My dad helped build North America's oat supply chain: Can it be remade?

https://ambrook.com/offrange/perspective/how-we-lost-our-oats

by surprisetalk • 22 days ago

91 54 22 days ago

bell-cot2• 22 days ago

In many ways, it's a story about far more than just oats.

US Ag policy is so, so screwed up. But with more entrenched interests than the US has Congressmen, and probably 10X that number of full-time lobbyists - good luck trying to fix it.

llm_nerd3• 19 days ago

In many ways, it's a story about far more than just oats.

Sure, and the story is about how Americans look at how they became the richest large country on the planet and endlessly ruminate on how they can have their cake and eat it too.

Oats declined as an American crop among farmers because there were more lucrative uses for the land. Literally it wasn't some grand conspiracy or external force, but simply that the crop preferred different climates and without needing it as a feedstock you could make more money growing soy or corn or countless other things.

But endlessly there are these sorts of "the children yearn for the mines" sorts of stories where Americans view anyone else producing literally anything as somehow unjustly depriving Americans. The rest of the world settled on putting the center of technology and arts and media and finance in the US, to hugely lucrative benefits for the US, with liberal free trade and IP protections and patent monopolies and a very healthy profit for Americans, but oh no someone else is making that low value crop and that needs to be undone.

"Data from the Ag Census cited by NAMA offer a compelling reason for the switch away from oats. Returns per acre are far higher for corn ($604) and soybeans ($544) than for oats ($111)."

Americans have some romance with the notion of "millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones". It's bizarre stuff.

toast0• 19 days ago

Americans have some romance with the notion of "millions and millions of human beings screwing in little, little screws to make iPhones". It's bizarre stuff.

Screwing in little, little screws to make stuff used to be a pretty decent job in the US. Most people can be trained for assembly work, which really isn't the case for tech, arts, media etc.

Most of that work is super repetitive and some of it is dangerous and etc, etc. Lots of reasons not to like doing it, but having it available as an option was pretty nice. That's why there's romantic feelings.

bell-cot2• 19 days ago

Returns per acre are far higher for corn ($604) and soybeans ($544) than for oats ($111).

How much of that difference is "natural", and how much is the Federal Gov't spending $billions to make it so?

https://www.fsa.usda.gov/news-events/news/04-08-2026/usda-an...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_policy_of_the_Uni...

ButlerianJihad• 19 days ago

Look, my fathers and their five fathers were all tech/EECS/radio guys; I learned PCB and soldering and schematics informally.

If I had my druthers, I would've trained early and diligently for a lifelong career in Electronics Assembly, because that should have been a solid and stable industry/job market.

But I did not, and it is not, in these United States. Pity.

Amezarak2• 19 days ago

The rest of the world settled on putting the center of technology and arts and media and finance in the US, to hugely lucrative benefits for the US, with liberal free trade and IP protections and patent monopolies and a very healthy profit for Americans,

The US is still the world's #2 manufacturer and it's still one of the biggest parts of the economy; 10x more people are employed in manufacturing than in the information sector. Moreover, manufacturing has been in a steep decline since the 1990s. The "romance" is people remembering well-paying jobs for people who are not interested in or cannot do tech, arts, media, or finance.

Centering your economy on those things deliberately would also be very foolish. Besides the fact you end up with a few urban cores with the rest of the country hollowed out (like the UK has seen), they are all things that are very easy to shift to other countries if there's a small cultural wind change - Hollywood especially is not in a great position in terms of "enduring global market titan."

At any rate it's absurd to say it's over and people should just give up on something that to this day employs so many people.

3eb7988a1663• 19 days ago

USDA[0] says that the US produces 1 million metric tons of oats per year, or 4% of global production. Sure, that is not the best, but clearly still in the game.

[0] https://www.fas.usda.gov/data/production/0452000

hn_throwaway_993• 19 days ago

I thought this was a fantastic read! In a time when I get nauseated by all the AI posts, the section about how the author's father rejiggered the supply chain to import oats from Canada was an excellent example of hacking to get a better solution and perfect content for Hacker News IMO:

Connecting Canada’s oat supply with U.S. mills was where my dad entered the story.
In a business that measured volume in millions of tons, squeezing even a few cents out of the supply chain could be extremely profitable. My dad, a gifted mechanic, excelled at finding creative ways to move oats cheaper than the other guy. For example, Canadian rail lines could deliver oats cheaply to Thunder Bay, Ontario, but rail freight across the border into the U.S. was expensive. My dad realized that instead of paying the high rail rates past Thunder Bay, oats could instead be loaded into a Great Lakes freighter designed to haul iron ore pellets (like the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald). Lake freighters typically unloaded their cargo in Thunder Bay and had to sail empty to pick up more iron ore on the U.S. side of the border. If you could fill them with oats in Thunder Bay, deliver the oats to Duluth, Minnesota, and then load the oats on U.S. rail lines, you could substantially cut shipping costs.
The problem was that Duluth’s elevators were built as a one-way spigot to ship grain out. Moving grain from a freighter into the elevator required a McGyver-esque solution. The grain company cut a hole in the side of the massive elevator bin so the lake freighters could pour oats into them, reversing the flow of grain from export to import. These kinds of fixes were how my dad made his living, and it’s how a supply chain was built.

danans• 19 days ago

Demand for oats increased in the 1980s when researchers announced that beta glucan, a type of fiber in oats, can lower cholesterol.

I'm skeptical that this was a factor, because in total only 5% of oats are used for human consumption. 95% is used for animal feed: https://oklahoma.agclassroom.org/resources/agricultural-fact...

I doubt it was that much different back then. This relates to the "Oat Mafia" that the article responds to:

https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/provi...

While I support their efforts to shift their industry toward human-consumption-grade vs animal feed-grade oats and more sustainable agricultural practices, they will have to also learn how to shape tastes (literally). I'm not sure that Americans are willing to shift their consumption from oat-fed animals toward oat-derived products. Realistically, they should plan on a generational scale project.

As this article indicates, the oat-consumption health fad has come and gone before (in the 1980s)- but it didn't make a significant shift in Americans' meat consumption. Arguably the only thing that will is higher prices of meat - which are now here, but for different reasons (drought, war-spiked energy and fertilizer costs, and now screw-worm).

moomin• 19 days ago

This is one of those little things I’ve had trouble putting my finger on: the US eats surprisingly few oats. The U.K. eats more than three times as much on average. Which is probably one of the reasons I find US cuisine slightly uncanny valley.

Southern Europe doesn’t really consume much either, but most US food is closer to Northern European food.

ikidd• 19 days ago

As long as corn and soybeans are subsidized via crop insurance, and propped up by biofuel mandates, oats will not be a popular crop in the US.

Canada doesn't do any such subsidies so oats make a lot of sense. In fact, some years it's our most profitable crop, even outstripping canola.

goodroot• 19 days ago

Kicked dairy about a decade ago. I'm grateful for oat milk.

Also, one of the very, very many examples of strong, necessary, and useful collaboration between Canada and the United States.

Happy Fourth of July, neighbours down south. I'm eager to be buds again.

hn_throwaway_993• 19 days ago

I am a bit surprised that oat milk is as popular as it is, given that, nutritionally, it's a very poor substitute for dairy as it's mostly just more sugar and carbs with very little protein.

In terms of non-dairy milk, soy milk is basically the only one that gets close to the nutritional value of dairy (and a lot of the fear mongering about endocrine effects of soy are just wrong). Even almond milk usually only has a teeny amount of actual almonds in it, as it's primarily just added water and sugar.

wizzwizz4• 19 days ago

and a lot of the fear mongering about endocrine effects of soy are just wrong

Farmed cow's milk contains enough oestrogens, progestogens, etc. that academics have argued (e.g. in the 00s) over the extent to which cow milk consumption affects human health. The macho crowd seem to think that it's implicitly obvious that the juice of a bean is more feminising than the mammary secretions of calved female mammals, from a lineage selectively bred to have massive udders. I don't understand this, but I do find it very funny. (From a distance. I like having teeth.)

That said, if there were a significant and obvious effect on humans from dairy (or substitutes), academics probably wouldn't have argued about it for so long.

IrishTechie• 19 days ago

I drink milk because a) I prefer flat whites to espressos and b) to make my cornflakes wet. In both cases I prefer oat milk and in neither cases do I care about nutrition. I’m guessing that’s the reason.

allthetime• 19 days ago

Soy milk is wildly superior to oat milk - I say as a vegan attempting to hit my nutrition targets. Oat milk is essentially flavoured water

antonvs4• 19 days ago

I drank cow’s milk for taste, not for health or nutritional reasons. It’s the same for oat milk.

xeromal• 19 days ago

I'm not big into vegetarian substitutes but oatmilk is legitimately delicious. It's good for lattes, cereal, whatever. I guess maybe not good for baking?

SketchySeaBeast• 19 days ago

Yup. I don't normally eat vegan but, if I'm drinking a latte, it's gonna be oatmilk.

bardak• 19 days ago

The thing that gets me is that the price of oat milk is so completely divorced from what it cost to produce. It's absolutely wild that oat milk, made with one of the cheapest bulk grains, is as expensive as almond milk, made with an expensive nut.

VorpalWay2• 19 days ago

For baking: depends on the recipe. In one recipe of a sort of muffin style bread that uses egg to rise (no baking powder, yeast, etc), oat milk makes it not rise properly and you get dense bricks instead. Other recipes have been fine. YMMV.

(Though, I quite like the non-homogenized full fat milk with bits of thick cream floating on top too. Oat milk, while pretty good, got nothing on that. Perfect on the porridge for breakfast.)

browningstreet• 19 days ago

The almond/coconut cream substitutes are my favorite but most coffee shops don’t stock them. Bought my own espresso machine because I got tired of dairy after effects when indulging in cold brews from coffee shops. Straight espressos are safer in that respect.

I eat steel cut oats every day but can’t really do oat milk. Not enough texture or flavor. I’d rather use Ripple in my oats for that little bit of extra.

Straight dairy tastes too weird to me now.

specialist• 19 days ago

+1 coconut cream

Before switching to daily steel cut oats, I made "oat milk" for my daily smoothie.

Rolled oats, water, and an enzyme (banana, honey, yogurt), quick frappé, let it sit in the fridge overnight. Add the rest of smoothie ingredients in the morning.

(I love almonds, but they don't love me.)

Scoundreller• 19 days ago

My dad realized that instead of paying the high rail rates past Thunder Bay, oats could instead be loaded into a Great Lakes freighter designed to haul iron ore pellets (like the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald). Lake freighters typically unloaded their cargo in Thunder Bay and had to sail empty to pick up more iron ore on the U.S. side of the border. If you could fill them with oats in Thunder Bay, deliver the oats to Duluth, Minnesota, and then load the oats on U.S. rail lines, you could substantially cut shipping costs.

The fun part about the “upper” Great Lakes is that some ships were built on it that can go through the Soo Locks, but not the Welland Canal. So they’re just stuck there moving ore (and I guess oats).

https://saultstemarie.com/the-ultimate-list-of-1000-foot-fre...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Paul_R._Tregurtha

swed420• 19 days ago

Can we get rid of the chlormequat while we're at it?

https://www.earth.com/news/banned-chemical-chlormequat-found...

chickensong2• 19 days ago

I don't drink oat milk, but man I love oats. Oatmeal is so good. Oatmeal cookies, oat crumble, goo balls, muesli, overnight oats, rolled, steel-cut, all of it. I make oatmeal sourdough bread that's like a meal in a slice, literally just put leftover oatmeal in the dough.

Just waving the flag for team-oat here. Thanks Canadian oat farmers!

antonvs4• 19 days ago

I’m with you. For beer drinkers, there’s also oatmeal stout - try Samuel Smith’s version, which is widely available and very good.

Plus I cook oatmeal using oat milk.

garettmd• 19 days ago

I'm not a huge stout fan but Sam Smith's is pretty outstanding.

chickensong2• 19 days ago

How could I forget oatmeal stout, I love it also! Nice one!

burnt-resistor• 19 days ago

PSA: In the US, always buy organic oats because non-organic are typically laden with unknowable amounts of glyphosate residues as it is sprayed with it as a desiccant near harvest time to reduce harvesting costs. The root cause is America's sick agri corp industry imposes undeclared substances of varying toxicity on consumers without their consent because of a lack of regulation based on monitoring, enforcement, and the precautionary principle.

My dad helped build North America's oat supply chain: Can it be remade?

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