pairing of Indigo and Grain
Craft was serendipitous. Reuben
McLean, the company's senior director of quality and regulatory, happened on an Indigo Ag booth in August while attending Wheat U, a trade
show aimed at helping wheat growers
enhance their operations.
"The Indigo guys came to our offices and spoke with us," Mr. Koenig
said. "The more we talked, the more it
made sense."
Indigo said it uses naturally occurring plant microbes, together with software and data tools, to increase yields
of wheat seed varieties without the application of chemicals or fertilizer.
"By using sophisticated genomic
sequencing and computational bioinformatics, Indigo has assembled an
enormous database of genomic information from these microbes," the

company said. "We apply algorithms
and machine learning to this database to
predict which microbes are most beneficial to the plant's health, applying these
specially selected microbes to crops in
the form of a seed coating. The resulting
seed treatments complement a plant's
natural processes to improve health and
development across each phase of life
while boosting crop yields."
Indigo pre-treatment of wheat seeds
with the microbes is aimed at maximizing yields and obviating the needs
for fertilizer and other treatment.
The company said it seeks to support a Grain Craft commitment to
minimize environmental impact and
conserve natural resources.
Mr. Koenig said Indigo has been focused principally on sustainability, enhancing yields and improving grower
economics. With the Grain Craft partnership, baking and milling quality
also are squarely in focus, he said.
"We love high test weight for milling, but this also focuses on stability,
absorption and protein quality, not
just quantity," he said.
The companies said that better aligning agricultural practices with consumer preferences will address a number of
current challenges, including agricultural profitability, environmental sustainability and consumer health.
"Indigo's goal is to increase farmer profitability using practices that
are consistent with environmental

Adding value across entire grain chain

12 / December 19, 2017

Milling & Baking News

INDIGO AG

avid Perry, Indigo Ag chief executive oﬃcer, sees the grain
sector ripe for the kinds of value-add opportunities that have
successfully taken hold in many segments of the food and
beverage industry.
In a blog oﬀering deeper background on the Grain Craft initiative, Mr. Perry suggested the same kind of underlying demand that
exists for premium single-origin coﬀees or certiﬁed Angus beef may
emerge for identity-preserved grain produced with qualities sought
by consumers.
"Through Indigo's microbial innovations, it is not hard to imagine
water-friendly, sustainably sourced, chemistry-free and reduced fertilizer crops making their way into the specialty market on a large scale,
as well as improved standards of Fair Trade that better ensure that
U.S. and international farmers turn a proﬁt," he said. "This system fundamentally aligns agricultural practices with consumer preferences.
Premised on farm-to-fork traceability, specialization gives us the opportunity to dramatically improve the quality and sustainability of our
food system - to the beneﬁt of growers and consumers alike."
Mr. Perry is an entrepreneur who has established three companies in the last 18 years. Most recently he was co-founder and c.e.o.
of Anacor Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company acquired
by Pﬁzer, Inc. in 2016 for $5.2 billion. The other businesses he established were Chemdex and Ventro Corp.
Indigo Ag was founded in 2013 by Flagship Pioneering and has

In an Indigo Ag greenhouse are David Perry, left, c.e.o., and
Geoffrey von Maltzahn, founder and chief innovation officer.

commercial operations in Memphis, Tenn. The company has international oﬃces in Sydney, as well as Buenos Aires, Argentina, and
São Paulo, Brazil. In addition to wheat, Indigo has launched branded
corn, soybeans, cotton and rice.
Flagship Pioneering is a venture capital ﬁrm established in 2000.
The ﬁrm said it "conceives, creates, resources and grows ﬁrst-incategory life sciences companies." MBN

bakingbusiness.com / world-grain.com

http://www.bakingbusiness.com http://www.world-grain.com

Milling & Baking News - December 19, 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Milling & Baking News - December 19, 2017