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Minnesota's Alt-Meat Revolution: 'Quiet' revolution taking hold in Midwest ag

Tom Cherveny — Tue, 27 Jun 2023 19:15:48 GMT

DAWSON, Minn. — There’s a quiet revolution taking place in agriculture, although you can’t really see it in the fields yet.

Listen for it instead in the kitchen, where it’s no louder than the sizzle of a plant-based burger on the griddle or the whisk of a plant-based egg mix being readied for one.

More people are incorporating plant-based protein into their diets, adopting what Abigail Krentz, a senior research scientist at the University of Minnesota’s Plant Protein Innovation Center, likes to call a “flexitarian” approach to their diets. They still turn to meat for much of their protein, but are increasingly open to plant-based protein as well.

Plant-based protein is nothing new. It’s been a part of diets for centuries, Krentz pointed out while being interviewed in the second installment of “Minnesota’s Alt-Meat Revolution,” a joint project involving Pioneer Public Broadcasting System, the West Central Tribune and the WORLD Channel.

What has really changed, Krentz explained, is that the move toward more plant-based protein has gone mainstream. America’s early forays into alt-meat products in the 1970s and into the early 1980s focused largely on bean-based burgers and soybean-based imitations of meats. Their intended customers were vegetarians and vegans, which represented only a small subset of the larger consumer market.

These early products, including some soybean-based versions produced by Dawson Mills in Dawson, never gained a stronghold in mainstream markets.

The Plant Protein Innovation Center where Krentz conducts her research is housed in the Food Science and Nutrition Building on the U of M’s St. Paul campus. In some respects, the work is very much in keeping with the tradition of the Green Revolution, launched in part by the University’s Norman Borlaug, who brought modern agricultural production technology to the world.

Much of what is learned at the center is meant to be transferable to the world at large. One of what she calls the most exciting projects is in collaboration with Microsoft and involves identifying all the unique characteristics of the proteins contained in a wide range of plants.

The proteins in various plants carry compounds that can have off flavors. Identifying them and developing ways to remove them can be essential to what this revolution is all about: bringing more plants to the table for humans.

Because first of all, they’ve got to taste good.

“People want to consume what they are comfortable with and seem very familiar to them,” Krentz said.

That understanding is essential to knowing why the western Minnesota community of Dawson, population 1,454, is again playing a leading role in the transformation taking place.

It’s home to PURIS, now housed in the 200,000-square-foot facility originally built by Dawson Mills. A PURIS workforce of roughly 100 people devote their days to extracting protein from yellow field peas for use in a wide range of human foods, from plant-based burgers to plant-based eggs, diet supplements and snack foods.

Company founders Jerry and Renee Lorenzen realized in 1984 that as the world population grew to a projected 10 billion, plant-based protein would have to play a larger role in feeding everyone. Jerry Lorenzen saw the inefficiencies that are inherent in raising crops to feed livestock to provide protein for people, said his daughter, Nicole Atchinson.

She and her brother, Tyler, now oversee the company that their parents launched. Atchison is CEO of PURIS Holdings. She said her father originally began his work by selectively breeding soybeans as a source of protein.

Soybeans remain a big part of the company’s business, but her father also discovered the benefits of turning to yellow field peas. The texture and other characteristics of the pea protein made them ideal for producing high-quality foods for people, she explained.

The company opened a processing plant in Turtle Lake, Wisconsin, and quickly realized it needed to expand production. A $100 million infusion of capital from Cargill led the company to Dawson, where it purchased and retrofitted what is now one of the world’s largest pea processing facilities.

Plant-based burgers get much of the attention, but whether they prove to be a staple of the American diet or a fad is not all that matters. Pea protein is finding its way as an ingredient in a growing range of products.

Most importantly, the trend toward producing more plant-based protein is on firm ground. With a growing world population, there is a need for more diversity in protein sources. The vast majority of the corn and soybeans raised today are for animal feed or fuel, Atchison pointed out.

By growing more plants to provide protein directly to humans, rather than through livestock, we can raise the food we need on existing farmlands instead of converting more wild lands to production, she explained.

A growing number of consumers are realizing what her parents understood 20 years ago, and are acting on that knowledge. Atchison said consumers today have access to information about the carbon footprint and environmental costs associated with the current food production model. And, consumers are more aware of the health benefits of making plant-based foods a larger share of their diets.

As a result, more are conscious of their buying practices to incorporate plant-based proteins.

The website for the U of M’s College of Food, Agriculture and Natural Resource Science points it out this way:

31% of consumers say they will eat more plant protein in the next five years. 36% of those eating meat say they are concerned about the environmental impact of it.

Atchinson said there is another equally important change steering the move toward plant-based foods. Technology.

“It makes the food taste great,” she said.

The industry has come a long way from the bean- and soybean-foods of the 1970s that were dubious imitations of the meats people enjoy.

Proof of the growing acceptance of today’s plant-based foods can be found in the heart of Dawson at the Rusty Duck bar and restaurant, where a pea-protein-based burger is now a standard on the menu. With the cameras of Pioneer PBS focused on him, kitchen manager John Schneider admits that he was skeptical about this plant-based burger when he flipped his first one from the grill onto a bun.

“I was very, very shocked that they actually tasted as good as they are,” he said.

While farm fields in western Minnesota remain the domain of corn, soybeans and sugar beets, change may be coming.

PURIS now raises most of its yellow field peas in the vicinity of Harrold, South Dakota, where it acquired a processing plant for them. Atchison said there’s no doubt. Acre per acre, corn and soybeans and sugar beets produce more profit for Minnesota farmers than yellow field peas.

But she believes the time will come when legume crops such as yellow field peas will be incorporated into the rotation to add nitrogen into the soil for corn. She foresees the day when yellow field peas — or other specialty crops — and corn can be raised in sequence on the same ground in the same growing season, adding to the farmer's profitability.

And that, according to Krentz, is exactly the sort of research already underway in the Plant Protein Innovation Center.

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Minnesota’s Alt-Meat Revolution: Dawson gets ground-floor start in plant-based protein

Tom Cherveny — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 17:56:09 GMT

DAWSON, Minn. — One of Dawson’s most popular gathering places is the Rusty Duck, and the menu has a lot to do with it.

Patrons appreciate its traditional Midwestern fare, everything from hot roast beef specials to barbecue ribs, steaks and burger baskets. Dawson is very much a traditional meat-and-potatoes community when it comes to food preferences, according to Jay Knoop, who helps serve up the Rusty Duck’s popular menu.

But Knoop said it’s not all meat and potatoes. Here in the heart of western Minnesota farm country, a veggie burger is also on the menu. Real meat burgers remain the most popular, but Knoop said the veggie burger does well.

How did an alternative meat burger find its way on the Rusty Duck’s menu? There is the matter of supporting one of the community’s largest employers.

PURIS Company has been processing pea protein in the former AMPI plant on the eastern edge of Dawson since October 2021. The plant employs more than 100 workers. The 200,000-square-foot facility with state-of-the-art processing equipment represents a more than $100 million investment as a partnership involving PURIS and Cargill.

Pea protein produced by PURIS makes its way into a wide range of food products, from high-energy bars and body-building mixes to alternative meat burgers.

“This is more than a pea protein facility,” PURIS President Tyler Lorenzen said in the companies’ joint news release announcing the partnership. “This is the future of food.”

This is familiar territory for Dawson. This rural community of just over 1,400 people has been in the vanguard of plant-based protein production for more than half a century. In fact, the building that now houses PURIS in Dawson was originally constructed in the mid-1970s by Dawson Mills to extract protein from soybeans.

The history of the rise of plant-based meats and western Minnesota’s role in this still-evolving endeavor is the subject of a series produced by Pioneer PBS for national broadcast. The West Central Tribune is participating in the venture. Pioneer PBS made the first of the series available for streaming in March.

The first series delves into the history of plant-based protein in Dawson. While it’s a story of being on the cutting edge in the food revolution, its origin story is a familiar one in rural Minnesota.

Being located far from the country’s major urban markets, Minnesota farmers have often received a lower price for their grains due to the shipping costs to get them to market. In response, Minnesota farmers have long focused on value-added processing.

That’s exactly what four Dawson-area businessmen proposed over their morning coffee one day, according to David Craigmile, a retired Lac qui Parle County farmer and educator as well as local historian. He said the businessmen decided: “We need to have an ag processing-related business in the area.”

The Tri-County Cooperative started processing soybeans in 1951 and became Dawson Mills in 1969. It has since become part of a larger company, Ag Processing Inc., and continues to process soybeans in the heart of Dawson as the community’s largest employer.

Dawson Mills was forward-thinking.

“In my mind, it was ahead of its time,” said Lee Gunderson, who retired as plant manager after 35 years with Dawson Mills.

The soybean processor was among the first to venture into extracting protein from soybeans. It built a processing facility east of town — which is now housing the PURIS operations — for extracting protein from soybeans for human consumption.

It purchased technology from General Mills, which had also produced plant-based protein for human consumption, to produce high-protein cubes flavored as beef, chicken or pork. The cubes were intended for human consumption. They were typically added to macaroni salads and similar dishes, Gunderson said.

Much of the protein produced by Dawson Mills was shipped overseas as part of a U.S. government-sponsored Food for Peace program, according to Gunderson. It was intended to improve diets in Third World countries.

Dawson Mills also produced a soybean isolate, a high-protein powder that could be added to baby formula and a variety of other products.

Dawson Mills faced many challenges as a pioneer. There were “scares” when traces of chemicals detrimental to livestock were found in some of the plant-based protein products processed for use as animal feed. The company changed its chemical extraction process in response.

Gunderson said the company was quick to adapt its equipment and develop new equipment to produce a range of protein products in response to inquiries from prospective customers. But those investments also worked against the company, he said, as the markets that were needed did not develop or prove to be sustaining.

Bernice Oeillien, who retired after 50 years as an administrative assistant with Dawson Mills, summed it up this way for Pioneer PBS: “We thought we're really going to be doing something here, and expanding, and helping the farmers out, and the elevators, and all of the feed, and it looked really great. And I think, maybe if we could have exposed people more to how to use it, and what was really involved, it would've been better. But that's hindsight, you just don't know.”

By 1981, Dawson’s foray into meatless meats came to its end. The building on the city’s east side was purchased by American Milk Producers Inc. and was retrofitted to produce cheese foods from 1982 to 2012.

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