So why take a plant that works perfectly well and make it perennial?

“I’ve been trying to talk someone into developing perennial wheat since the 1960s,” says Jim Moore, a Kahlotus farmer and former head of the Washington Wheat Commission.

“Vogel told me they couldn’t get enough yield out of it. I don’t care about that. I want something to hold my soil in place.” The dry, powdery soil of the Columbia Basin, composed of volcanic ash and glacial silt, blows easily. The fine soil particles are not simply annoying, but a possible health risk, exacerbated by the fact that Spokane’s population is directly downwind from the dryland wheat-growing region. Various means have addressed the dust problem, the most effective to date being minimum tillage. Planting directly in a previous year’s stubble without tilling is an excellent conservation practice, but it still requires annual planting and a substantial investment in specialized planting equipment—and a lot of herbicides.

But perennial wheat’s attractions are not limited to holding the soil in place. Somewhat surprisingly, in an unrelated interview last fall, pharmacy dean Bill Fassett told me that he thought perennial wheat was the most important research being conducted on campus. The largest new health threat that looms over the medical community is global climate change, says Fassett. Carbon dioxide is a major contributor to the increased greenhouse effect and resulting global warming. And soil tillage is a major contributor to the release of carbon into the atmosphere.

Conversely, a permanent, or at least semi-permanent plant cover, such as perennial wheat, greatly contributes to sequestering carbon in the soil. As oceans and forests are gigantic “sinks” of carbon, so is farmland planted in non-annual crops. Not only could a perennial wheat crop greatly contribute to the sequestration of carbon in eastern Washington soils, land owners could sell carbon credits in what can only be a growth industry.

Perennial buffers next to streams or on highly erodible land not only filter water but are also attractive to birds and other wildlife, which is a reason the state Department of Ecology has provided Jones and Murray with funding.

But from an economic point of view, there’s an even more fundamental attraction.

“If you look at planting costs annually,” says Ritzville farmer (and state legislator) Mark Schoesler, “planting once instead of four times starts looking really good.”

Earlier hopes for perennial wheat generally dimmed, because in addition to lower yields, there was little economic incentive regarding input. Fuel, fertilizer, and labor were all cheap. But now, input costs have greatly increased. Fertilizer costs have tripled over the last few years, says Allan. Diesel fuel costs $1.37 a gallon and is unlikely to fall in price. Fuel costs for a single tillage of a 2,000-acre field can run to several thousand dollars, and a new tractor can set you back a couple hundred grand.

The problem with commodities is the price is set by the world market. Too much wheat results in low prices. The only way to increase profit is to cut costs.

“There’s two things educated people have taught me,” says Schoesler, who has experimental plots of perennial wheat on his land. “You can be the low-cost producer, or you can sell quality. I don’t know that you can do both.” Some large producers have chosen the quality niche. For example, Karl Kupers of Harrington (Washington State Magazine fall 2003) produces specialty grains and bypasses commodity brokers to produce his own flour. On the world commodity market, though, efficiency is everything. Anything that can add to economy of scale, anything that can squeeze another penny of profit out of a bushel of wheat, helps Washington stay afloat.

Perennial wheat is not a new idea. Russian scientists worked on perennial wheat early in the 20th century. Unfortunately, the resulting germplasm was lost during the Soviet era. “It’s a shame all this stuff has been lost,” say Jones. “Multiple lifetimes of work is just gone.”

Breeders at University of California, Davis did extensive work on perennial wheat in the 1950s and 1960s, and some of their breeding material made its way to Pullman. Allan remembers perennial strains included in wheat trials at Washington State College in the 1950s. Though it’s unclear whether she had perennial wheat in mind, Washington State College botanist Hannah Aase worked with many of the same crosses between wheat and its wild relatives in the 1930s as Jones and Murray.
Aase was known internationally for her work, says Jones. Aase’s work seems to have been directed purely at understanding wheat’s ancestry. Unfortunately, all of the genetic material that resulted from her pioneering work has been lost. And more sadly, even though Aase was a major figure in WSU’s scientific tradition, few on campus remember the significance of her work.
But Schoesler remembers researcher Dick Nagamitsu, with the Lind Research Station, talking about the problems faced by perennial wheat in the 1950s. One of the main problems that Nagamitsu dwelt on, says Schoesler, was how difficult it was to thresh.

Technology, harvesting and otherwise, has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. So have a number of other factors, leading Schoesler and others to think the time is finally ripe for perennial wheat.

When scientists abandoned the idea in the 1960s, the yields simply couldn’t compete, considering the low input costs, says Jones. But now, in the dry parts of eastern Washington, yields wouldn’t need to be even 50 percent of conventional varieties, as fields are planted only every other year to conserve moisture. Then figure in the potential savings in inputs, primarily tillage, as well as the value of erosion control, and perennial wheat starts to seem pretty attractive nowadays.

Murray points to actual value placed on erosion control. Although payments vary by area—and, some say, legislator—land in the federally supported Conservation Reserve Program averages around $55 an acre. The CRP pays farmers to put highly erodible land into permanent grass cover, which cannot be harvested.
“ If you get 20 bushels an acre and average $3 a bushel, perennial wheat competes pretty favorably,” says Murray.

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