Menu

Tag: Sosland Publishing Centennial

Posted on

Reporting from the edge

By Laurie Gorton

July 2022

Reporting from
the edge

Monthly magazine explores how, where and why supermarket innovations happen

Supermarket Perimeter

Supermarket operators know that all the excitement happens today around the perimeter of the store. Now they have a publication that recognizes and celebrates such change: Supermarket Perimeter.

Introduced by Sosland Publishing three years ago, this monthly magazine and its digital products focus on the fresh operations that encompass circle the outer edges of grocery stores and supermarkets.

“Freshness, health, variety, flavor, innovation, authenticity, experiences — it’s little wonder that perimeter departments are getting the most buzz and generating the biggest sales increases,” wrote Andy Nelson, managing editor, Supermarket Perimeter and bake, in his Editor’s Note column for the magazine’s inaugural issue, January 2019. “We at Sosland Publishing have been hearing it for years.”

From corners to full perimeter

Supermarket Perimeter is exclusively focused on the fresh perimeter area of retail grocery stores. Its editorial teams cover the latest trends impacting the entire fresh perimeter and provide their expert insights on the news and trends impacting the perimeter’s key categories, including bakery, deli/prepared foods, produce, dairy, meat, poultry, seafood and more. The magazine also includes the popular Commissary Insider as a monthly supplement.

Troy Ashby, publisher, Supermarket Perimeter and bake, explained the evolution of the new standalone monthly magazine.

“Having served the grocery in-store bakery and in-store deli segment since 2005 with inStore Buyer and then inStore, we had a front row seat to see what was taking place in the perimeter area of grocery and were in a great position to expand our coverage to include insights for all fresh perimeter departments, including bakery and deli,” he said.

The move from inStore to Supermarket Perimeter was a natural next step. According to Ashby, the change was to fold coverage of the in-store bakery and in-store deli into the larger category of fresh. There were good market reasons for doing so.

Statistically solid positioning

“The evolution from inStore to Supermarket Perimeter largely was driven by the increased focus on and investment in fresh perimeter departments as a whole that grocery operations were making in the 2010s,” he added.

The Food Marketing Institute (FMI), the field’s leading trade association, continues to illuminate this trend with a series of webinars, podcasts and TED talks addressing Top Trends in Fresh. It noted that “retailers who are on the forefront of marketing and merchandising these products grow sales up to 25% faster than average.”

Earlier this year, FMI reaffirmed the importance of fresh: “Fresh food has had a phenomenal two-year run, with sales reaching an all-time high as people continue to eat at home and seek stores and meal ideas that meet their needs.”

FMI states that more than half of all supermarket sales involve perishables. It describes fresh as the ultimate disruptive grocery category.

“Fresh saw solid growth with even service-oriented departments like bakery and deli showing strong sales as both expected and surprising areas grew within fresh, leveraging the trends of health, fresh prepared/convenience, taste exploration and customization,” the group noted.

This trend continued despite the pandemic.

For example, a Supermarket Perimeter Daily email of April 19, 2022, reported: “Organic meat is booming. In the past year, organic meat sales have grown 37% vs. two years ago, outpacing the meat department, which grew 20%, according to Nielsen data.”

Such findings, reported over the past decade, paved the way for Sosland to launch Supermarket Perimeter. Ashby said that Rick Stein, FMI’s vice president of fresh foods, is one of the magazine’s authoritative sources.

“In our annual food industry speaks report, members tell us what’s going on,” Stein said in the March 2021 issue of Supermarket Perimeter. “And what’s happening in is stores are differentiating themselves in the perimeter. It’s a part of their key strategy.”

The importance of the perimeter is also emphasized by the International Dairy Deli Bakery Association (IDDBA), which recently described the importance of the fresh category by noting the proliferation of new channels, such as convenience stores and club stores, now competing with grocery.

Supermarkets still have built-in advantages that other channels can’t match.

“You’re not going to smell fresh bread being baked, you’re not going to see sandwiches or pizza being made, or the variety of cheeses or sampling,” according to IDDBA. “Fresh departments have greater roles now than they had decades ago.”

Audience and competition

Statistics about the audience of Supermarket Perimeter position the magazine as a premier marketing vehicle for advertisers serving the fresh departments of supermarkets.

Supermarket Perimeter is offered in both print and digital formats. It maintains active social media sites. It also offers a slate of digital products that include daily and weekly email newsletters, including Protein Insight Weekly and the monthly Perimeter Food Safety. Advertisers can also take advantage of customized webinars, targeted email marketing programs, white papers and e-zines.

The publisher estimates that advertisers have nearly 4 million opportunities annually to connect with their customers via Supermarket Perimeter and its affiliated properties. Print circulation for the monthly magazine averages 10,927 per issue, with digital circulation of 28,698 per issue. And the combined monthly newsletter circulation comes to 264,255.

Circulation by business class finds 78% grocery, supermarket, club; 11% commissary, central kitchen, bakery; and 10% distributor, broker.

“With inStore, we were already reaching c-suite titles, such as vice-president of perishables, director of fresh foods, etc. who had oversight of all fresh perimeter departments,” Ashby said. “So, the expansion to cover all fresh perimeter departments provided an even stronger media product for that portion of our audience.”

It is the only publication in the business-to-business field to focus exclusively on the fresh perimeter of retail food stores. In this, the magazine enjoys a distinctive competitive advantage.

“Supermarket Perimeter is unique in the fact that there isn’t a mirror competitor of the publication/media in the industry,” Mr. Ashby said.

Focused on fresh

“We decided to transform InStore magazine, which covered just in-store deli and bakery, into Supermarket Perimeter because of the incredible growth throughout the fresh perimeter departments,” Nelson said. “Produce, meat and poultry and seafood are also making huge gains at retail. We also saw an under-explored opportunity: Supermarket Perimeter is the only trade publication that focuses exclusively on grocery fresh departments.”

John Unrein, editor, bake and Supermarket Perimeter, explained further. “Each month, Supermarket Perimeter delivers the insight and information bakery, deli/prepared foods, produce, dairy, meat/poultry and seafood executives and decision makers need to meet new challenges and capitalize on the opportunities in today’s dynamic market.”

“We want our work to give retailers practical ideas for ways to improve their fresh departments,” Nelson noted.

It’s a market willing to support both print and digital products. “Many of our readers still like the experience of reading longer-form pieces in our monthly print/digital editions,” Nelson said, “but the times are certainly changing, and we also need to cater to subscribers who want their news and analysis delivered more frequently and in easily digestible chunks.”

To celebrate the Sosland Centennial, Supermarket Perimeter has produced several articles discussing changes that occurred during the past 100 years in fresh presentation (March 2021) and preparation technology (November 2021). Others are planned to look at product development and predict future innovations for foods sold along the perimeter of grocery stores.

You might also enjoy:

Reporting from the edge

Reporting from the edge

Monthly magazine explores how, where and why supermarket innovations happen.

The bake story

The bake story

This innovative publishing platform now observantly reports about the changing face of retail baking.

Posted on

Future is now: Incremental advances improve highly efficient, labor-light flour mills

By Matt Noltemeyer

June 28, 2022

Future is now:

Incremental advances improve
highly efficient, labor-light flour mills

On the occasion of its 100th year chronicling the evolution of milling in the United States and reporting on the commodity markets that feed the world, Milling & Baking News spoke with milling experts about the technological leaps, bounds and baby steps that led to the modern flour mill.

Milling & Baking News

©xreflex – STOCK.ADOBE.COM

A grain professional’s device pings early on a Wednesday: A VP has a VIP in need of 30,000 cwts of bread flour, ASAP.

Since the mill had cake flour grind scheduled today, the worker mentally tallies the steps to make the switch.

He pours a coffee, commutes to the cozy cockpit of his home office, fires up the machinery and completes an authenticator eye scan.

A few taps at the tablet and he’s put the cake flour grind on hold. A few more taps and the line, in the plant a few miles away, begins to make the necessary adjustments for milling hard red winter wheat into bread flour without ever turning the lights on.

Another couple keystrokes and the soft WIP — work in progress — wheat is set for a few more hours in the temper bin. Next, the automated mill dutifully collects a precise volume of winter wheat, dampens it with the additive solution that will have the bran toughened just right and the endosperm appropriately mellow by the mid-morning coffee break.

During the grind, the mill will continually monitor quality parameters and issue data on each wheat berry. Should a problem arise with the specs or a mechanical part, the mill will divert product to a holding bin while troubleshooting takes place, avoiding a mess on the floor. A self-regulating pneumatic system will convey just enough product to avoid wasting energy and adjust automatically if the flow rate deviates.

A scene from a wheat miller’s dream?

Yes and no.

More precisely, that tableau mixes technologies already used in many flour mills that are expected to become more refined, more efficient and more commonplace in the coming years, with what some see as “the Holy Grail of wheat milling.”

On the occasion of its 100th year chronicling the evolution of milling in the United States and reporting on the commodity markets that feed the world, Milling & Baking News spoke with milling experts about the technological leaps, bounds and baby steps that led to the modern flour mill; where flour production technology most likely is headed next; and what improvements will transform the industry when value-added solutions to age-old problems emerge. Some milling equipment manufacturers were reluctant to be interviewed because they didn’t want to give away ideas they were working on or developing

Millstones and pneumatics

In the beginning there were millstones. By the 15th century, millers began to work out the grind-sift-grind process to reduce the kernel, endosperm and bran into flour.

Innovations such as the roller milling system in the 1870s revolutionized the industry to a degree that perhaps hasn’t yet been eclipsed. After all, rollers endure as the foundational technology in the world’s newest, largest, most efficient flour mills.

Incremental advances consistently reduced the mill labor force, eventually eliminating such roles as smutters controlling the clearing house, bolters steering the sifting house, truckers tugging the hand carts. By the 1950s, longer-lasting parts meant equipment broke down less often. When pneumatic conveying superseded bucket elevators, mills became cleaner, safer places with fewer sweepers.

“The genius of the gradual reduction system of milling is that a mill can produce multiple grades of flour contemporaneously, fine cake flour, pretzel flour, cookie flour,” said Richard Siemer, president of Siemer Milling, Teutopolis, Ill. “We can blend it back and forth and sift it apart. Milling technology, at the heart of it, is innovations that took place in the 1700s and the middle-1800s. For the most part, in the 20th and 21st centuries, what we’ve been seeing is just refinement. If we could resurrect a good miller from a good mill who died in 1900, bring him into a modern mill today, he’d understand the process almost immediately. You would of course have to train him on computers, and the scarcity of mill workers would be part of his cognitive dissonance.”

For the near term, more such incremental improvements to existing technologies are expected. For example, while pneumatic cleaning systems are more sanitary, they tend to use more energy than mechanical sorting. The US power grid amply provides for that. But in other countries and with customer expectations trending green, there is an opportunity to raise the efficiency of the cleaner technology.

The new mills that have come online in the past five years are some of the largest in the world, a trend that’s likely to continue.

“If you check into Sosland’s Grain & Milling Annual archives, as I do from time to time, and you look back into the 1980s, 10,000 sacks a day, or 600 tons, was a pretty big mill, but I don’t think that would make the list of the 25 biggest mills in the states today,” said Scott Martin, senior director of technical milling with Ardent Mills, Denver. “Back then, I worked at a 10,000-sack mill that had two sifter floors, 17 individual sifters, holding about 94 sifter sections. A modern 10,000-sack-a-day mill has maybe 4 sifters and maybe half as many sections. Fewer machines, bigger machines make for more simplicity, fewer labor resources, which are good improvements, and it’s good to see progress.”

©henadzy - STOCK.ADOBE.COM

NIR and working from afar

A flour mill today is an efficient, computerized version of the roller mill and gradual reduction systems in place for many decades. Millers who in the 1960s looked to floor spills to spot problems now have a real-time understanding of how each element in the plant is performing, all viewed from screens in a control room or even from another location. That area continues to expand with each generation of technology introduced. The miller who in the 1970s regularly replaced worn belts to avoid potential fire hazards now runs lines mostly controlled by direct drives and, increasingly, variable frequency drives to run fans, airlocks and other components intelligent enough to sense a potential stoppage and divert product before the elements likely to cause combustion align.

The arrival of NIR, or near-infrared reflectance, meant millers no longer had to manipulate samples with their fingers or take them off site to a lab where a technician with a scale and an oven took four hours to test the product. NIR shortened the wait to minutes. Moving the data analysis computer to the mill streamlined things, as did training millers to calculate their own results. The latest updates automated the process and moved it online.

“Knowing the quality of flour is important, and if it can be done automatically, it frees the shift miller to do something that can’t be done automatically, plus the mill and its customers get a better measure of quality because we’re measuring it all the time,” Mr. Martin said. “If a quality parameter isn’t where it needs to be, we can divert that product to a different storage bin, do some troubleshooting and know we have that product isolated for corrective action. A mill has to have the resources behind it to keep the instruments calibrated, and with most now on a network, it’s all about whether the network is strong enough. It’s a pretty exciting part of where the industry is going.”

These technologies and other examples of mills essentially running themselves are the future of flour milling, experts said. Already there are autonomous mill tracks in place that can run without a human in the building. It’s commonly called lights-out milling because when the miller leaves the area and the sensor times out, darkness ensues, but the mill continues to clean, sort, sift and grind.

Multi-national equipment manufacturers such as Bühler are striving to stay at the forefront of automation innovation.

“Their ambition is to create an autonomous mill that really could operate by itself if a company wanted to or needed to,” Mr. Siemer said. “You can’t eliminate the human factor, but it’s another step toward automation.”

As the 21st century rolls on, experts foresee manufacturers such as Bühler incorporating more electronics, more sensors, and enhancing multi-point sensor-based data collection. Essentially, sensors present real-time data on the temperature of the equipment, vibration, throughput and many more that comprise a massive trove of measurements being taken every second. Mills have to figure out what data are important for their grind and how to apply it toward improving the process. That typically means using data to improve mill yield, to keep flour products within specifications and to run in the most energy efficient way possible.

“The challenge is doing something with the data to tell us more about flour quality and productivity and energy usage — that’s when the data adds value,” Mr. Martin said. “You have to have the means to analyze data and then put value into what the data tells you. We’re just on the cusp of that. We’re starting to have roller mills that can tell us about roll temperature and roll force and kilowatts consumed — all toward reaching maximum efficiency and productivity.”

Another key benefit? Integrated control systems that join on-site and remote management enabling remote troubleshooting.

“In our case, working with Bühler, a miller can literally dial up Switzerland or Minneapolis and ask that person to get online and view the operating parameters and consult on what to do about it,” Mr. Siemer said. “Software suppliers can open the hatch, get inside and try to diagnose your system. Millers in different locations of the same organization can also share information with each other. It’s something we’ve just been able to do within the past few years, to call on experts, reliable people from different places and have them actually participate in the troubleshooting process in real time.”

As US flour mills continue to migrate to new technology and processes that are more autonomous, there will be a need for skilled mill workers schooled in the new and the old, said Kent Juliot, vice president of research, quality and technical services with Ardent Mills.

“Even in 10 years, the industry will still have older mills, so you’ll need people that know both sides, those who can manually adjust mill rolls but also understand the logic of an automated controls system,” Mr. Juliot said. “With labor shortages, newer systems can reduce the number of people needed, but the pressure from the technical side will be even greater, because the education and knowledge will have to span all the way down to just above the waterwheel. The future of milling is going to be exciting and new, but we can’t forget the old.”

Sorted and binned

The methods for removing corn, soybeans, husks, straw and other dockage from incoming wheat were once limited to a basic separator and a scourer to clean out the dust from the crease. Mechanical cleaning gave way to aspiration, which paved the way for precision grain cleaning systems such as the color, or optical, sorter. It’s the closest thing to a revolutionary technology the industry had seen in about 60 years.

These cleaning systems combine sophisticated cameras with precision equipment using sharp blasts of air to knock out impurities that may have commingled with wheat at an elevator or aboard a rail car. It eliminates non-grain contaminants and sorts supplies by characteristic. Color sorters have improved consistently since their debut. Today, most all new plants employ them, and many older mills have retrofitted them. The technology has moved from black-and-white to color cameras and now to infrared scanning. Sorting technology today allows mills to better handle damaged wheat. For example, it can salvage more good wheat from a shipment with elevated dockage, disease such as scab and other macrotoxins, such as vomitoxin. It’s clear to experts that the future holds further refinement of optical sorting technology.

“Mill technology keeps improving, and if we think to the future, the technology in sorters will probably blow our minds in ways we can’t even dream of right now,” Mr. Juliot said. “For example, they currently use spectral analysis that can give you an actual analysis of each individual wheat berry and, in my opinion, they’ll become amazingly high-tech in the foreseeable future.”

Cleaning out impurities relies on the color sorter, which compares kernels with references it’s already learned, and reacts quicker than any human ever could. But what of the nearly invisible threats to food safety, the mycotoxins? Cutting-edge technology on the horizon aims to eliminate them with a method more efficient and economical than ever at a time when the US Food and Drug Administration has indicated pathogens are on their radar and near the top of their list.

“Pathogens are right up there with leafy greens and everything else on FDA’s list, so having a mitigation step in place, they expect you to have it,” said Brad Allen, chief technical officer at PHM Brands, Denver.

Several methods of handling this problem are on the horizon. One of those already operates at PHM’s Dawn, Texas, plant, having been adapted for the food industry by PHM Brands’ Energis Solutions in a joint venture with the technology’s inventors. Energis is manufacturing equipment that produces a treatment solution on site. It yields a similar reduction to other systems developed since the turn of the century 22 years ago, “but we’re doing the head end of the process, so you’re not making a ready-to-eat claim like other methods do, but you’re getting the brand protection and you’re not going to get a recall,” Mr. Allen said.

The advance of that and future pathogen elimination technologies could spur adoption of an industry-wide standard, a development that would please Mr. Siemer.
“It’s not something I’d like to make any money on as a proprietary advantage,” he said. “I’d just like to have everybody agree that we’re going to use it for certain products. And I’d like to see it applied to flour rather than wheat, because that gives you a lot more flexibility. Unfortunately, none of the systems that I’m aware of right now are used on flour, they’re used on wheat before milling. It gets kind of complicated. I know it’s significant right now, and I think it’s going to become more so.”

Genomes and unknowns

Some of the innovations likely to shape and shift flour production in the future are beyond the horizon for now. Breeders manipulate wheat to create varieties more likely to thrive in certain growing environments or to increase resistance to disease pressure. At some point, experts said, biotechnology and research in the wheat genome will generate some major advances to the milling process of flour production. That may have to do with the ease of processing the kernel, adjusting qualities such as protein, reducing gluten’s impact on those afflicted with celiac disease, or increasing gluten strength for use in pizza doughs, variety bread, and perhaps even pancakes.

“As long as wheat quality is, as they used to say, 70% nature and 30% nurture, or 30% genetics, 70% environment, you’re not going to be able to be really precise, but I believe that biotechnology will soon have the biggest impact on the wheat foods industry in a positive way,” Mr. Siemer said. “If as many resources had been put into breeding wheat as have been put into breeding corn over the past 90 years, we’d be a lot further along, but that’s our particular cross to bear.”

Near the top of Mr. Siemer’s wish list is a boost to soft wheat resistance to alpha-amylase activity. That’s an enzyme in the wheat that starts to break down the endosperm very shortly after the kernel is fully ripe, especially if moisture is introduced via rain on a mature, ripe crop. It leads to sprouting, which reduces the viscosity of the flour and locks it out of some applications, such as pie crusts.

“If wheat could just sit out there in the field for a week without degrading, as distinct from sitting out there for an hour if it starts raining, that would be enormous for the milling quality of wheat and would be one factor in the attractiveness of wheat as a crop here in the eastern Corn Belt,” Mr. Siemer said. “It would be more reliable. Farmers would know when they harvested it that it would be of good quality.”

After quality is established, wheat headed for the mill typically stops off for a lengthy stay in the temper bin to ready the kernels for efficient sorting. Of all the advances in milling over the years, the temper time has proven a tough nut that’s yet to be cracked.

“One thing that hasn’t changed over the years is the miller’s desire for 24 hours of temper time for milling hard wheat,” Mr. Martin said. “If we could find a means to achieve the physical changes to the wheat kernel in a shorter time, it would be greatly beneficial. Bigger mills require more space for work-in-progress, or tempered, wheat. Bigger bins mean greater capital investment.

“Also, if the mill is grinding spring wheat and the flour silos get full, I still have all that spring wheat WIP in my temper bins. I can’t change to another grist, so the mill has to stop and wait for space to come available in the flour silos. Mills with a 24-hour temper time have to know what they’re going to do tomorrow today. They can’t turn the mill on a dime so to speak.”

There have only been marginal improvements in tempering over the past few years. A step-change in technology to shorten the planning cycle or the development of an additive to reduce temper time to just a few hours but retain the effects for optimal grind is seen by the industry as a Holy Grail because of the flexibility it would enable.
“If there were a way to do that,” Mr. Juliot said, “it would be transformative.”

Until such an innovation comes along, improvements in flour milling efficiency, efficacy and food safety will continue to be incremental, millers and grain industry leaders say. And that’s not a bad thing, Mr. Siemer noted.

“I heard a miller say 45 years ago in one of my first months in the business, ‘I’d hate to be the person known for building the last grind-and-sift flour mill,’” he said. “But honestly, we’ve gone for all these decades, and nobody has come up with a better way of making flour, so we’ll see.” what happens.”

Anhui Jietal Intelligent Technology

You might also enjoy:

Future is now for milling technology

Future is now for milling technology

A grain professional’s device pings early on a Wednesday: A VP has a VIP in need of 30,000 cwts of bread flour, ASAP.  

A look ahead

A look ahead

Technology that promotes sustainability, efficiency and connectedness will take the baking industry into the future.

From chalkboards to computers, futures evolve with the market

From chalkboards to computers, futures evolve with the market

One hundred years ago grain futures markets depended on hand signals, observers and chalkboards with posted prices to keep traders on the floor aware of the most recent prices.

Posted on

Catalysts for change

By Charlotte Atchley

June 2022

Catalysts
for change

The pressures of regulation and consumer demand have led to significant advances in food science for the baking industry.

Baking & Snack

©JHVEPhoto – stock.adobe.com

Innovation comes from many places. Sometimes it’s born out of need: a new regulation nullifies the use of a reliable ingredient. Other times it comes from an individual asking the simple question: Does it have to be this way? Occasionally, a person just wants to recreate the bread of their homeland in their new country.


Regardless of how innovation starts, it can be revolutionary. And the baking industry has seen much transformation over the past 100-plus years, from the commercialization of yeast to the many ingredients that make automated bakery production possible. Bakers and food scientists have been tinkering and reformulating to find new ways to reduce saturated fat, make whole grains more palatable and meet consumers’ ever-changing demands for less additives and more natural, healthful — but delicious — baked goods.

You might also enjoy:

Sustainability Strategies

Sustainability Strategies

Today’s meat and poultry processors carefully manage expectations to feed people, preserve the planet and deliver profits in the future.

Automation Mission

Automation Mission

Slaughtering and processing facilities where meat and poultry are manufactured have improved dramatically over the past 100-plus years.

Future is now for milling technology

Future is now for milling technology

A grain professional’s device pings early on a Wednesday: A VP has a VIP in need of 30,000 cwts of bread flour, ASAP.  

Standardizing the rise

More than one hundred years ago, the commercial baking industry was born from a culmination of many technological advancements. Milling technology improved to enable large-scale flour production. The industrial revolution brought about equipment that allowed bakers to use up all that flour and commercially bake bread. The commercialization of yeast by the Fleischmann family, however, standardized a chemical reaction that until that point had largely been guesswork and accident.

 

The Fleischmanns certainly didn’t invent yeast. In 1857, it was Louis Pasteur who discovered what yeast could do. By studying fermentation, Mr. Pasteur confirmed that yeast was a microorganism, and that it converted sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. He also found out that yeast contaminated with Lactobacillus produced a souring lactic acid, and that if air was added during the fermentation process, the yeast would multiply. While these discoveries led to Mr. Pasteur’s contributions to medical science, it also provided every industry that uses yeast the foundational scientific knowledge to harness specific strains and make them more consistent.


Enter the Fleischmann family, specifically brothers Charles and Max. Distillers by trade, Charles and Max Fleischmann immigrated to the United States from their native Austria in 1866. After establishing themselves in the US, the brothers saw a need in their new home in Cincinnati to provide European-style bread to their Austrian-German community. They partnered with James Gaff to develop, manufacture and sell compressed yeast from a strain brought from Austria for both commercial and home bakers. The brothers and Mr. Gaff founded Gaff, Fleischmann & Co. in 1868.


“Yeast fermentation and baking are very scientific processes,” said Michelle Brodie, director of yeast technology of AB Mauri North America, which currently owns the Fleischmann’s brand. “Consistency is key to ensuring our customers are putting out the same product week after week.”


The next scientific advancement in yeast was the invention of active dry yeast. In 1933, Harold Allden Ander invented the process that would dehydrate fresh yeast while maintaining its functionality. Standard Brands, which owned the Fleischmann’s brand at the time, patented the process and launched Fleischmann’s Active Dry Yeast. This added months to the shelf life of yeast, removing concerns from commercial bakers about losing the viability of the fresh yeast they were purchasing. All they needed to do was simply rehydrate the dormant yeast.


In 1984, Fleischmann’s would make yeast even easier to use with its RapidRise Instant Yeast. This ingredient could simply be added to the mixing bowl and deliver the rise bakers needed.


“What revolutionized the industry was when Fleischmann’s developed the dry yeast because you could just add it to the dough mix,” Ms. Brodie said. “Then they continued to revolutionize by developing the fast-rising dry yeast. Bakers could just add it to the dough mix without hydration. These dry products are now staples.”

Charles Fleischmann with his brother Max and partner James Gaff created the first commercialized yeast for the baking industry. AB Mauri North America

Back and forth with fats

No other major ingredient category may have had more ups and downs in the past 100 years than fats and oils. These ingredients aren’t critical to every bakery application — most bread formulations don’t require much if any fat. But for those bakery applications that do need fat — cakes, donuts or laminated doughs — these ingredients do a lot of heavy lifting.


Every time fats and oils have had to shift to appease health-conscious consumers or the US Food & Drug Administration, the baking industry has waited with baited-breath to see if the latest replacements would hold up to previous standards.


Originally, bakers used butter or lard, traditional animal fats, to provide lift and flavor to their baked goods, or the perfect fry on their donuts. In 1911, the development of Crisco — the first commercially produced partially hydrogenated oil — and the heavy marketing push around the new ingredient to home bakers, began the fall of animal fat. It was cheaper than animal fats with similar functionality and began outpacing lard as the fat of choice for home bakers.


Partial hydrogenation enables bakers to use vegetable oils as shortening. The process converts vegetable oils into solid forms of varying plasticity. Unlike simply blending vegetable oils, hydrogenation also improves the shortening’s resistance to oxidation and rancidity.


“Those shortenings provided the tenderness, structure and mouthfeel consumers expected,” said Frank Flider, oils consultant for the United Soybean Board. “When PHOs went away, the problem became matching the performance we had with PHOs and animal fats and developing shortenings that had the same characteristics that bakers are used to.”


Unlike animal fats, which gain their functionality from saturated fat, PHOs use trans fats to get those same characteristics. In the 1950s when saturated fat was linked to cardiovascular health, PHOs became even more in vogue as a way to eliminate saturated fats from baked goods. However, when new science found trans fats to be even more hazardous to human health than saturated fats, the FDA stepped in.


In 2015, the FDA revoked the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) status of PHOs. The baking industry had three years to remove PHOs from their formulations, except in the instances of using small amounts of PHOs as a food additive, for example, as a carrier for colors and flavors.


Replacing PHOs created not just a formidable challenge but an opportunity for a wealth of innovation. From it has come many ingredient technologies and formulating strategies to create custom fats and oils. To date there is no drop-in PHO replacement that works across all applications. Food scientists have relied on blending multiple base oils, emulsifiers, high-oleic base oils and interesterification to create custom shortenings that deliver the same functionality as PHOs. Fully hydrogenated oils contain no trans fatty acids and have been useful as food scientists blend them and use interesterification to create custom shortenings to replace partially hydrogenated counterparts.


With PHOs successfully replaced with custom blends, bakers are now turning toward continued reduction of saturated fats as well as finding more sustainable fat and oil ingredients.

Dough improvers have been around since the beginning of commercial baking to ensure dough endures the stresses of industrial baking. Corbion

A stronger dough

While commercial yeast would provide a consistent, easy-to-achieve rise for commercial bakers, the equipment producing the baked goods would require stronger formulas to handle the stress.


“Continuous bread production that we see today requires more tolerance from the formulation,” said Yangling Yin, PhD, director of RD&A, ingredient solutions, Corbion. “Doughs running in these continuous production runs require quite a bit of dough strength.”


The baking industry turned to dough conditioners — which provide several functionalities including strengthening, relaxing and softening — to provide that strength. Emulsifiers like DATEM, SSL, mono- and diglycerides showed that they could improve the texture and tolerance of doughs that were produced in 3,000-loaf batches.


These emulsifiers have been around a long time, though they have cycled through as standards for formulating throughout the years. Industrial-scale emulsifiers have been around since 1920, specifically monoglycerides since 1934 and DATEM since 1960. In 1958, the FDA granted GRAS status to improve ingredients in general use.


Since then, new legislation has eliminated the use of some of these ingredients, as is the case with potassium bromate. While this ingredient proved useful as an oxidizing agent that strengthened the dough, it is banned in many countries around the world including the European Union. The US has yet to outright ban the ingredient, though the FDA has encouraged bakers to voluntarily stop using it, most of which have complied. Since then, other emulsifiers like DATEM and SSL took a turn in the spotlight, according to Dr. Yin.


However, as consumers continue to expect cleaner ingredient labels, bakers have been looking for other options to provide the same level of tolerance, texture and shelf life as emulsifiers.


“When clean label came on as a trend a few years ago, people in the industry thought it would come and go just like other passing trends,” Dr. Yin said. “But it’s not going to go away. The next generations want it, and the clean label trend will only grow stronger.”

Clean up on aisle 65

The movement toward clean label, generally defined as ingredients consumers readily recognize, has led to many exciting ingredient innovations as bakers rush to remove stand-by ingredients that have enabled the commercial scale production of baked goods. Clean label as a term doesn’t have a regulated meaning, though many companies base their clean label formulation decisions on what is accepted at retailers such as Whole Foods or regulations such as California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act of 1986, also known as Proposition 65.


Proposition 65 requires companies to disclose whether their products contain any of the 900 substances included in its list of toxic chemicals, or those that could cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive harm at significant exposure. This disclosure includes a regulated warning label, and companies found omitting the warning could be fined up to $2,500 per day for each violation. While this law technically only applies to products sold in California, many companies include the label on all products sold in the US as a precaution if they contain a listed chemical. Ideally, however, companies reformulate their products, which has led to much innovation in the baking industry, specifically around enzymes.


“Labeling became an issue; people were shocked to read all those chemical terms on their bread labels,” said Kees Docter, retired senior director of technical services for Lallemand Baking. “But with enzymes, it’s just enzymes, which are naturally occurring.”


Mr. Docter’s longtime colleague Jan van Eijk, PhD, retired research director of Lallemand Baking, spent much of his 38-year career developing enzymes for the baking industry as it strove to find clean label solutions for dough conditioning and shelf life. After joining Lallemand Baking, Dr. van Eijk moved to the US from The Netherlands where he saw the clean label movement begin to pick up steam. With his experience baking in Europe, where chemicals like bromate had already been removed, he applied his knowledge to developing enzymes for the US baking industry.


“We wanted to be the first to the clean label solution,” Mr. Docter said. “We saw that coming, and we wanted to be first, and with our experience making bread in Europe, we knew we could do it.”


The game changer for enzymes, in Dr. Yin’s opinion, was the ability to use genetically modified substrates to gain control of enzymes. Before this time, about six or seven years ago, enzymes were difficult to control. They’re sensitive to their environment, and bakeries are inconsistent places with changing ambient temperatures, humidity and flour quality. Harnessing enzymes through GMO substrates made these ingredients more consistent and easier to use.


As consumer demand has pushed the industry toward enzymes, cost has also played a factor.


“There’s not just a label improvement but a cost reduction,” Dr. Yin said. “The gluten shortage, for example: gluten by itself is very expensive. We’re not even talking about the availability issue, but it’s just not sustainable in this crisis. People are looking at enzymes as a sustainable and cost-saving solution.”


With the commercialization of enzymes bakers have been able to move from emulsifiers to strengthen dough, soften dough and even extend shelf life, where the baking industry continues to reach new heights.

Changing the game with ESL

Extended shelf life (ESL) radically changed the way the baking industry did business. The research and development team at Interstate Bakeries Corp. (IBC), Kansas City, Mo., led by Theresa Cogswell, was able to develop a proprietary enzyme blend that enabled them to double Wonder Bread’s shelf life to seven days from four. Ms. Cogswell recalled that no one was quite sure what to do with such a revolutionary product when bread previously barely lasted longer than the daily paper.


“No one at IBC knew how to implement it,” said Ms. Cogswell. “The execution of ESL Wonder Bread came from Walmart. They no longer had to stack bread by the day of the week; they could now mass merchandise the bread.”


In an interview with Milling & Baking News, then President and Chief Executive Officer Chuck Sullivan laid out the benefits for retailers:


“Retailers, including Walmart, define full service as a full shelf. The positive side for the retailer is that the shelves remain full all the time, as opposed to the short shelf life we had before.”


While speaking to analysts in an investor call on September 19, 2001, Mr. Sullivan showed that ESL had reduced stale returns from 12% to 15% to 6% to 7%. He also elaborated on how this innovation would impact routes, deliveries and operational efficiencies.


“It essentially reduces the amount of product we have to pick up; it increases productivity of routes; it results in fewer routes,” he said.


Ms. Cogswell remembers the room full of maps with pins all over to show those different delivery routes.


“The guys would be in there repinning the routes because they didn’t have to deliver bread as often,” she said.


Ms. Cogswell recalled that the company saved $60 million that first year of ESL Wonder Bread. Despite the pushback she received (she remembered being told multiple times she would single-handedly destroy the baking industry), Ms. Cogswell’s passion project changed the game on the way bread was not only merchandised but produced and delivered.


“I never understood the bakery business model,” she said. “We would bake 100 loaves of bread and intentionally be okay with losing three to five loaves due to staling because we couldn’t sell them by the expiration date. …


“I credit my mother with this achievement because she never wasted anything, and I used to look around at all the waste and stales in the bakery and wonder, ‘Does it really have to be this way?’ ”


And that’s the big question that every innovator asks themselves and the industry. The answer carries the baking industry into the future of taste, nutrition and better operations.

Health guidance has sent fats and oils suppliers on an innovation journey from animal fats to PHOs to customized shortenings. ©JPC-PROD - stock.adobe.com
Posted on

Health matters

By Andy Nelson

June 2022

Health
matters

Retailers try to keep up with ever-changing definitions of health and wellness

Supermarket Perimeter

tpzijl, aamulya – stock.adobe.com

Health and wellness has never been more important for Americans and for the suppliers of the foods they eat to help them meet their personal better-for-you goals.


But health and wellness have evolved so much in recent years, it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what people mean when they use the terms. Getting a better handle on it, though, is critical to perimeter departments that want to capitalize on the obvious advantages their fresh and healthy foods provide.


In the food world of 20 or so years ago, there wasn’t nearly as much crossover between healthy eaters and those who fell into different categories, said Krystal Register, director of health and wellbeing for Arlington, Va.-based FMI – The Food Industry Association.


For instance, people who called themselves healthy eaters didn’t tend to overlap with those who identified as foodies.


But what Register calls a “convergence” began to emerge before the pandemic and only accelerated during it. Today’s consumers increasingly don’t just want to be just foodies and health-conscious, they also want convenience and a host of other benefits when they make their food-buying choices.


When it comes to the fresh perimeter, one way retailers are trying to meet that new consumer where she is, Register said, is with easy meal solutions that combine convenience, health and flavor.


Crucial to those efforts for many retailers is the input of in-house dietitians.


“There’s an uptick in the number of dietitians in stores,” Register said. “They have the education and the knowledge to take the science of nutrition, which isn’t always easy to talk about, and put it into a customized solution.”


Making that solution convenient is crucial. According to recent Industry Speaks data from FMI, 80% of retailers plan to add more grab-and-go options in the near future.

The rise of “natural”

One big difference between the perimeter departments of the past and the perimeter departments of the present is the presence of “natural” products, said Raj Shroff, founder and principal of Columbus, Ohio-based PINE Strategy & Design.


“It used to be you had a market that specialized in natural, now every grocery store has a huge organic section,” he said. “Natural continues to go mainstream.”


“Mainstream” also increasingly means “decentralized,” said John Youger, a PINE partner. Kroger and other retail chains used to have natural sections in their store. Now natural products are spread throughout the perimeter and the rest of the store.


Despite all of the gains, selling consumers on health and wellness can be easier said than done. As Youger points out, it’s convenience, not health and wellness, that seems to be playing the biggest role in the grocery perimeter of today. Sometimes that can overlap with healthy, but not always.


One simple thing retailers could do in the perimeter to promote the health benefits of their products is more instore signs, Shroff said. Simple messages like “This product is high in fiber,” or “This product has been tied to heart health.”


“It’s not trying to cram it down their throat,” Shroff said. “They can read it or they can ignore it. There may a little of this being done at a store like Whole Foods, but retailers in general have really fallen short in the perimeter of adding that value to shoppers.”


Youger said PINE did a “shop along” with people with diabetes. Once they got outside of the section of the store devoted to people with diabetes, they were lost, he said, unsure of what they could and couldn’t eat.


“It’s a lack of execution by stores,” he said.


One way perimeter departments could combine health and convenience, Shroff said, would be to create “tiered” meal kits combining protein, produce and other perimeter items. One tier could be low sugar, another energy, another recovery, for example.

Heart-healthy foods rich in magesium are among the top choices of health-conscious Americans.

Pandemic impact

“Health and wellness” is a fluid category, and during the pandemic, many consumers dropped more “restrictive” diets — keto, for example — but were more likely to stick with Mediterranean, whole-food and other diets, Register said.


And regardless of this or that trend du jour, what always “rises to the top,” she said, is heart health.


Whatever particular form their approach to diet takes, almost half of all Americans — 48% — follow at least some approach, indicating that health and wellness is definitely on the minds of consumers, whether they put their intentions into action or not.


And retailers are getting the message.


“There is a real increase in investment in health,” Register said. “And there’s a lot of research showing a direct connection between increasing health outcomes and return on investments.”

Variety, technology, demographics

The grocery fresh perimeter is so diverse, there are many lenses for studying the evolution of health and wellness over the decades.


Take fresh produce. For decades, produce departments focused on a basic range of items, said Brian Numainville, principal in Lake Success, N.Y.-based Retail Feedback Group. Then things like organics started to gain in popularity, and from there, one of the big differences today from a variety perspective, Numainville said, is the expanded range of exotic and superfood items from around the world that many shoppers look for to help meet their health and wellness goals.


Another game-changer, he added, was the advent of smartphones. Apps now provide all the information you’d ever want about specific products and their health benefits, right at your fingertips. And if a shopper needs to find product information — to determine, for example, if a product is gluten-free or to learn more about ingredients or nutrition facts for a specific product — it’s as simple as a web search or app while in the store.


As food is increasingly looked at as a kind of “medicine,” Numainville said, the grocery store has a real opportunity to be the hub of health and wellness for shoppers.


“It all starts with understanding where the shoppers of a given location are at in terms of their health and wellness needs,” he said. “A rural store with an older population might have a very different approach than an urban store with a high percentage of younger shoppers or a suburban store with many families with young children.”


From there, it’s important find ways to link messaging up through the store so there’s consistency and synergy between the various departments in the store, the pharmacy and dietitians. That means connecting the dots for shoppers, so those who are looking for healthy foods and options can easily identify them throughout the departments in the store, providing a convenient and simple communications in all vehicles available — signage, digital, social and beyond.


An interesting point of reference, Numainville said, is the 2021 Food & Health Survey from the International Food Information Council, which found that “In 2016, consumers most identified with the negative: the absence of certain components, like fat and sugar content. In 2021, the definition takes a more positive tone: 27% say it is defined by the presence of healthful components (like fruits, veggies, and nutrients) (up from 17%) and 25% say it is the food that is simply “good for you” (up from 18%).”


“That clearly indicates that shoppers are shifting how they look at food, moving away from an absence of items like fat and sugar, towards choices that moves towards the inclusion of healthy fresh foods that can be used for health,” he said. “I also think shoppers are looking at functional foods, moving beyond simply taking vitamin supplements but connecting with foods that offer health benefits.”


Products grown and sourced from farmers engaging in regenerative agriculture practices will continue to pick up steam into the future, combining “good for you food” with “good for the environment” practices, which appeals to many shoppers, and likely will resonate heavily with millennials and Gen Z, Numainville said.


The growing interest in health and nutrition meant supermarkets had many more SKUs to offer shoppers, but this fragmentation also presented new challenges such as building the right assortment at the store level, managing inventory and the need for smaller case counts, and even new competitors who were finding more efficient ways to connect people with the specific products they wanted to meet their respective needs, according to Barrington, Ill.-based consultancy Brick Meets Click.


Merchandising and services such as meal planning and consults with dietitians are among the creative ways supermarkets can meet their customers’ health and wellness needs, according to Brick Meets Click.


Eating healthier is hard work, though, a challenge dietitians know well. Even when they work one-on-one with their clients, making a lasting change in the way people eat remains elusive. It’s difficult to change eating habits even when these lifestyle changes can lead to a better quality of life.


Information is not the problem, according to Brick Meets Click. Nutritional information has never been more accessible, and there’s plenty of guidance available on what to eat and what to avoid based on a person’s health issues.


“The problem is the friction that comes from the work of combining all the nutrient information and health facts into decisions about what specific products to buy.”

You might also enjoy:

Reporting from the edge

Reporting from the edge

Monthly magazine explores how, where and why supermarket innovations happen.

The bake story

The bake story

This innovative publishing platform now observantly reports about the changing face of retail baking.

Posted on

China hungry for more

By Susan Reidy

June 2022

China hungry
for more

World’s most populous nation reaches for self-sufficiency as it holds fast to food security

World Grain

©ChonnieArtwork – stock.adobe.com

It has the world’s most people and the second largest economy. It has successfully produced one-fourth of the world’s grain and fed one-fifth of the world’s population with less than 10% of the world’s arable land.


But China wants — and needs — more.


In 2019, China surpassed the United States and the European Union as the world’s top importer of agricultural products. While population growth essentially has stagnated, falling in 2021 to the lowest rate of growth since 1960, disposable household income increased 9.1% in nominal terms over last year. The nation is experiencing rapid urbanization and consumers’ preferences are changing to a more sophisticated diet.


This all leads to the need for more — more crops, more food, more imports. What China doesn’t necessarily have is more resources to meet these needs internally. Still, it will push for self-sufficiency, a goal it has had for decades that has come more into focus recently in official government pronouncements.


“It’s always been a concern, but two shocks sparked a renewed interest: the US-China trade war and African swine fever,” said Wendong Zhang, associate professor of economics, Iowa State University. “I think that another thing that also changed is that when China used to talk about self-sufficiency in agriculture, it was mainly talking about food crops. Now they’re probably thinking more broadly, this is food products.”


Chinese economic agencies, the National Development and Reform Commission and the agriculture ministry have all stressed security as a priority for 2022, pledging to secure the supplies of grain, energy and raw materials. It has even released detailed plans to set aside more land for soybeans, a crop that it had mostly given over to imports after entering the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.


At the same time, the nation also seems to be relaxing its stance on genetically modified organisms, likely as a means to meet its goals through increased yield.


Still, analysts say it’s too much more, especially for soybeans, and China won’t be able to achieve those goals. At the same time, its actions seem to contradict policy, as China increases its purchase of soybeans and corn.


“This tension between what the government says and how it acts is really interesting,” Joe Janzen, assistant professor, Department of Agricultural and Consumer Economics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told World Grain. “They are clearly managing some very serious trade-offs between a desire for security and to have enough food, and to be in control and be self-sufficient. That’s in part why they have to behave opportunistically. They make decisions that are right at that time, so when they really need commodities from other parts of the world, they go get them. When they feel like the cost of that is too great, they pull back. They are constantly managing this trade off.”


While the COVID-19 pandemic and now the Ukraine-Russia conflict has increased China’s push for self-sufficiency, it will still need to be a part of the world market to provide food security to its people.


“Although the Chinese government would want to be self-sufficient in all products, they lack the resources, especially for land intensive feed grains and meat products like beef, soybeans and sorghum,” Zhang said. “All they can become is more self-sufficient. They will continue to be a significant driver in the global market.”

©Nah Ting Feng - stock.adobe.com

History of reform

In its quest to feed more than 1 billion people, China has undergone multiple agricultural reforms. Grain output in 1949 amounted to 113.18 million tonnes, and the agricultural foundation was fragile. The government responded with land reform in the 1950s in which peasants were given their own land. During the First Five-Year Plan from 1953-57, gross agriculture output increased by 4.5% on average, according to a report by Guoqiang Cheng, Institute of Market Economy, Development Research Center of the State Council of China.


Over the next two decades, excitement for agriculture production waned under China’s commune systems, with output increasing by only 2.3% on average per year. Shortly before the next round of reforms, 250 million of China’s 780 million rural residents were living in poverty and food and other basic consumer goods were rationed. Grain output was 283 million tonnes and the average yield was only 2,600 kilograms per hectare.


In 1978, China launched a market-oriented rural reform, reigniting enthusiasm for agriculture production and boosting the nation’s overall gross domestic product. After those reforms, grain production increased from 283 million to 407 million tonnes in 1984.


Agricultural development entered a new phase in 1998 that included significant changes in the supply and demand, and strategic restructuring of agriculture and the rural economy. Production shifted from long-term shortages to equilibrium or even excess supply in bumper harvest years.


Cheng attributed the changes to technological progress, increased investment in agriculture, improved infrastructure for farmland, water conservancy and irrigation facilities, market-oriented reform of product pricing and greater openness of the agricultural sector to the outside world. Growth of the national economy, urbanization and growth in disposable income increased demand for meat products, seafood, fruits and vegetables.


As the agriculture sector developed and restructured, it also opened up to the outside world and integrated into the world trade system, Cheng said. This accelerated further with China’s accession into the World Trade Organization in 2001. Exports increased from less than $11.3 billion in 1992 to $31.03 billion in 2006, with an average growth rate of 7.5%. During the same period, imports increased from $5.3 billion to $31.99 billion with an average growth rate of 13.7%.


Through the years, agricultural imports grew at a much faster pace than exports, and today China is a net importer of agriculture products. In 2021, it imported 28.35 million tonnes of corn, an increase of 152% from 11.3 million in 2020, according to data from the General Administration of Customs. Wheat imports also hit a record 9.77 million tonnes, an increase of 16.6% from 8.38 million in 2020.

Planning for self-sufficiency

Chinese demand continues to outstrip domestic supply, particularly as the middle class grows and is willing to spend a large portion of its disposable income on higher quality food. China finds itself importing more and more, even as policy stresses the need for self-sufficiency.


The 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), issued this February, called for annual grain production of no less than 650 million tonnes and meat production of 89 million tonnes. It also said retaining poverty eradication in rural areas, food security and seed development are top priorities.


“Pronouncements have come out in the last three or four months from the Chinese government suggesting they need to focus more on food self-sufficiency,” Janzen said. “At the same time, we have relatively high levels of soybean and corn exports from the US to China. It’s not because China loves the idea of importing US soybeans and corn, but because they need those products to meet short-term food security objectives.”


According to China’s published statistics, annual grain production has exceeded 650 million tonnes for seven consecutive years, including a historic high of 682 million tonnes in 2021. Meat production reached 88.8 million tonnes in 2021.


The plan also said scientific and technological innovations shall account for 64% of the growth of agricultural output by 2025. Use of fertilizers and pesticides must continue to decrease, and the use of animal manure must reach 80% or more by 2025.


To stabilize the grain planted area, the government said it will provide protective price policies with rice and wheat procurement, producer subsidies for corn and soybean growers and expanded scope of full cost insurance. It will keep 120 million hectares of arable land, with 103 million hectares dedicated to grain production. Total construction of high-standard farmland must reach an area of 71.7 million hectares by 2025. High-standard farmland is restricted to grain production.


The Chinese government is improving the safety net for farmers and experimenting with land reform, Zhang said. Before 2007, there was no agriculture insurance market and now China is the second-largest crop insurance market in the world.


“They’re offering a different variety of products, including revenue production products and incentivizing more machinery purchases,” Zhang said. “They’re also allowing farmers to pretend to own the land, so they are able to rent it out to another farmer. Now, about a third of the land is rented out, so that could potentially increase some of the production scales and efficiencies and allow the use of more machinery.”


China’s ability to achieve self-sufficiency depends heavily on the commodity, Janzen said. In staple grains such as corn, rice and wheat, it’s not far from self-sufficiency in part because the nation has made a conscious decision to focus on staple grains.


“It’s a zero-sum game,” said Stephen Nicholson, global grain and oilseed strategist for Rabobank. “If you focus on one crop, you’re going to have to import something from someplace else. It’s a steep curve for them to get to, along with trying to adopt all the Western practices to get to the yields, increasing hectares and adopting GM seeds. I’m a bit of a skeptic as to whether they’re ever going to be self-sufficient in anything. They are lofty goals, commendable goals. But I think the reality is it would be really difficult for them to be self-sufficient.”


Agriculture practices, seed varieties, lack of modern machinery are just some of the factors limiting yield growth, Nicholson said. Corn and soybean yields in China are about 60% of the US levels, Zhang said.


“When you look at our yield growth, we’ve seen nearly two bushels every year in corn and smaller in wheat and soy,” Nicholson said. “But they’re not seeing that at all. In some cases, they’ve had some issues over the last several years that production is relatively flat. Well, that’s not going to work.”


Corn production in 2022-23 is forecast at 265 million tonnes, a drop of 2.8% from the previous year. Corn imports are estimated at 20 million tonnes, down 4 million tonnes from 2021-22, but still the third highest year on record. China is building reserves in response to the pandemic and is preparing for any other external shocks, the USDA said.


“In addition, lower planted area for corn due to a shift to soy acres, as well as persistent, high domestic prices will further the desire for imports as market opportunities present themselves,” the USDA said.


The most recent Five-Year Plan calls for improving soybean production capacity in northeast China and expanding the planted area for rapeseed in the Yangtze River Basin. The 2022 No. 1 Document on agriculture and rural development specifically focused on soybean and other oilseed production, a change from previous years.


It includes subsidies to plant grains and oilseeds, intercropping corn and soybeans, increasing production of non-soybean oilseeds and adjusting oilseed utilization in animal feed. China has said it plans to boost domestic soybean production by 10% per year, for an overall increase of 40%, Janzen said.


“It’s not totally clear where those beans would come from,” he said. “Would it be additional acres or some kind of improvements in yield? Any sort of increase in soybean acreage will come at some expense of some other crop. That conflicts with the goals of self-sufficiency stated for other crops.”


One possible solution is intercropping, the practice of growing two or more crops in proximity, which reached 466,666 hectares in 2021, according to the USDA. China is calling for an increase of 1 million hectares this year. This could reduce corn area and yields, but the overall impact is small, the USDA said. Subsidies for intercropping could be as high as $824 per hectare, much more than for soy alone.


China’s soybean production in the 2022-23 market year is estimated at 17.4 million tonnes, an increase of just 1 million tonnes from last season, based on expected acreage of 8.9 million hectares and minimal yield growth. Total oilseed production is estimated at 62.4 million tonnes, up from 61 million tonnes in 2021-22, according to the USDA.


Oilseed consumption is forecast at 166.7 million tonnes with imports at 104.1 million tonnes, up from 98.4 million tonnes a year ago. Demand continues to outstrip domestic supply, so imports are expected to account for 62% of total domestic oilseed consumption.


Finding more acreage is no easy task. With urbanization, cities are taking up more land and expanding fruit and vegetable production also is swallowing up acres, Zhang said.


“Also, China pledges to be more sustainable and carbon neutral, so there are also programs to convert some of the previous cultivated fields back to forest or pasture,” he said. “There’s not a whole lot of new land that they can cultivate. They’re more thinking that with the better technology and more efficient management, they’re hoping for better productivity gain.”

GMO on the horizon?

Those productivity gains could come not only from more modern farming practices, but also the adoption of GMO technology. At some point, the pressure to approve GMO technology is going to be too great, Janzen said. The Five-Year Plan included increasing support for “modern agricultural science and technology research” with efforts on, among other things, biotech breeding. High-level Chinese officials have made strong public statements emphasizing the importance of biotechnology, the USDA said, and the Biosecurity Law of China came into effect in April 2021.


While China has not approved any genetically engineered (GE) food or feed product for domestic cultivation, it has issued biosafety certificates for cultivation of some domestic products. The USDA said there are 10 domestically developed traits that have biosafety certification that are waiting for variety registration for commercialization.


This January, China issued a revision of the major crop variety registration rules that define a clear pathway for domestically developed GE crops to be commercially cultivated, the USDA said. Domestically produced seed could be commercialized as soon as next year.


China has been hesitant in the use of GM in part because the general public has a distrust of the products, Zhang said, but also the government doesn’t want the technology to be dominated by foreign companies. Over the past 10 years, China has invested heavily in the technology, especially CRISPR and genome editing, he said.
“China is not that far behind and in some areas, it is probably even more advanced than its foreign counterparts,” Zhang said. “So there is more of a conscious push that way, but this still is going to be a long road.”


It took the United States about 20 to 25 years to improve yields 20% to 25% through the adoption of GM technology, he said, and even if China went full speed ahead, it would probably take the same amount of time.


Chinese officials have shown no willingness to accept safety testing data from outside of China without first conducting verification trials, the USDA said. This is a concern for foreign developers because they lose control over the timeline to conduct the trials and the trial results, the agency said.


Janzen said it’s more likely China will approve GMO for use in some kind of animal feed product versus products that go into the food supply chain.


“I think it’s probable, given the levels of GM adoption around the world,” he said. “But that decision has to be acceptable to the Chinese population.”


Nicholson questioned if GM is such a big issue for the Chinese, why do they import soybeans from the United States and Brazil?


“It’s more about what is convenient and what’s not to meet their political goals rather than some big upsurge in policy or some big public upsurge against GMOs,” he said. “If they decide this is what they’re going to do, and they’re going to be self-sufficient, they will say this is what we need to do. If nothing else, the Chinese are pragmatic.”

World market impact

Global disruptions, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukraine-Russia conflict, has propelled China to further stress the importance of food security. And while those disruptions make the call for self-sufficiency louder, ultimately China will need to still be a major player in the global market to ensure it is prepared for all eventualities and can feed its 1.4 billion people.


“Sometimes that means having to source commodities from places where it wouldn’t otherwise source,” Janzen said, adding that US corn is a good example. Up until 2020, China didn’t buy too much US corn, but when Ukraine had a poor crop, it turned to the United States. Because that’s a way it can meet its objectives at the lowest cost. I think it will continue to be opportunistic in that sense. China has the economic wherewithal to import grain when it needs it from other parts of the world.”


Strategically, China wants to have a more diversified portfolio, to the extent it’s possible, Zhang said. For certain products, like corn and soybeans, the United States is indispensable.


“Overall, unless China dramatically increases yields, which is unlikely in the short run, it will continue to be very consequential in the global market,” he said. “Especially with the increasing income it could potentially play a bigger role in consumer-oriented agriculture products.”


There are a lot of moving parts related to energy policy in China and the United States that could influence agriculture markets, Zhang said. Low carbon fuel standards will impact the soybean market and change the relative price ratios for whole soybeans versus soybean meal.


“What will the Chinese want to do with the ethanol mandate, which is currently in suspension?” Zhang said. “That could change the calculation for China’s import needs for ethanol versus corn. Those are some of the things that are also very interesting to watch and see how this will play out.”


Another consideration is how much China will allow market price incentives to exist to help match supply and demand inside of China, Janzen said.


“Chinese farmers face prices well above the world price for most of these commodities, so they’re insulated from global markets,” he said. “That would be another lever the Chinese government could use to help meet its food security goals at lowest cost. But whether it will move even toward using market incentives domestically, and give up control, is an open question.”


It’s hard to say how the Ukraine-Russian conflict will impact China, analysts agree. Ukraine has been a significant import country of origin for China, and even occupied the top spot for a few years, Zhang said.


“There’s some uncertainty there so that’s why we’re seeing a little uptick in corn purchases from the US,” he said. “It will also depend on the duration and severity of the conflict.”


Nicholson said the Ukraine-Russian conflict could be a monkey wrench in China’s plans, but it will find a solution.


“The Chinese will find, whether it’s direct or intermediate, other sources of grain and make sure this doesn’t impact them,” he said. “Certainly, the political challenges with China are always going to be there. But I’m optimistic they’re going to continue to import, whether from the US or someone else.”

More than 5,000 flour mills operate in China, including those owned by the world’s largest milling company, Wudeli Flour Group. The company’s total daily milling capacity is 61 million tonnes (wheat equivalent).
Posted on

The bake story

By Laurie Gorton

May/June 2022

the bake
story

This innovative publishing platform now observantly reports about the changing face of retail baking.

bake

It’s simple: wholesalers deal with customers, retailers deal with consumers. Communication style, too, shifts when serving retail bakery readers vs. wholesalers. That’s what makes bake so different from other Sosland Publishing brands.

Since its founding in 1987, the magazine has evolved steadily with the times. Originally titled Baking Buyer, it is now known as bake.

“The changes were made to make the content more engaging to our audiences,” says John Unrein, editor, bake and Supermarket Perimeter. “Baking Buyer became bake to reflect a more modern approach to the artistry and business aspects of retail baking.”

Mission oriented

Like most business-to-business publications, bake’s mission is both educational and advisory. It is aimed at educating the retail/specialty bakery audience about influential consumer purchasing and consumption trends affecting the current and future profitability of the fresh bakery industry, as well as to spotlight leading trends in the areas of ingredients, equipment, packaging, technology and business management. The magazine reaches retail bakery, artisan/specialty bakery, foodservice/bakery cafe and intermediate wholesaler audiences.

“bake magazine and bakemag.com are the quintessential resources — both online and in print — for all things baking in the retail bakery and bakery foodservice segments of the North American baking industry,” Unrein says.

Made to measure

bake is certainly the Sosland brand that has seen the most transformation in concept, content and format, thus reflecting the dynamic food retailing marketplace. Its mission today is far different, both more mature and more innovative, than the one that launched it in 1987.

The magazine started as a project of Sosland’s Baking Equipment (now known as Baking & Snack) because competitive pressure forced a demonstration of the ability of Sosland’s bakery audience to respond to advertising. It was a gambit in the numbers game of reader inquiries.

In pre-internet times, publishers urged readers to respond to ads and editorial items by filling out reader service cards, a.k.a. “bingo cards.” Introduced in the early 1960s, these cards could be found in most trade magazines a decade later. The postcards, bound into the magazine, carried a grid of numbers linked to ads and supplier new product news items.

The greater the number of inquiries a magazine generated, the more favorably it was viewed by many advertisers. Ad agencies, in particular, liked such response data because they made it easier to justify ad “buys” during an era that emphasized cost-per-thousand circulation analytics.

Sosland Publishing’s problem was that its bakery publications, Milling & Baking News and Baking Equipment, had far fewer recipients (by just more than half) than Bakery Production & Marketing (Gorman Publishing), the leading competitor. Baking Buyer supplemented its circulation to approach that of the competition.

Magazines that specialized in new product news were fairly common in the 1970s and 1980s. Usually published in tabloid size (11 by 17 in.), their business purpose was to generate sales leads. They circulated free of charge to qualified recipients, often the same list used by another of that publisher’s roster.

Baking Buyer covered product news from vendors and suppliers and was targeted at retail and intermediate wholesale bakers — the prime users of the Baking Equipment reader service card program. Mike Gude, publisher of Baking Equipment, headed up Baking Buyer sales, and Laurie Gorton, then editor of Baking Equipment, supervised the new magazine’s editorial content. The company worked with a University of Kansas journalism student to write the news items on a freelance basis.

“Those early issues look downright primitive when compared with the sophisticated approach, design and reader audience of today’s bake magazine,” Gorton says.

As the 21st century approached, the World Wide Web made reader service cards obsolete. The internet provides myriad opportunities for measuring reader traffic, page views and content interactions with highly precise analytics. Almost as soon as publishers launched their websites and digital editions, they mothballed their bingo cards.

The metamorphosis of reader service numbers into webpage addresses was not the only alteration made by Baking Buyer. Over the years, its content was enriched with feature articles. Its size also changed. The tabloid was modified in 2001 to standard size (8½ by 10½ in.), where it now remains.

In 2005, Baking Buyer split into two publications. “It was then that we increased our efforts to focus more specifically on the retail/specialty bakery segment with Baking Buyer and the in-store bakery with a separate publication, inStore Buyer, which became inStore in 2013,” says Troy Ashby, publisher, bake and Supermarket Perimeter.

Baking Buyer became bake in 2012.

The emerging importance of fresh foods, sold in departments set around the perimeter of supermarkets, led Sosland Publishing to enlarge the editorial coverage and reader audience of inStore, transitioning it into Supermarket Perimeter in 2019.

Circulation by business class finds 62% retail baking; 19% bakery cafe; 12% specialty baking; 5% food service distributor, bakery distributor and broker; and 2% intermediate wholesale bakery.

“There are more specific types of readers in our audience than other publications at Sosland,” Unrein says.

The magazine’s readership skews young, reflecting generational change within the industry and the entrance of many new bakers, especially those in their 20s and 30s. Cover photos often portray these trends and the people responsible. bake’s 2022 Media Guide reported US Census data stating that the retail baking segment employs nearly 200,000 workers, 64% of whom are female.

A dynamic field

The bake marketplace is widely diverse … and rapidly changing. “The retail industry continues to evolve, sometimes dramatically,” Unrein says. “When I started here, there were mostly family-owned retail shops and supermarket bakeries that both followed the same goals.

“Then specialization took hold of the industries,” he continues. “Retailers branched into cake shops, cookie specialists, pastry shops, donut stores and other retail shops that specialized in much more defined — and marketable — product lines. And supermarkets emerged as the leading competitors to retailers because of shifts in consumer buying patterns, such as more one-stop shopping.”

New product news, once the mainstay of Baking Buyer, has long since been superseded by feature content involving ingredients, formulas and technology, plus workplace management, financial controls, food safety, merchandising and shop design, as well as in-person operator profiles.

“New product introductions are certainly still important to our audience,” Ashby says. “As our print publications evolved and digital offerings expanded, new product spotlights have taken more of a digital-first direction. This is reflected by the fact that in nearly every digital newsletter we deliver to our audiences, there is a new product spotlight section of the newsletter — some being sponsored sections, others driven by our editorial teams.”

You might also enjoy:

The bake story

The bake story

This innovative publishing platform now observantly reports about the changing face of retail baking.

Content and Integrity: the Milling & Baking News story

Content and Integrity: the Milling & Baking News story

The 100-year-old magazine helps managers keep supply and demand in balance by assisting the industry in keeping its eye on the ball.

A trusted voice

A trusted voice

Sosland Publishing’s protein platform builds its success on a solid foundation of industry knowledge and connections.

John Unrein

Industry trends

“Our story is your story. During tough times and those filled with prosperity, the retail baking industry has advanced through the determination of family businesses dedicated to knowledge of their craft and solid work ethic,” Unrein wrote in his Editor’s Note column in the May/June 2021 issue of bake about coming articles celebrating the Sosland Centennial. To date, these reports have been published in 2021 issues of May/June, July/August and September/October and the 2022 issue of March/April.

A little more than a century ago, retail bakers organized a professional association, the Retail Bakers of America. Its first annual meeting was scheduled for October 1918 but was postponed because of the influenza pandemic then raging.

For most of the 20th century, retail baking was dominated by family businesses, usually founded by an immigrant masterbaker and serving primarily local markets. On a national scale, supermarkets entered retail baking with small in-store shops, made possible by the advent of frozen doughs and flexible small-scale commercial mixing, proofing and baking equipment introduced in the 1970s.

By the 1990s, the artisan bread movement had started to revamp retail baking’s product lines and ownership profiles. It was centered at first on the West Coast but rapidly spread throughout the country. This new/old bakery style attracted a new group of bakery operators, often young people from outside the traditional baking professions. The celebrity baker emerged side by side with the celebrity chef. The Bread Bakers Guild, the champion of artisan baking, formed in 1993. The James Beard Award, created in 1990 and now considered the food industry’s highest honor, has recognized Outstanding Pastry Chef from its start and, more recently, Outstanding Baker among its award categories.

Today, US retail bakers rival any in the world in their expertise, evidenced by 2005’s victory at the world’s most prestigious event for craft bakers, the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie (World Cup of Baking) held in Paris — the second time in three occasions that Americans achieved this distinction.

Specialty flours, particularly organic styles, rose in attention and usage by the retail baking segment. Whole grain, gluten-free, non-GMO and vegan, plus fiber enrichment, have found a place on the retail baker’s menu boards. The late 1990s finally saw a licensing solution to the legal problems that previously occurred when bakers depicted popular characters from movies and comics on decorated cakes.

Technology has improved, too, as computer-aided processing equipment became available in this market, thus leveraging the masterbaker’s knowledge and skills over a wider range of employee capabilities. But the big change in retail baking has been the rising use of the internet and social media. Not only do bakers find it easier to advertise and describe their products in this fashion, but it has also fostered creation of unique products. Think cronut, or duffin, or cake truffle. Or even a wedding cake non-fungible token (NFT).

American retail bakers have now caught up with the bakery cafe format so popular in Europe, and retail bakeries also figure in the pop-up trend, the newest form of food retailing.

Radical redesign

Over the years, Baking Buyer evolved from a product tabloid into a full-fledged business magazine. But in 2001, its readers found something entirely new in their mailboxes. The magazine mounted a total redesign. Everything changed. The impact was immediate.

“Who said that business-to-business books had to look like trade magazines anyway?” opined then-editor Kerri Conan, in the January 2001 issue as she introduced readers to the new look.

Prefacing this effort was a plan drawn up by the publisher and editors for a comprehensive overhaul of content. The magazine’s design team knew the editorial shift was intended to better serve the retail marketplace and its readers’ focus on consumer as well as business needs. That led them to evaluate contemporary mass media, rather than review just business-to-business titles. They deliberately pursued the “look and feel” of popular lifestyle magazines. Additional white space. More photos. More graphics. More art. Text, set in ultra-fashionable fonts, was leaded a few points extra to let in more “air.” Color blocks in graded shades and tints replaced red, blue and other bright colors previously in use.

Restyling went more than skin deep. Content changed, too. News coverage turned into departments, each named for a targeted subject area. Feature stories spread out over several pages, made easier to read and were compartmentalized with sidebars, charts and “sound bites.”

“The goal is to create a magazine with more entry points so that the information you care about pops up fast,” Conan wrote. “The hope is that you linger and discover items you may not have realized could impact your business.”

She described the “new” magazine as providing “insight for business on the rise.”

Unrein joined the magazine’s staff in March that year, taking over as editor. Looking back, he said, “The redesign dramatically increased the value and readership of Baking Buyer, now bake.”

The new look did not go unnoticed by the magazine’s publishing peers. The very next year, Baking Buyer received national recognition, named as a top-three finalist in Folio magazine’s annual Ozzie Awards for best overall magazine redesign. The magazine’s designer, Cayce Richardson, accepted the award.

Posted on

The push and pull

By Charlotte Atchley

May 2022

The push
and pull

Grains have long been the foundation of the American diet, but consumer behavior doesn’t always comport with nutrition science.

Baking & Snack

stock.adobe.com 

Despite the prevalence of low-carb dieting over the past generation — a trend that keeps cycling back around with different names — grain-based foods have made up the bulk of people’s diet for the vast majority of human existence. Bread in various forms has served as the foundation of a meal and accounted for more calories consumed than any other food category. It’s only been since the 1970s and even more persistently since the late 1990s, that some people have truly shunned carbohydrates, and therefore, grain-based foods, to achieve what they believe to be a healthier lifestyle.


But consumer perception of what’s good for them and what’s not fails to line up with what scientists have discovered and what science continues to learn about the place grains and carbohydrates have in the diet. Even now, despite consumers’ renewed interest in baked goods, low-carb persists. In today’s iteration, the baking industry contends with the keto diet and demand for baked goods that deal in net carbs, or those carbohydrates which are digested and used for energy.

You might also enjoy:

Catalysts for change

Catalysts for change

The pressures of regulation and consumer demand have led to significant advances in food science for the baking industry.

Health matters

Health matters

Retailers try to keep up with ever-changing definitions of health and wellness.

The evolution of grains

The industrial revolution brought about many technological advancements, but the ability to mill flour on a larger scale made it possible to commercially produce bread. Previous to this advancement, most people baked their own bread with whole grain flour.


“These flours were milled and consumed on a shorter timeline and a smaller scale,” said Sarah Corwin, PhD, RD, senior principal scientist, plant-based, Ajinomoto Health & Nutrition, who studied carbohydrate chemistry and digestion at Purdue University. “By having large-scale refinement technology, we observed that the fat, B vitamins and proteins in whole grain spoiled the flour, so the shelf life was much shorter. This wasn’t a problem before because we were consuming it as it was produced, but now we’re able to create very large amounts of flour and baked goods way ahead of what we needed, so we needed to extend the shelf life of that flour.”


To do that, millers removed the bran and germ, extending the shelf life at the expense of the nutritional value. Most baked goods were then made with refined grain, but because grain-based foods made up the bulk of the American diet, it wasn’t long before nutrition deficiencies started showing up in the population.


To counteract that, the United States government began food fortification and enrichment programs: adding iodine on a voluntary basis to salt in 1924 and vitamin D to milk in 1933. In 1940, flour entered the spotlight with the Committee on Food and Nutrition recommending it be enriched with thiamin, niacin, riboflavin and iron. The US Food & Drug Administration established a standard of identity for enriched flour including these initial nutrients, and by 1942 much of the bread being produced in the US was meeting this standard voluntarily. In 1998, folic acid fortification was added to the standard of identity to address neural tube birth defects.


“It’s been documented since that time that the incidence of neural tube birth defects has fallen precipitously, and it’s directly related to that,” said Glenn Gaesser, PhD, professor, College of Health Solutions at Arizona State University, and member of the Grain Foods Foundation Scientific Advisory Board. “And you see that in countries that don’t have mandatory fortification you don’t see the same sort of benefits. It’s just one example, but it’s pretty clear cut.”


The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that this addition has prevented neural tube birth defects in about 1,300 babies each year. These defects have decreased by 35% in the US since 1998.


While enrichment has certainly boosted the nutrition of refined flour — and complex carbohydrates offered by refined flour are also helpful to the human body — whole grains offer an elevated nutritional profile to consumers. While commercial baking may have been geared toward refined flour because of the ease of production and shelf life, the scientific community has been wise to the nutritional powerhouse that is whole grains for quite some time.


“In the mid-19th century, when nutrition science was only in its infancy, whole grains were a staple food in American health sanitariums,” said Kelly LeBlanc, MLA, RD, LDN, director of nutrition, Oldways. “In fact, many commercial whole grains today, such as graham flour and whole grain cereal, can be traced to the teachings of Sylvester Graham and John Harvey Kellogg, who were prominent and controversial health influencers of their time.”


Even at the turn of the century, Ms. LeBlanc pointed out that scientists noticed people eating brown rice in East Asia were significantly less likely to develop beriberi, a chronic disease that is potentially deadly, than their counterparts who were eating white rice.


“This finding paved the way for the discovery of vitamins and helped shape our understanding of the nutritional value that whole grains have to offer,” she explained. “Over the years, as nutrition scientists learned more about the importance of micronutrients like vitamins and minerals, as well as other essential nutrients like fiber, it became increasingly clear that whole grains were an important part of a nutritious diet.”

Milling technology and better formulating knowledge has enabled baking companies to create whole grain breads that are palatable. stock.adobe.com

The taste of healthy

Despite the profound knowledge, even among fickle consumers, that whole grains are a benefit to the body, consumption of whole grains has always been slow. Taste remains the No. 1 reason consumers make repeat food purchases, regardless of any virtue-signaling they may provide their friends, family and market researchers. And for many, products made with enriched flour simply taste better.


“It’s been a real challenge to get people to consume more whole grain foods,” Dr. Gaesser said. “And it’s not from lack of advertising or general knowledge that whole grains are good. You can find that easily on the internet. There are all sorts of studies and websites that tout the health of whole grains. You can look at the scientific literature and see that whole grains are associated with lower risk of a lot of chronic diseases, so why people don’t consume more I think it’s just a matter of taste, texture and maybe even color.”


The 2021 Whole Grain Consumer Insights Survey found that the biggest barriers to whole grain consumption are taste (33%), cost (29%) and availability (23%). Things may be changing, however, as consumers have become more educated, and millers have created whole grain flours that create more palatable breads packed with nutrition.


That same consumer insights survey also found that more than a quarter of respondents reported there is nothing keeping them from eating more whole grains, and more consumers reported that they see the taste of whole grains as a benefit rather than a barrier.


“Zooming out a little further, lack of exposure to whole grains had also been a barrier to whole grain consumption, but this is an area where we’re really seeing progress,” Ms. LeBlanc explained. “Feeding experts note that food preferences are not set in stone, and that in order to enjoy a food, we really need repeated exposures to it over time.”


The Dietary Guidelines of Americans quantifying whole grain recommendations influenced school lunch programs and the bakery products that could be offered to schoolchildren. The baking industry has used more finely milled whole grain flours and a combination of whole grain and enriched flours to create soft and smooth products for school lunch programs and even the retail shelf to satisfy even the pickiest of eaters.


“Thankfully, today’s bread makers have a better understanding that whole wheat flour cannot simply be substituted 1:1 for all-purpose flour, and that different varieties of wheat are well-suited for different end products,” Ms. LeBlanc explained. “By experimenting with different types of whole grain flours, milling to a smaller particle size, increasing hydration of the doughs and investing in product research and development, today’s bakers and manufacturers are able to offer more delicious whole grain breads than ever before.”


Just last year, Bimbo Bakeries USA (BBU), Horsham, Pa., launched Soft & Smooth wheat bread under its Sara Lee Delightful line. The Delightful line contains no added sugars and contains only 45 calories per slice in addition to this variety delivering whole grain nutrition with a soft and smooth texture. In January 2021, the company also introduced Sara Lee Delightful White Made with Whole Grain, which also claims to be keto-friendly with only 6 grams of net carbs per slice.


Flowers Foods, Thomasville, Ga., also touts a wide variety of whole wheat and whole grain breads with a soft and smooth texture, and some formulated with honey.
New products that provide a range of textures and flavors associated with whole grains have helped Americans learn to appreciate the flavor and texture the grains contribute to baked goods.


“In fact, in 2010, whole grain bread sales began to surpass those of white bread,” Ms. LeBlanc pointed out. “Today, whole grain breads are a trendy staple at artisan bakeries across the country, and whole grains like quinoa, farro and brown rice appear on fine dining menus and fast casual alike. Additionally, locally grown whole grains provide a unique path for bakers and food producers to connect with the Earth and support local food systems and economies.”


For consumers who are interested in the taste and texture of whole grains, there’s a wide array of options to choose from, whether it’s BBU’s Oroweat brand or Flowers Foods’ Dave’s Killer Bread, which both market to a health-conscious and socially conscious consumer.


“There are so many options that it would be almost impossible that someone couldn’t find something that was palatable,” Dr. Gaesser said. “In the past, some of the whole grain breads just tasted like cardboard, but today, the coarse texture can be minimized, and that’s paved the way for all the options we have now.”

The consumer conundrum

While the science around the benefits of whole grains and enriched grains is clear and consistent, the movement toward low-carbohydrate diets has persisted in the collective consumer conscious since the 1960s. Carbohydrates gained a brief respite in the 1980s while fat took a turn at vilification, but in the 1990s, the spotlight turned back toward carbohydrates and simple sugars. Dr. Corwin attributes this persistent vilification with the growing understanding of macronutrients.

 

“As the science progressed, we started to understand the caloric distribution of macronutrients,” she said. “That’s when we began to understand that fat is higher in calories than protein, so maybe we should cut down on fat and carbohydrates. Then sugar became the next target because it’s a simple carbohydrate. This also coincided with the observation that with a ketogenic diet, glycogen stored in muscle (which is more than 10 times its weight in water) is lost, resulting in the number on the scale going down. It’s been a long progression of carbohydrates being viewed negatively, even though grains are the main source of carbohydrates in the American diet.”

 

Dr. Gaesser also pointed to the fixation on dieting and the growing rates of obesity in America. Data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, 2013-2016, found that 49.1% of US adults tried to lose weight in the past 12 months, while nearly 40% were considered obese. Among the adults who tried to lose weight, exercise and eating less were tied for the top spot with 62.9% of respondents reporting these strategies.

 

“When you look at diet from the standpoint of how to lose weight, you see a smorgasbord of diets that have vilified carbs, whether it’s low-carb, keto or paleo,” Dr. Gaesser said. “Carbohydrates are the most commonly consumed macronutrient, so for most of the last century, about half the calorie intake for the average American comes from carbs. So if you want to lose weight, you need to cut calories.

 

Carbohydrates are an easy target. It makes sense from this perspective to cut out something that you’re consuming a lot of. However, research shows that in terms of weight loss, it’s the calories not the carbs.”

 

Dr. Gaesser also pointed to the biology of how carbohydrates are stored in the body as to why people find so much initial success with cutting carbohydrates.

 

“For every gram of carbohydrate you store in your body, you store almost 3 grams of water with it,” he explained. “So if you lose the carbohydrate, you also lose the water weight. When people go on a carb-free diet, they can drop 5 to 10 lbs within the first week, and they think this is the best diet ever because they’ve never experienced that. The low-carb diet gurus have capitalized on that phenomenon.”

 

It’s these stories about quick weight loss, Dr. Corwin said, that attract the public more than the science because stories can be so powerful.

 

“But anecdotes aren’t scientific evidence,” she said. “MSG is a really good example. One person published one article saying they had a headache and a stomachache after eating Chinese food. And that resonated with someone else, and they repeated it over and over again. MSG is also naturally occurring in Italian food in the Parmesan cheese, so why is this phenomenon so specific to Chinese food? Only recently in the last four years has it really come to light that the reason why people thought MSG was bad was xenophobia and a couple of misinformed articles in the 1960s.”

 

Today, the sexy diet people are hopping on board is the ketogenic diet, which on its own has a long, well-documented history to treat epilepsy. But it has reached the mainstream consumer who may not need this extremely restricted diet to treat anything but a waistline. Dr. Gaesser pointed out that there could be unintended consequences for those who cut carbs without a medical reason to do so, whether that’s epilepsy or celiac disease. Two research papers published in major journals he cited show an association between cutting out gluten and increased risk of diabetes and heart disease.

 

“If you cut out wheat — Americans’ major source of gluten — you’re cutting out a major source of fiber,” he pointed out. “Studies show that dietary fiber — particularly cereal fiber — is inversely associated with diabetes and heart disease.”

 

There’s been chatter about the healthfulness of sprouted grains, low-carb breads and long fermentation products like sourdough, but the science is leading to fiber.

 

“There is really interesting research starting to hit publications around what type of fiber is beneficial, but there is no real research around some other consumer trends,” Dr. Corwin said. “Despite minimal research backing the lasting benefits of probiotics, some research supports prebiotics and fiber for gut health. I believe prebiotics and fiber are the future of gut health. If science drives trends, then the next steps will be determining what those types of fiber are. Hopefully, that’s how we’ll be developing new products.”

Posted on

Evolution of snacking

By Michelle Smith

April 2022

Evolution
of snacking

As the snack industry grows and changes, consumers are gobbling up a variety of treats.

Baking & Snack

Quinn Snacks

 

When James Herr started his business in 1946, he sold potato chips at a local market in Lancaster, Pa. But that wasn’t the only way he found to get his snacks in the hands of potential customers. He would place free 3-lb tins of chips on doorsteps with a note telling people that if they liked them, they simply needed to return the tin, pay the fee, and another tin would be delivered.


“Back in the 1940s, you didn’t have all these supermarket chains,” said Ed Herr, James Herr’s son and current chairman and chief executive officer of Herr Foods Inc., Nottingham, Pa. “Back then, it was more mom-and-pop stores.”


Things have changed a lot at Herr’s in the 76 years since that humble beginning. Indeed, automation, packaging, distribution, ingredients and so much more — including snackers and their habits — have all had a hand in transforming the snack industry into the vibrant, multifaceted powerhouse it is today. As Sosland Publishing, the parent company of Baking & Snack, celebrates 100 years in business, we are taking a closer look to see what’s gone before and what’s next.

Managing dramatic changes

Many automation innovations have been developed for snack makers over the past century, including many pieces of machinery that have only become faster and more efficient through the years. This list includes equipment bagging salty snacks like chips and pretzels.


“The automation that has come in has been fantastic, and the systems and controls have been amazing,” said Barry Levin, CEO of Snak King Corp., City of Industry, Calif. “When I first started, we had volumetric fillers. Then we had bulk and dribble feeders going into a single scale. Today we have combination weighers that are significantly faster and more accurate. The tools we have today are remarkable to help us make good products consistently.”


The equipment has come a long way for pretzels, too, said Justin Spannuth, vice president and chief operating officer at Unique Snacks, Reading, Pa.


“With twisting, braiding, filling, the rate of extrusion back when we were on Montrose Avenue — this was pre-1980 — we had a Unex brand extruder, which extruded two pretzels at a time,” he explained.


That amounted to about 100 pretzels per minute while extruders today can produce several thousand per minute, although Mr. Spannuth said that to ensure quality, Unique Snacks doesn’t operate at maximum speed.


And the industry has changed significantly over the years, said Troy Gunden, president of Herr’s and the third generation to run the family-owned company, which employs 13 family members in a variety of roles.


“For the first 75 years of your publication, there would have been a lot of mom-and-pop businesses and independent snack food companies in each different area producing either potato chips or crackers or any number of things,” he said. “In the ’80s, ’90s and definitely now, it seems like there’s significantly more consolidation.”


Malcolm McAlpine, business manager for branded snacks and confections in foodservice for Mondelez International, Chicago, pointed out that there wasn’t much in the way of packaged snacks outside of retail 100 years ago.


“Over the past 30 years, the variety and pack formats have exploded,” he said. “For example, on Oreo we have probably 20 different pack formats on a regular Oreo. Everything from two-count, four-count, six-count, king size, mini big bags, regular bags, retail family size, 20 oz. What’s really happened is not only has snacking increased dramatically, but also the fact that, particularly in the last 20 years, pack sizes and formats have been developed to fit specific channels.”

Creating community

Snack producers say they have found success in a variety of ways. Herr’s maintains not only a dedication to tradition, community and sustainability but also through steady expansion and progress.


“We pretty much stick to what we do and try to do it really well,” Mr. Herr said. “We’re really proud of our culture and our people. Our slogan this year is ‘It’s our people.’ We believe it’s not just our Herr family, it’s the Herr Foods family, and we all work together to build a strong reputation in the industry. We believe in our mission to safely provide the best products and service to our customers.”


Community is a theme that snack makers touted as vital. That comes in the form of company culture as well as reaching out to customers by establishing personal connections.


“You build digital brands by building a community,” said Joe Ens, CEO of HighKey, Orlando, Fla., which started by selling no-sugar cookies online before jumping to retail. “We invested heavily in digital, social and influencers to build a foundation, a consumer community that stays with us still. As soon as we hit a retailer shelf, we’ve already got a built-in loyalty.”


E-commerce and direct-to-consumer websites help startups connect with consumers by creating unique brand experiences, said Stacey Benham, vice president marketing, Quinn Snacks, Boulder, Colo., which sells all-natural snacks.


“This channel also makes it possible for more personalized conversations with loyal consumers to really understand what they love about your product and your brand so you can deliver an exceptional experience,” she said.


Connecting online with consumers is good business as 62% of people enjoy food content on social media, according to the Third Annual “State of Snacking” report from Mondelez International. That number jumps to 82% among Generation Z consumers.


Mr. Ens credits part of HighKey’s success to a growth mindset. That includes seeing failure as progress.


“What e-commerce has enabled for a company like us that has a growth mindset is you can just go for stuff,” he said. “And as long as it’s in the brand parameters, you can lean in and fail faster and cheaper than using traditional approaches.”


Obviously, a company must also be creative, have strong leaders with drive and a product worth selling. And as Mr. Levin said, “I don’t know if you can replace hard work with anything.”

Snack nation always changing

Because Americans are snacking more rather than eating full meals, they’re looking for greater variety of snacks that satisfies their desire for healthfulness as well as indulgence. The “State of Snacking” report said that nearly two-thirds of consumers prefer to eat many small meals instead of a few large ones, and 85% of global consumers eat at least one snack each day for sustenance and one for indulgence.


“Over the course of time, snacks have changed dramatically in terms of what they are because technology has changed so much,” said Lynn Dornblaser, director of innovation and insight, Mintel. “One of the biggest consumer behaviors that really stands out to me is how for the US market, we snack all the time.”


Just 10 years ago, she said, consumer data defined super snackers as those eating four to six snacks a week. Now people are eating that many snacks a day. Hostess Brands, Lenexa, Kan., recently said its research found 18 distinctive consumer snacking occasions.


“With busy lifestyles, with both members of the household working, they’re more time-constrained,” Mr. McAlpine said. “So I think the days of the three square meals a day are long gone. People are eating more frequently and smaller portions at more times of the day.”


Mr. Spannuth said he’s seen a fair number of trends that have come and gone.


“Since I’ve been here — it’s not just exclusive to pretzels, more the snack category — is all the trends between flavor trends, health trends, gluten-free, the changes of oil,” he said. “That’s probably the only thing we’ve changed in our recipe. It went from lard to hydrogenated soybean oil, and then trans fat became a bad thing, and we went to canola oil. Then canola oil became an issue, so we went to non-GMO high-oleic sunflower oil.”


Many brands are finding the balance between tasty and good for you.


“The desire for organic foods is here to stay, and it’s going to continue to grow as people become more conscious of what they put in their bodies,” Mr. Levin said. “But I still think people when they’re buying a snack, they’re looking to get satisfied, and they oftentimes want that indulgent snack. It’s their treat.”


He said that although the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic brought people home and eating meals together, the grab-and-go mentality is still present, and snacks are a good fit for that.


He said the definition of a snack will evolve, an opinion shared by Ms. Dornblaser.


“There are so many more choices now. There aren’t any rules about what a snack is. Anything can be a snack,” she said. “Sometimes when we ask consumers, ‘What do you snack on?’ Cheese and fruit are at the top of the list. It can be grain-based snacks, it can be fried snacks, it can be produce, it can be a beverage. A beverage is often a snack, depending on what it is. What a snack is has changed a lot.”


For instance, she said that products are crossing category lines. That includes items such as Ritz crackers now being offered as chips, yogurt and cottage cheese adding grain-based mix-ins, or snacks that include pretzels and hummus in one package.


“To me the most important thing that’s different now than it was in the past is that snacking is a behavior. It’s not a category,” she added.


And many agree that the BFY products will grow as brands explore more ways to deliver healthful ingredients through the expansion of base ingredients.


“It’s not just about snacks being corn-based or potato-based or wheat flour-based,” Ms. Dornblaser said. “There are so many more base ingredients whether it’s different kinds of grains, beans and pulses. That to me seems like a big change because in some cases it makes the products very, very different.”

Leveling the playing field

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic provided a shot in the arm to the
e-commerce market, which already was growing before March 2020. That’s good news for newer and startup snack makers that may not have access to crowded retail shelves. They can put up their own direct-to-consumer (DTC) websites to get their products noticed.


“Our DTC site allows consumers to engage directly with our brand, learn more about our ‘Be better, do better’ mission and speak with us one on one,” said Stacey Benham, vice president marketing, Quinn Snacks, Boulder, Colo. “As a result, we also gain valuable insights to help us drive new innovation and understand what our consumers expect from our brand.”


Digital brands can ramp up more slowly and don’t need the volume needed to produce a snack that is going on retail shelves.


“E-commerce really has leveled the playing field in that initial startup phase,” said Ryan Quinn, who is a founder and managing partner of Bougie Bakes, Los Angeles, along with his wife, Meghan Quinn. “I don’t think e-commerce can completely replace everything in the food business, but I think it’s a great start that you can get that proof of concept with live sales and direct customer feedback.”


Selling online allows companies to gain quick feedback and understand how their products are doing and being received by customers, said Joe Ens, chief executive officer of HighKey, Orlando, Fla., which started as a digital brand and has moved to retail.


“The unique element that digital does create for a company like ours and others is you can very quickly iterate, you can innovate, you can kill ideas or explode ideas depending on how quickly they succeed, and you’ll know within days or weeks, not months or years,” he said.

Bougie Bakes

Snackers demand sustainability

As the preferences of snackers evolve, so does the definition of better-for-you snacks. Consumers are interested in products that are greener and better for the planet.


“Better-for-you 20 years ago meant low-fat or low-salt,” Mr. McAlpine said. “Now that umbrella encompasses a lot more things. It’s ethically sourced raw materials and ingredients. It’s clean label and non-GMO — all of that. That trend is going to continue as well. People want healthier, but they also want indulgent products. Believe me, we see that. But they want the indulgent product to be more clean label.”


That also extends to the packaging for snacks. Mr. McAlpine said that he’s seen tremendous strides in packaging by extending the shelf life of products as well as the rise in sustainable packaging.


Mr. McAlpine said he thinks that the number of new products will only continue as the world works its way through the pandemic.


“Innovation has slowed up a bit because of COVID, but you take a walk down the grocery store aisle and see how many bars that you have access to,” he said. “You almost see new products every week.”


The last couple of years have produced unprecedented challenges for snack makers.


“Right now is probably a time when the challenges seem the greatest with supply chain, staffing and freight,” Mr. Levin said. “Right now is the most difficult time I’ve seen in my career.”


Although research and development may have suffered lately because of the challenges brought on by the pandemic, he prefers to take a positive view of the situation.


“I’m optimistic that the staffing challenges are going to improve,” he added.


Mr. Spannuth doesn’t expect any reverse of the situation in the foreseeable future.


“I think the shock and awe are going away,” he said. “Unfortunately, it’s the new normal right now. We’re starting to see a plateau. We’re still getting price increases. They’re not as often or as much, but we’re still getting price increases.”


One thing the snack industry agrees on is that Americans will remain committed snackers. And that’s great for manufacturers, whether they’re providing healthful snacks, indulgent treats or a bit of both.


“One hundred years ago there weren’t a lot of snack items,” Mr. McAlpine said. “It’s exploded over the last 100 years, but we’ve seen a big expansion in the last 20 years. I’m very bullish. I only see it continuing to increase.”

You might also enjoy:

From feed to food

From feed to food

A look at nearly a century of Nestlé Purina meeting the nutritional needs of pets as the industry has evolved.

Dawn of complexity

Dawn of complexity

For two decades, the age of specialization has dominated the retail scene.

Posted on

Content and Integrity: the Milling & Baking News story

By Laurie Gorton

March 8, 2022

Content and Integrity:
the Milling & Baking News story

The 100-year-old magazine helps managers keep supply and demand in balance by assisting the industry in keeping its eye on the ball.

Milling & Baking News

The mission was ambitious, and so were the three brothers who established the trade journal known today as Milling & Baking News. Now reaching its milestone 100th year, the publication launched by Samuel, David and Sanders Sosland on March 7, 1922, as The Southwestern Miller has lived up to their promises … and much more.


At the heart of this very commercial venture was an absolute commitment to the integrity of its content. This approach proved its value time after time. At first, that duty was to the millers of the southwestern United States; it would grow to encompass the whole world.


The new magazine addressed readers in a box on the cover of its Vol. 1, No. 1 issue by describing the journal’s purpose: “The Southwestern Miller will voice specifically the news of the Southwest, which, as the largest producer of flour and as the leader in the extension of wheat production, should command the attention not only of millers but of flour handlers throughout the world.”


L. Joshua Sosland, president, Sosland Publishing Co.; editor, Milling & Baking News; and editor-in-chief, Food Business News, emphasized, “Equally important was a pledge in the first issue to ‘strive for accuracy, to be fair, to be prompt and to labor unceasingly to render the service (we have) undertaken to perform.’”

Setting up for success

Why was Kansas City such an appealing place in 1922 for a new business-to-business newspaper to serve the grain-based foods industry? Simply put, the time was ripe for the flour and grain business community and for the hard red winter wheat grown in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Texas.


In the early 1920s, forceful economic change was blowing through wheat farms and flour mills throughout the nation. Until then, the wheat business divided itself into distinct zones with highly localized markets. Flour milled from wheat grown in the Southwest went primarily into the family flour market, while white wheat growers and millers in the Northwest (the Dakotas, Minnesota and Montana) mostly sold flour to commercial bakeries. During World War I, however, the US Army took advantage of the abundant supply of lower-cost hard red winter wheat grown in Kansas and the Southwest.


“When my father and uncles started out, flour milling was the biggest industry in the US,” the late Morton Sosland, the magazine’s longtime editor-in-chief, told a biographer in 2008. “More than half of all flour milled in the US went into the family flour market. That changed after World War I, when home baking began its long decline. Southwestern mills were forced to find a new business among commercial customers and industrial bakers.”

The need for a new voice

“I believe the reason that the southwestern mills represented such an opportunity to the Soslands was because those mills perceived an increasingly pressing need for new markets,” Josh Sosland said. Family flour was mostly a local affair, and its millers marketed it like any other retail packaged food: through local newspaper advertising.


“They didn’t need business-to-business publications,” Josh Sosland said. “That changed after World War I with the decline in home baking.”


Although plenty of publishers covered milling, none addressed the specific issues of interest to mills in the Southwest and the hard red wheat grown there.


The Sosland brothers, two of them fresh out of World War I military service, had found positions as reporters covering grain markets for several Kansas City and St. Louis area publications. Emmet Hoffman, head of The Kansas Flour Mills Corp., the largest milling company in Kansas, buttonholed the three brothers at a regional millers’ meeting and made the case that millers in the Southwest deserved their own journal.


“Mr. Hoffman recognized the Soslands as knowledgeable about grain and milling,” said Neil Sosland, executive editor, markets, Milling & Baking News. His father and uncles had been thinking about creating a publishing business of their own. They considered several fields, including banking and financial markets.“But flour milling is the one that suited them best,” he observed.


The Southwestern Miller’s first issue carried a folio of 36 pages and 106 ads, printed in what would today be considered tabloid format: 10½ by 13½ inches. Its masthead listed only three names: David N. Sosland, editor and manager; Samuel Sosland, managing editor; and Sanders Sosland, associate editor. It also listed a subscription price of $2 per year in the United States, Cuba and Mexico. The remainder of the world could get it for $3 per year. Single copies were 10¢.


The magazine was launched with regular columns about “Markets of the Southwest,” “The Central States,” “Markets of the East,” “The Week on Millfeed Markets,” “Transportation,” “Southern States,” “Cotton, Jute & Burlap” and “The Flour Tribunal” with columnists who covered transportation and legal matters.


Neil Sosland added, “The reader that the founders envisioned was a small local flour mill that dealt only with customers in the local area. Subsequently, because this magazine also dealt with bakers, we did expand to baking and feed milling.”

Solid mission

The magazine was launched with a tight regional focus, but as Josh Sosland said, “Even at the start, the editors noted the importance of keeping abreast of global issues. They declared, ‘The Southwestern Miller will not be provincial. No miller and no individual or organization can succeed if provincial in any branch of the milling business, where it is constantly necessary to cope with world trade factors.’”


Market analyses have always been the magazine’s mainstay, but also appealing were the many “Notes” in the form of personal references to industry leaders, most of which grew out of their visits to the editorial offices. When Morton Sosland became the chief editor, the opinion columns he wrote titled “Peregrinations” — brief editorials, often light or personal in nature — served a similar purpose.


Convention coverage was a constant from the start, as were regular reports on new and pending federal legislation and regulations, and international markets. Covering financial results of public companies became an early hallmark.


“Government always has played a great role in US agriculture and food industries and, thus, in our magazine,” said Jay Sjerven, senior editor, markets, Milling & Baking News and Food Business News. “Some would argue too great a role.”


His beat also covers Washington news.


“But no matter whether helpful or frustrating, what government does is important, as it manages trade and farm policy and sets the rules of the road for food manufacturers,” he said. “The editors of The Southwestern Miller certainly understood this from the get-go, reporting on directions and government policy with an eye to what flour milling executives simply had to know.”


Recognition was a big part of the Sosland brothers’ publishing strategy.


“Sam and his brothers were strong believers in putting peoples’ names into the magazine, noting how much readers liked that,” Morton Sosland wrote in 2008, “but spelling the name right and getting the correct title and company name were also important.”


Josh Sosland added, “The mission of Milling & Baking News hasn’t changed much. We take it to be: to provide important, timely, accurate and actionable information to the grain-based foods industry.


“It’s true that the magazine initially was aimed at serving the milling industry of the Southwest. Today, we serve the entire grain-based foods industry with Milling & Baking News and the entire food industry with our sister publication Food Business News.”


Even though the magazine charged its readers for their subscriptions, advertising helped pay the bills from the beginning.


“A big part of the success of my father and uncles was the ability to bring in advertising, even the ‘inch’ ads,” Neil Sosland said. “It had to be a combination of revenue from subscriber and advertiser to make this publication work.”


Of all the companies advertising in 1922 only two operate under the same name today: Commerce Bank, Kansas City, and Shawnee Milling Co., Shawnee, Okla. Shawnee Milling continues as a family business, now run by the third and fourth generations. Although publicly owned since 1975, Commerce Bank still draws its key executives from the Kemper family who owned the bank when The Southwestern Miller was launched.

David N. Sosland, Sanders Sosland and Samuel Sosland.

You might also enjoy:

The bake story

The bake story

This innovative publishing platform now observantly reports about the changing face of retail baking.

Content and Integrity: the Milling & Baking News story

Content and Integrity: the Milling & Baking News story

The 100-year-old magazine helps managers keep supply and demand in balance by assisting the industry in keeping its eye on the ball.

A trusted voice

A trusted voice

Sosland Publishing’s protein platform builds its success on a solid foundation of industry knowledge and connections.

Preparing purchasers

On June 5-7, 2022, the Sosland Publishing Purchasing Seminar will convene its 44th annual gathering. In addition to presentations on major ingredient markets and energy, topics to be covered include the weather outlook, transportation, the economy and consumer trends, plus risk management.


A year before the 1977 inaugural seminar, the company presented a conference inspired by America’s bicentennial celebration and reflecting on breadstuffs over those 200 years. Its featured speakers were many of the industry’s top leaders, the presidents and chairmen of major grain, baking and milling enterprises worldwide. Milling & Baking News published a special issue containing all the speeches given at that 1976 meeting.


Josh Sosland, company president and editor of Milling & Baking News, said that the 1976 meeting and an earlier 1972 gathering to celebrate the magazine’s 50th birthday inspired Morton Sosland to create an “evergreen” event, one that could be repeated annually.


“The guts of the original Purchasing Seminar are still there today,” Josh Sosland said. “However, we have added subjects appealing to other sectors of the food industry. That means sacrificing some of the specialized coverage, for example, lengthy presentations on durum and soft spring wheat, among others.” (On-going analysis of these crops is reported in Milling & Baking News, and their technological developments are discussed at the Wheat Quality Council’s annual meetings normally held in February.)


“It has moved from baking-centric to food-centric,” Josh Sosland noted. “It now covers proteins, meat and poultry, and similar topics. It also has added more commentary on risk management. Thus, the Purchasing Seminar helps train the next generation of ingredient buyers about the technologies and market conditions specific to the ingredients they will purchase.”


There were about 200 people at the first Purchasing Seminar. Attendance peaked at 800 for the 2015 seminar, which also celebrated Sosland Publishing’s 75th anniversary. It outgrew its original site, Kansas City’s Alameda Hotel (now the InterContinental), and moved to the Sheraton at Crown Center. It was even held in Chicago.


The COVID-19 pandemic forced the company to cancel its 2020 Purchasing Seminar; however, it developed a substitute video web series offered in June 2020 with presentations from many of the originally scheduled speakers. In October 2021, it reinstated the in-person Purchasing Seminar at Kansas City and is currently planning for 2022, likely to be in-person as well.


Recruiting the speakers has been the responsibility, successively and successfully, of Morton Sosland, Mark Sabo and now Josh Sosland, with the assistance of the company’s editors. The business of the purchasing seminar, registration, fees, housing and speaker arrangements, rested first with Donna Tartar, then Barbara Mount, and today is managed by Christina Sullivan.


Sosland Publishing also pursued a transportation seminar for about 10 years during the 1970s.

Outsiders turned insiders

While folks named Sosland shaped the magazine’s first 50 years, as the company grew it came to rely on more and more staff drawn from outside the family. Three such individuals who most affected Milling & Baking News’ direction were Mel Sjerven, Gordon Davidson and Mark Sabo.


In 1968, Morton Sosland invited Mel Sjerven, then a Minneapolis-based stringer with 17 years of reporting for The Southwestern Miller, to move to Kansas City in a larger role. He became the first full-time editor hired outside the family. Even after he retired in 1990, he continued to contribute to Sosland projects, coordinating speakers for the Purchasing Seminar, held annually in June.


“Mel Sjerven was recognized as a great friend to the flour milling industry and, in fact, was a great friend to many individual millers,” said his son, Jay Sjerven, who joined the company in 1981. “His strong personal relationships with milling executives brought both great accuracy and richness to market reporting. His objectivity and discretion were respected and valued by all.”


Mr. Davidson, a veteran newspaper reporter and editor, was hired in 1972 as an associate editor and special project manager of Milling & Baking News. He became managing editor of the magazine in 1986.


“Gordon set a good example for us.” Josh Sosland recalled. “Even in the middle of a crisis, he remained calm and laid-back, always getting the job done.”


During its first half century, magazine advertising was sold primarily by Dave Sosland. On recommendation from the Millers’ National Federation (MNF), the brothers hired Jerry A. Machalek in 1968 as assistant editor. He was assistant to the publisher from 1972 to 1978. He established a professional advertising sales staff, which included Mark Sabo. He became well-recognized for his influence in the milling and baking fields, earned during his years as the magazine’s chief sales executive.


“What I appreciated most about Mark Sabo was his willingness to embrace history but also to look forward, to develop, nurture and expand Milling & Baking News and the company into new areas, as when we launched World Grain and later Food Business News,” said G. Michael Gude, publisher, Milling & Baking News, Food Business News and Baking & Snack. “He was able to recognize trends and take advantage of them, thus well-nurturing the legacy product. He did both with so much tenacity.”


Mr. Sabo rose to assistant publisher in 1980 and to president and publisher of Milling & Baking News in 1986 before his retirement in 2015.


Both Josh Sosland, who succeeded Mr. Sabo as company president, and Mr. Gude, who followed Mr. Sabo as Milling & Baking News publisher, described him as crucial to the development of the magazine and company.


Josh Sosland noted specifically, “Mark was a force helping lead us beyond being a one-title publishing company. Working with Morton, Mark led Milling & Baking News into its role as the incubator for Baking & Snack, World Grain and Food Business News, magazines that greatly expanded the company’s horizons.”


For most of the magazine’s first 50 years, it and Sosland Publishing Co. were synonymous. Only during the 1970s, did management consider adding new titles to the company’s portfolio.

Tracking the leaders

Corporate Profiles, a special issue introduced by Milling & Baking News in 2002, was expanded in scope three years later with the debut of Food Business News. Jeff Gelski, senior editor, was appointed the annual edition’s managing editor. He and editors from many other Sosland magazines do the research, write and edit the publication.


“The past two decades of Corporate Profiles show how companies in the food and beverage industry have evolved.” Mr. Gelski said.


He noted the important changes over this period.


“After Interstate Brands Corp. declared bankruptcy and later was sold off, Grupo Bimbo and Flowers Foods became dominant in the bread industry,” he said. “Flowers bought the Wonder bread brand once owned by Interstate and then acquired Dave’s Killer Bread. Bimbo also was active in acquisitions, including the Sara Lee brand of fresh bakery products. Kraft spun off the Nabisco business that included Oreos and other snacks, calling it Mondelez International, and later merged with Heinz to become Kraft Heinz.”


All of this, and more, is what is described in Corporate Profiles.


“Walmart and Kroger increased their presence in food and began appearing in Corporate Profiles,” Mr. Gelski continued. “The plant-based trend annually appears in Corporate Profiles now that Beyond Meat trades publicly. Amazon also made appearances in Corporate Profiles, which signified how online sales have grown. Once COVID-19 hit, restaurant chains scrambled to increase digital ordering capabilities. Those companies are now also represented in this special issue.”

The winds of history

Change is a constant in a field whose economic size places it at the top of the food processing industry, rivaled only by the meat and dairy sectors. Josh Sosland described the themes and events that shaped Milling & Baking News over the past 100 years: Industry consolidation, something that continues to the present day among bakers and their suppliers; the New Deal that launched increasing government involvement in business through burgeoning regulations; the Russian Wheat Deal of the early 1970s; the disastrous Atkins Diet; the health-and-wellness trend now dominating consumer foods; and the growing importance of foodservice as commercial baking’s customer. Of course, the past two years of the COVID-19 pandemic also have shaped business conditions for Milling & Baking News readers.


The first two decades of The Southwestern Miller were marked by huge changes in both flour milling and baking, and it so happened that Kansas City was central to many of these.


During this period, Sam Sosland scored a major scoop on his competitors by writing a weekly series profiling the leaders of America’s grain, milling and baking companies — a “Who’s Who” of industry leaders.


The years of the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression, starting in 1929, brought drought and economic problems to grain farmers and government controls over markets. They also prompted creation of the Daily News Card and, later, the “Sosland Says” commentary published daily by Reuters into the late 1980s.
In 1938, the foundational Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act was passed, establishing the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). And a year later, in 1939, the Federal Standards of Identity were created.


In the run up to World War II, the magazine reported how hostilities in Europe affected US wheat futures and that wheat exports were restricted by submarine warfare and blockade.


America entered the war, and patriotism entered advertising messages. The Southwestern Miller published its first cover printed in more than black with red with the issue of July 4, 1942, that showed the US flag inked in red and blue.

Slicing bread in San Angelo, Texas.

Post-war and the cold war

The military draft initiated in 1940 found widespread malnutrition among potential soldiers. Thus, in 1943, supported by the nation’s nutritionists, War Food Order No. 1 mandated enrichment of white bread and flour with B vitamins and iron as a temporary measure. Extending enrichment into peacetime ignited a bitterly fought battle, but the MNF and the American Bakers Association (ABA) supported this effort. And so did The Southwestern Miller.


The war era saw further erosion in home baking. Commercial bread accounted for 85% of consumption by the end of World War II; it was just 50% the year the magazine was founded.


Home from military service, Morton Sosland resumed his studies at Harvard College. He joined the magazine staff in 1947. In 1952, Neil Sosland, who had recently graduated from Harvard and was working for the family company, was drafted to serve in the army during the Korean War. He returned to the magazine two years later.


As post-war tensions rose between former allies: the United States and the USSR, The Southwestern Miller reported that flour from Kansas was included in the Berlin Airlift to overcome the Soviet blockade of the German capital. This was also the era that saw big changes in flour handling technology, specifically the use of pneumatic conveying and the shift to bulk shipping of flour and other ingredients.


But mostly, the late 1940s and 1950s were an era of unprecedented prosperity. Milling did well during the war and afterward as long as the Marshall Plan was in force. Flour production peaked in 1945 at 227 million cwts and was only 203 million three years later. As flour production tumbled, there was a cascade of flour mill closings.


During this time, bakers developed national consumer brands.


In the 1950s, the grain exchanges at Chicago and Minneapolis moved trading to a five-day week from six, and Kansas City soon followed. Nevertheless, the magazine kept to its six-day work schedule, finalizing its market and commerce columns over the weekend.


The continuous dough making process was introduced in a presentation to MNF and dually reported by The Southwestern Miller. This method would come to dominate bakery production for the next quarter century.


Corporate consolidation and more productive technology led the number of milling facilities to drop to 803, according to 1954 Census of Manufacturers issued by the Bureau of the Census. This was a loss of 35% from the 1,243 locations reported in 1947. Census figures, issued every five years, provided a statistical picture of American manufacturing, detailing the number of locations, employees, purchased supplies, packaging used, goods produced and more. Analysis of the Census data about the bread, cake, cookie and cracker industries became Mr. Davidson’s special reporting beat and a mainstay of the magazine.


Cold War conditions intensified during the 1960s, and in 1963, The Southwestern Miller reported how US longshoreman and maritime unions took it on themselves to limit Soviet Union acquisitions of US wheat to half of their requests.


Relations between the United States and the USSR continued to deteriorate during the 1960s, leading to the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the Cuban missile crisis. When the Russian wheat crop failed in 1965, the Soviets bought wheat from Canada and Australia but not the United States, developments reported in depth by The Southwestern Miller. America’s entry into the Vietnamese War also roiled grain markets, according to the magazine’s reporters, and drove up bread prices.


This decade found consumers growing concerned about possible negative effects of food additives. The Delany Clause, a part of the Food Additives Amendment of 1958, forbade the FDA from approving the presence in foods of any substance found to cause cancer in animals or humans. Its zero-risk requirement threatened many effective mill fumigants and pesticides. Highly unpopular among processed food professionals, the clause wasn’t revoked until 40 years later when a new law removed the zero-risk provisions.


In 1968, Bakers Weekly, founded in 1904 and the major baking magazine of the day, folded, and Sosland Publishing saw the chance to shift the focus of The Southwestern Miller more to wholesale baking. Two years earlier, Bakery Production & Marketing was founded. It became a formidable competitor and was once ranked as the highest revenue-generating magazine in the business-to-business field.


In 1969, the White House Conference on Food, Nutrition and Health took place, setting the stage for formal dietary guidelines for Americans. That year, the FDA reviewed its Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) list of food additives. During the next year, the Clean Air Act went into effect, enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency. Bakers learned from the magazine how the anti-pollution law would affect bakery ovens by regulating ethanol emissions.

‘Our new name’

Dave Sosland died in 1968 and Sanders Sosland in 1970. Management of the magazine and the company passed to the second generation, Morton and Neil Sosland. Morton deepened the magazine’s international coverage and reputation, and Neil brought expertise to market reporting and enhanced coverage of the science of milling and baking.


Sam Sosland, the founding managing editor, gradually took a lesser role and withdrew from magazine work after 1970.


In 1972 on its 50th anniversary, The Southwestern Miller became Milling & Baking News. It was a change that was a long time in coming, but editors framed it as “a change in name only, albeit with considerable enthusiasm.”


The new name, according to the editorial announcement, was intended to help the magazine move beyond regional aspects. Hard red winter wheat flour, they said, needed national champions. Ownership of flour mills had long since crossed regional lines, making the Southwestern designation obsolete.


“(T)he individual, the company and also the industry that does not prepare, yes initiate change, is in effect moving backward,” observed Morton Sosland, the unnamed editorial writer.


The editorial continued: “To all intents and purposes, though, the adoption of Milling & Baking News is the capstone of many changes that gradually have been made in this magazine over the past five years or so, all with the intent of better serving breadstuffs managers. These editorial changes – new departments and features, expansion of headquarters staff and adding correspondents and new graphics inside and on the cover – all have aimed at making the ‘News’ in the name a meaningful description. … The magazine is basic reading for breadstuffs managers. The new name is suited for the exciting time ahead.”


He cited the potential “in such areas as nutrition, new products, new marketing techniques and scientific advances that communication takes on new meaning.”
Thus did the Sosland editors affirm a flexible approach to covering the changing issues that the industry faces.


“For the first 70 years, government meddling in agricultural production was as important a topic as any covered by our publication,” Josh Sosland explained. “With the decoupling of grain production and farm supports in the 1990s, this issue receded in importance. To be sure, government regulatory involvement remains a major concern, but not as much with regard to the price of agricultural commodities.


“The point is that we have a staff ready and able to adapt the news to the most pressing needs of our readership. Today that’s tight labor markets and shifting attitudes toward nutrition. We’ll be ready for whatever comes tomorrow.”
The company used the 50th anniversary to expand Milling & Baking News’ coverage, said Neil Sosland.


“That’s when the story became one of audience expansion,” he said. “And we wanted to expand to areas in which we could work. We experimented with various concepts during my father’s and uncles’ time. Now, it was up to Morton’s and my generation to execute on these ideas.”


Neil Sosland advised, further “The most important thing that continues to determine our future is our ability to change. You can’t settle into any one structure. That’s what journalism today faces.”


On the 50th anniversary of the magazine, Sam Sosland recalled, “Our aim was to be a practical publication, moved by realism and idealism.”

Morton I. Sosland discussing the Russian Wheat Deal on the 1974 television program “Firing Line” hosted by William F. Buckley Jr.

Serving timely data needs

The story behind the Daily News Card, established in the 1930s and for a long time the company’s only publication other than its weekly magazine, reveals not only the publisher’s commitment to timely information but also its standing among readers as a knowledgeable interpreter of that data.


During the early 1930s, the manager of a small Kansas mill told Sanders Sosland how he lost $2 per ton on a carload of bran because his information on market prices was several days old. He asked the editor to send him a postcard each day marked with the price change.


Requests for similar reports grew as other millers learned of the agreement, and the company started printing millfeed prices on postcards mailed every market day. Soon, The Southwestern Miller editors converted the card to a condensed guidance report on wheat, flour and export markets, as well as millfeed.


In that era, Sosland Publishing could count on its postcards arriving in the next morning’s mail, but by the late 1980s, the deteriorating reliability of US Postal Service deliveries prompted Mark Sabo to change the format from a postcard into a fax, noted Josh Sosland.


“MarketFAX was its first step in its journey into electronic delivery,” he said.
In 1990, the Daily News Card fax migrated to the internet, moving into the electronic age. It was revised to fit letter-sized sheets, carrying even more relevant market information, renamed MarketFAX and transmitted via phone lines during the evening for morning readership. Its commentary often set the pace for that day’s markets.


Starting in 1998, MarketFAX was offered as MarketFocus, an email publication transmitted nearly instantaneously over the internet and archived electronically at Sosland’s website, www.bakingbusiness.com. Today, nearly all recipients have converted to email delivery.

A shocking scoop

Indeed, things were about to heat up. On July 17, 1972, Morton Sosland took an overseas phone call from a London source who allowed himself to be named only as “John Smith.” He said he was only trying to confirm details about the pending purchase of US grains by the USSR; however, the caller revealed an amazing story. The Soviet Union’s grain importing agency, Exportkleb, was buying an astonishing 5 million tonnes each of US wheat, corn and barley in a secretive deal.


The Soviet Union, usually an international power in grain production and exporting, wanted to conceal the past two years of massive crop failures in the country’s collective farming sector. So, it negotiated the deal to hide the amounts and types of grains it planned to purchase and the names of those US exporters selling the grains.
Nearly a month of phone calls ensued before the editors decided to report the news on Aug. 4, 1972.


Secret until that moment, the Milling & Baking News report revealed what came to be known as the Russian Wheat Deal. It shook the American grain market, fueled extraordinary food inflation and rattled the US and global economy. The small one-title, Midwestern publishing company scooped even the big newspapers and financial journals based at New York, Washington and London.


The Russian Wheat Deal report raised the stature of Milling & Baking News throughout the business-to-business publishing world. It also confirmed Morton Sosland’s place among the elite in geopolitical and financial circles.


Although Morton Sosland never learned the real identity of “Mr. Smith,” he speculated his informant was likely Russian, but London’s Financial Times claimed he was an East German. The source always placed his calls to Kansas City from different European locations, and editors were never able to pry a return phone number out of him. After his Aug. 10 phone call, Morton Sosland never heard from him again.


“Morton’s reporting on the Russian deal really put us on the map,” Neil Sosland said. “A year or two later, the Wall Street Journal article about this matter brought our company into the international spotlight.”

Starting new ventures

As earth shaking as the Russian reporting was, the milling and baking industries continued to reshuffle themselves throughout the 1970s, indeed into the 21st century.


This was also the time that Mr. Sabo and Morton Sosland began to move the company beyond its single-title status. Baking Equipment Quarterly ran as a supplement to Milling & Baking News from 1979 through 1983 before becoming a freestanding magazine, later renamed Baking & Snack.


The Baking Directory & Buyer’s Guide debuted in 1974. Similar directories covering milling, international grain, retail baking, meat and poultry would follow in coming years. In 2022, a pet food buyer’s guide will be added.


The 1970s saw the introduction of more rigorous food labeling as well as open dating codes. UPC codes also were added to food labels, and all were covered by Milling & Baking News.


Charles S. Sosland, Morton Sosland’s son and the first member of the family’s third generation to join the business, came in on the Milling & Baking News sales side in 1978. He would move to London in 1982 on a one-year assignment to lead sales efforts for World Grain.


The American Institute of Baking relocated in 1978 from Chicago to Manhattan, Kan. The federal government issued its first set of dietary guidelines, which were required to be renewed and re-written every five years. It was also the year that the limits on Soviet grain buying were lifted and the year that hard white winter wheat was introduced to Kansas, the leading grower of hard red winter wheat. Plus, Sosland Publishing adopted computerized writing, editing and typesetting technologies.

Growth in topics covered

The 1980s opened with another new technology: handheld computing for bakery route accounting. The era also saw the interest caught up in a peaking trend toward corporate diversification with widely varied merger activity, including the purchase by the brewer (and yeast manufacturer) Anheuser Busch of baker Campbell Taggart. Standard Brands stalked and captured Nabisco, setting off a chain of industry-shaking events later documented by the best-selling book, “Barbarians at the Gate.” The start of the decade witnessed Seaboard Allied, one of the largest companies in the milling category, divesting its domestic mills to Cargill and pursuing the poultry, pork and global milling businesses. Ralston Purina bought Continental Baking from ITT. Ward Baking and American Bakeries, two of America’s oldest baking companies, exited the business by selling their last remaining plants.


The Kansas City Board of Trade celebrated its 125th anniversary, while the Chicago Board of Trade opened the world’s largest commodity trading floor and expanded futures trading opportunities.


It was at this time that Milling & Baking News substantially increased its feature coverage, distinct from news and markets.


“Today, there are more features in the magazine than there were 75 years ago, although you could see the change coming in articles such as industry personality features written in the 1960s and 1970s,” Josh Sosland said. He joined the family company in 1983 as an associate editor.


“This trend grew during Gordon Davidson’s era,” he explained, “and it helped us compete with other industry magazines that were more feature-centric. Readers want more than news; they also want ‘big picture’ perspective and analysis.”


Another massive round of bakery plant ownership changes occurred in the 1990s. To avoid anti-trust complications, the major bakers shuffled around bakery plants like a deck of cards.


In 1998, Mexico City-based Grupo Bimbo acquired Mrs Baird’s Bakeries, laying the foundation for today’s Bimbo Bakeries USA. At the time of this first major US purchase, the Mexican company raised plenty of eyebrows among American bakers when it announced that it intended to become the largest North American baking business. A decade later, it accomplished that goal.

Nutrition, safety to the fore

The nutritional qualities of food began to draw heightened attention from consumers. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the FDA jointly issued dietary guidelines and, in 1982, introduced the Food Guide Pyramid. Per capita flour consumption, which began in the early 1970s to reverse a decades long decline, experienced an acceleration in growth, and a number of milling companies added large, new, heavily automated facilities. Likewise, new bakeries were created to serve larger distribution areas, and formulating for extended shelf life (ESL) bread and cake products became the watchword that defined the 1990s.


Folic acid — known to nutrition scientists since the 1960s to greatly reduce birth defects, — was added to enrichment mandates, and birth defects dropped as predicted. In 1998, the FDA mandated that enriched grain products be fortified with folic acid. Folic acid was first allowed on Nutrition Facts food labels in 1990. It became mandatory for food labeling in 2020.


Also incorporated into food plant practices were Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) protocols for food safety. These conventions would be further enhanced when the FDA adopted enhanced food safety procedures under 2011’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).


The infamous Tylenol poisoning incident upped risk levels for consumer products, and the 1983 Federal Anti-Tampering Act changed the way all food and drug companies packaged their goods.


Another significant change happened in 1990 when the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act (NLEA) went into effect. The FDA could now regulate the wording of the many nutrition and health claims being put on foods, claims that were previously not allowed. It was a grain-based-foods company, Kellogg Co., that opened this Pandora’s Box. Starting in 1984, the company printed on labels for its All Bran breakfast cereals a claim implying that eating high-fiber foods such as bran cereals could reduce the incidence of several cancers. Health claims were changed again in 1997 by the Food and Drug Administration Modernization Act.


In 1997, Sosland Publishing became the first in its field to establish a presence on the internet at www.bakingbusiness.com. Jointly with its sister publication Baking & Snack, Milling & Baking News has populated the website with news ever since.


As the 20th century came to an end, so did a much-diminished Bakery Production & Marketing magazine, a competitor to Milling & Baking News and Baking & Snack. It ceased publication in 1999. Sosland acquired what few assets remained, and only the BP&M Redbook, an industry directory, and the Bakery Newsletter, now properties of Sosland’s bake platform, are still published today.

Entering a new century

The much-feared Y2K Millennium Bug computer meltdown passed mostly without incident; however, Milling & Baking News and Sosland used the scare to update the company’s computer servers and network.


But just a year later, the very real 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington did heighten food safety concerns. These fears prompted passage of the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002. Milling & Baking News and Sosland helped sponsor the International Symposium on Agroterrorism organized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Joint Terrorism Task Force and held at Kansas City in March 2004.


Coverage of ingredients became especially prominent in the late 1990s and the early years of the 21st century. The focus was on ingredients that could provide health benefits in readers’ products. Milling & Baking News developed its Food Ingredient Solutions section to cover these matters in depth. Managed and chiefly written by Jeff Gelski, senior editor, it has become a regular feature for nearly 20 years and has changed the complexion of the magazine.


“Soy was used more frequently because of a health claim that it was granted late in the 20th century,” Mr. Gelski said. “Industry raced to find alternatives for partially hydrogenated oil, which FDA eventually banned because it contained trans fat. Natural sweeteners such as stevia came into vogue as consumers and industry sought ways to reduce sugar consumption. Milling companies such as Ardent Mills and Bay State Milling increased their offerings of whole grain flour and ancient grain flour.”


In the meantime, American consumers powered a diversification of product development. Shoppers sought out foods labeled as organic, non-GMO and “free from.” The term organic was officially defined in late 2000 by USDA National Organic Program regulations. NLEA-like labeling rules for the dietary supplement industry were spelled out by the FDA under the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994.


A decade later, the 2004 Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection Act (FALCPA) identified the eight major allergens whose presence in foods must be specifically labeled. The list was updated in 2021 with the addition of sesame.


“In the early to mid-2000s, I regularly attended the Whole Grains Council meetings when they were first getting started,” said Eric Schroeder, managing editor, Milling & Baking News and World Grain, and executive editor, Food Business News. “I remember the Whole Grain Stamp in its infancy, and today, I see it on all kinds of products.”


The new century brought additional changes to the staff of Milling & Baking News. Meyer Sosland, the son of Charles Sosland, joined as the magazine’s associate editor and millfeed market writer. Two years later, he was named managing editor of World Grain, and today, he is chief operations officer for the company.


Milling & Baking News reported the death and resurrection of Hostess Brands that occurred between 2012 and 2013. It also noted the 2019 conversion of the American Institute of Baking from a bricks-and-mortar teaching facility, research group and inspection service into a virtual business. The school held its last resident baking course in 2018 but, as AIB International, remains a comprehensive provider of food safety inspection services and educational seminars.


Merger and acquisition continued apace among bakers. The latest news involved 2021’s divestiture of all baking operations of Weston, Canada’s largest food retailer.
The magazine’s pages also described the potential for genetic enhancement of wheat. This matter has been long discussed and extensively researched but not yet implemented. While the industrial ingredient market reflects consumer uneasiness about bioengineered crops, bakers are open to hybrid wheat developed by more conventional breeding methods.


Climate change and sustainability have become serious editorial topics for Milling & Baking News. Coverage of ingredients has taken note of the impact on baking of the 2021 Food Allergy Safety, Treatment, Education and Research Act (FASTER).


The most immediate food-related problem reported by Milling & Baking News/Food Business News since March 2020 has been, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply chain issues affect their readers, and foodservice bakers, in particular, have encountered especially difficult circumstances. Meanwhile, the magazine publisher labored hard to cope with social distancing and developing appropriate remote work procedures.


As the food industry moves into the third decade of this century, focus now falls on sustainable benefits, too.


“Organic ingredients continue to be in demand,” Mr. Gelski said. “General Mills, in a nod to regenerative agriculture and improving soil health, has invested in Kernza (the grain of a robust perennial wheatgrass developed and trademarked by The Land Institute). Multinational food companies and ingredient suppliers annually publish corporate responsibility reports that provide details on oil and palm sourcing, educating and improving the lives of farmers and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The protein category continues to evolve through plant-based meat alternatives and cellular meat.”

A new twin publication

In 2005, Sosland Publishing introduced Food Business News and altered the publishing schedule of Milling & Baking News to run every other week alternating with the new food magazine. Initially, the two publications shared the same editorial staff. Over time, the publications have developed distinct and gradually diverging styles. As Food Business News has grown, it has added editorial team members dedicated completely to the publication.


“The whole reason to pivot to a Milling & Baking News/Food Business News combination was that we looked at the people who were attending our Purchasing Seminar and who were paying subscribers to Milling & Baking News,” Mr. Gude said. “We were getting attention from companies outside of milling and baking. And baking and milling companies were expanding beyond their original fields. Some new readers and attendees were protein-based; others were beverage companies. We also had foodservice companies and their suppliers. They were telling us by their attendance and their subscriptions that they wanted more news than they were receiving from other sources.


“Sharing the editorial staff between the two magazines was and continues to be a seamless process. We built our company on putting out a weekly magazine. The two titles compatibly feed each other.”


Over the years, the company had commissioned a number of studies, some done by Kansas City’s own Midwest Research Institute, to assess current and future positioning of Milling & Baking News and the company. Most recommended an expansion of the reader audience to encompass more of the general food industry. Over time, Mr. Sabo also urged conversion of the one-magazine company into a multi-title publisher.


Some of the diversification of the company was premised on the idea that industry consolidation ultimately would not support a magazine dedicated to grain, milling and baking. While those worries were not groundless, the value of the information provided by Milling & Baking News, the addition of the Purchasing Seminar and the distinct character of the flour-based foods industry has sustained Milling & Baking News longer than would have been suggested by many metrics when the research was done.


“And of course,” Mr. Gude said, “we are a full-function publisher, with design, circulation, advertising, marketing and business departments under one roof that collectively support all of our publications. Right now, the COVID-19 pandemic has dispersed these business functions under many remote roofs.”

Role as industry voice

During Milling & Baking News’ ascent into industry leadership, Morton Sosland provided its voice, writing most of its editorial opinion columns. These were typically unsigned, a legacy from his father and uncles. He occasionally shared this assignment with Mr. Davidson, the magazine’s managing editor. The two men were so aligned in thought and industry insight that most readers could never tell their columns apart.


Even as Morton Sosland turned over Milling & Baking News’ editorship reins to his nephew Josh Sosland, he continued to contribute editorial columns well into his 90s until shortly before his passing in 2019.


Morton Sosland has been recognized for his industry advocacy and community service many times, almost too many to count; the walls of his private conference room were lined with award statuettes, certificates, plaques and photos of industry and government notables. Among those accomplishments was his induction into the 2006 inaugural class of the Baking Hall of Fame of the American Society of Baking.


Neil Sosland received the first-ever Myron D. “Mike” Baustian Memorial Award from the Milling and Baking Division of the American Association of Cereal Chemists (now the Cereal Grains Association) and was also honored by the International Association of Operative Millers and, for his lifelong service to milling, made an honorary member of MNF — a special honor since he was never assigned to cover MNF meetings.


Shortly after he retired, Mr. Sabo also was honored by the North American Millers’ Association to recognize his contribution over the years to the association and the milling industry. On Mr. Sabo’s death in 2020, Robb MacKie, chief executive officer of the ABA, called attention to the longtime Sosland executive’s unsung role in revitalizing the flagging International Baking Industry Exposition (IBIE).


“His insights and perspectives brought the disparate industry stakeholders together to put IBIE on a path for growth and success,” Mr. MacKie said.


“Mark got us more deeply involved with IBIE and helped establish Sosland as its primary media provider,” Josh Sosland said. “That event has grown and become vitally important to the industry, and it has become important for us, too.”

Striving to stay up to date

“We knew what our role was in our business universe,” Neil Sosland said. “We aspired to be a class above, and people knew that about us. But we also had to keep improving our work.”


This also means improving the tools used by the magazine reporters, editors and production staff.


“It used to be that on the Monday ahead of our Tuesday publication date, we made up the magazine’s pages,” Neil Sosland explained. “First, we placed the advertising pages; then we slotted in the editorial content. Originally this was done by a secretary, and then it devolved onto the youngest editor — me at the time — for paste-up. And did we ever use a lot of paste.


“My father and uncles asked me to be part of our computerization initiative, which began around 1969 or 1970. I and our business manager Bob Neve took a computer course in California to get ready for it. I made sure I programmed that first computer so it could do the paste-up.”


The magazine’s first redesign took place in 1969 when it changed its cover and adopted a new type face. When The Southwestern Miller became Milling & Baking News in 1972, editors added a band of color to the front cover. They alternated every other week between green and gold. Further design tweaks eliminated the green and gold in 1992 and changed the logo to red. In 2021, the magazine underwent a major redesign, effective with the May 4 edition.


“Anyone familiar with Milling & Baking News and its predecessor The Southwestern Miller knows the magazines were heavy on copy, maybe a little light on design,” Mr. Schroeder said. “With the redesign in 2021, we wanted to bring the publication up to date without losing the feel of the journal aspect created 100 years ago.


“Understanding that the print publications now work hand-in-hand with the digital products we offer, I think the redesign has been a home run. Our designer, Christina Sullivan, created some fantastic, engaging covers, and the work that has breathed more life into our markets coverage has been well received.”

Market reporting importance

Like his father and uncles, Morton Sosland insisted on excellence in market reporting and didn’t hesitate to advise editors when they may have fallen short, said Josh Sosland.


“This provided great motivation to market editors to always strive to ‘measure up,’” he said.


From its very first issue, March 7, 1922, The Southwestern Miller reported both the news flour millers had to know and the market trends they had to follow in order to manage their businesses successfully.


Ingredient market reporting in Sosland publications expanded over the years to include additional commodities as the milling industry itself evolved to feature new product offerings. But the commitment to providing up-to-date market information and analysis critical to managing flour milling and other food manufacturing businesses remains.


“Market reporting is a matter of knowing names and placing phone calls, of learning how to talk to people about their business while still keeping it confidential,” Neil Sosland explained. “We also went out on the trading floor to get an immediate perspective.”


Describing the work of market reporters, Jay Sjerven said, “Neil Sosland expanded markets coverage significantly into areas such as sugar and sweeteners, bakery shortening, milk products, cocoa and egg products, ensuring these markets were reported on as accurately and professionally as those related more directly to the wheat and flour markets.”


Neil Sosland explained, “Covering sweeteners was new to the magazine at the time I joined it. We established that column as coequal with flour milling. This allowed us to get into new publications and new coverage areas. It opened the doors to move into the fields that we now cover.”


It’s the analysis that made the Sosland reputation for the integrity of its content, he said. Its importance continues despite the ease of communications afforded by the internet and its myriad sources.


“To compete, a market reporter must constantly improve the quality and depth of his analysis,” Neil Sosland said. “And if there’s a better way to do it, we should pursue that to be able to succeed. I’m continually learning.”


Market reporting by Milling & Baking News, and also Food Business News, has benefited from a straight line of mentors. Sanders Sosland set the bar early and high.

He tutored his nephews, Morton and Neil Sosland, as they learned and then took over news and market coverage in the 1960s and 1970s. They were aided in this by Mel Sjerven.


“Morton, Neil and Mel ensured that high standards in market reporting were maintained as the third generation of Sosland Publishing market editors came to the fore,” Jay Sjerven said. “Their efforts largely were responsible for competitor publications to The Southwestern Miller and Milling & Baking News falling by the wayside.”


Josh Sosland added, “This same straight line of mentorship may be seen in the oversight of news. Sam Sosland was a meticulous editor who was followed by Morton and then Gordon Davidson, as managing editor. The latter role has been ably (and busily) filled for nearly 20 years by Eric Schroeder.”


Josh Sosland, who covered markets for nearly a dozen years, also helped bridge the generations of market writers, working first with Neil Sosland and then with Ron Sterk, now Milling & Baking News senior editor, markets, when he joined the company.


Mr. Sterk explained the market reporting process: “The basic reporting hasn’t changed — the key still is calling trusted sources and gathering prices and supply-and-demand information. The three had such a stellar reputation in the industry that it possibly was easier to find people who wanted to talk.”


About 10 years ago, Mr. Sterk took the initiative to propose the launch of The Sosland Sweetener Report, published on Wednesdays. It built on the sweetener coverage initiated years earlier by Neil Sosland. The weekly report provides prices, data, analysis and industry news for the US, Mexican and global cash sugar and corn sweetener markets, New York sugar futures. In addition, a brief daily update is provided.


“(The Sosland Sweetener Report) has deepened our reputation as a leading source of sweetener market information,” Josh Sosland said.


The major change in the company’s market reporting is the source of information and data.


“While key market prices and certainly quotes and analysis of the market come from our usual sources, much of what we now gather comes from the internet, especially the USDA data, but also company websites,” Mr. Sterk said. “That makes it easier sometimes but doesn’t replace an actual conversation.”


These communication changes actually make it easier for market reporters to gauge the value of their work to readers.


“They can just email you either compliments or complaints,” Mr. Sterk said. “But we also talk to subscribers and ask what they need to know and try to fill that void or enhance on the product if we’re already producing it. (The internet has) lots of metrics to illustrate how many readers are clicking on our reports, how much time they are spending on them, etc., but that’s really just the beginning of good customer feedback.”


Milling & Baking News editors don’t overlook these challenges and strive for immediacy via daily postings on the website.


“It would be disingenuous to say the internet hasn’t affected Milling & Baking News’ reporting at all, but in fact, the focus on reporting day by day rather than week by week has increased the content produced for the grain-based foods industry,” Josh Sosland said.


“We now tend to have far more content than we are able to publish in each issue of Milling & Baking News and need to think carefully about which articles are most important to include in our print edition,” he added.


The numbers and commentary are available each week to subscribers of Milling & Baking News/Food Business News.


“Numerous outlets have offered commodity prices on a more timely basis than Milling & Baking News, for decades,” Josh Sosland observed. “Our value proposition is not necessarily aimed at those who trade each and every day but is instead directed toward ingredient buyers who buy week by week, month by month in a manner aimed at managing risk and understanding overarching trends as they make purchasing plans for the month, quarter, half year or year. In addition, our coverage of millfeed and cash wheat markets remains the most in-depth of any available anywhere.”

Relationship to readers

Reader feedback always has been important to the magazine. Mr. Gude explained, “We do reader study after reader study, and we have learned that people who are Milling & Baking News readers have a real affinity for the magazine. Fully 75% of readers tell us they read every issue. That’s three out of four readers of an every-other-week magazine who read every issue, and 95% of respondents describe themselves as ‘regular’ readers.”


Ingredient buyers and suppliers, as well as leaders of grain, milling and baking companies, continue to form the core of the Milling & Baking News readership, said Josh Sosland.“Additionally, over the last quarter century, we have added research and development professionals and editorial coverage around ingredient technology to broaden the scope of our editorial in a way that gives our core readers a broad understanding of ingredient formulation trends and also meets the need of ingredient advertisers.”

Into the second century

The rise of digital publishing poses a conundrum to any print publication but especially to those in the business-to-business field. Milling & Baking News is no different.


“I very strongly feel the importance of becoming digitally literate,” Neil Sosland said. “In journalism today, very few publications remain in print. Many have gone completely digital. As a publishing company, we will continue to go further into internet applications. We must be one of the electronic leaders in business-to-business publishing, and we must respond to those challenges.


“As journalists, you have to keep learning new things, and that means getting savvy about technology. It’s like the change from doing long division, as Sanders did when he worked on the market pages, to using a slide rule like I did at first, to going to adding machines and then to computers. You have to always be looking for a better way to do your job.”


Milling & Baking News is at a crossroads today, said Josh Sosland.


“The industries we cover have vastly changed,” he said. “Today, the milling and baking industries businesses have largely consolidated and are highly concentrated. Family businesses were the norm in 1970. Today, they are the exception, both in milling and baking, as well as publishing.


“The grain industry was enjoying its heyday in 1970. Few standalone grain companies from that era continue to exist. Most have shut down, been acquired or turned into much more diversified companies.


“In 1970, white bread remained the dominant end use for flour, together with basic commodity cookies and cracker. White bread has been in decline ever since, perhaps with the exception of the start of COVID-19, and the end-use outlets for flour are far more diverse than was the case 50 years ago.


“As consumer tastes have become more sophisticated, with a $5 loaf of organic bread the fastest growing brand over the past five years, it’s clear that more change is coming. It’s very exciting for our readers and for us.”


Looking ahead, he said, “Milling & Baking News will need to adapt to the changing marketplace, both because of continued consolidation in the grain-based foods industry and as a paid subscription publication in a business-to-business environment in which such publications really no longer exists.”


Jay Sjerven summed up: “Each successive generation of Sosland Publishing editors must continue to provide this essential information to the food industry.”

Posted on

A trusted voice

By Laurie Gorton

March 2022

A trusted
voice

Sosland Publishing’s protein platform builds its success on a solid foundation of industry knowledge and connections.

Meat+Poultry

Successful trade magazines make their mark by earning reader respect and acceptance. They must cover complex subjects in a timely manner, provide insight into today’s concerns and look ahead to tomorrow’s trends, all done accurately and authoritatively.


“MEAT+POULTRY’s mission is to offer access, trust and credibility,” said Dave Crost, publisher of M+P. “That’s what we bring to our readers and advertisers.”


In its nearly 70 years, the magazine moved from a regional journal for West Coast meat processors and brokers to national – and recently, international – circulation and editorial coverage. It does so in print and, increasingly, digital formats. Its editorial assignment is to examine knotty technological advances, complex marketing matters and thorny labor, regulatory and business management issues. The magazine has also earned a reputation for its operationally focused features based on tours of dozens of meat and poultry processing plants during the course of most years.


“Our magazine is the meat industry’s leading information source,” Crost said. “Our coverage balances business and trends. We look at what’s over the next hill, at what’s happening in the plant and what’s developing with the technology.”


Over its history, M+P has broken many high-interest stories. It was the first among meat industry publications to cover workforce diversity, the impact of ethanol production on the feed-dependent industry, religion in the workplace, swine flu, animal welfare and, even, plant-based proteins and cultured meat production.


Meat plant operations are a major component.


“When I explain our operations coverage, I tell people that we put our focus on the loud part of the plant and cover the story in hardhats and boots,” said Joel Crews, editor of M+P. “We are out on the operations floor to do our reporting.”


“We cover the business from boardroom to plant floor,” Crost added. “We respect the industry, and they respect and trust us. Trust among the readership is vital to us.”


Trust, Crost added, fosters access.


“That’s why we get invited into facilities others don’t,” Crews said. “No one is better at that than us.”

Today’s MEAT+POULTRY

In Sosland Publishing’s portfolio, MEAT+POULTRY is the protein-focused platform. The company acquired the magazine in 1996. As company Chairman Charles Sosland explained, there has always been an important link between grain and commercial livestock. “Grain-based feeds sustain and finish herds,” he said.


Its circulation stands at 23,082 print and 3,573 digital for a unique total qualified circulation of 25,025, per the B.P.A. audit of June 2020. Job functions of recipients include the C-suite, plant operations, production, R&D, QC, marketing, sales and purchasing.


“Consolidation continues to happen in the meat industry,” Crost observed, “but we’ve seen our digital circulation rise substantially.”


Compared with the meat industry of the 1950s through the 1980s, industry demographics have changed, thus altering the magazine’s circulation profile. “Like the industry, our readership is still male dominated,” Crews said, “but more women are coming into the business, and the workforce is growing more diverse and inclusive. It has also started to trend younger, which you can readily see at industry conferences and conventions.”


“Companies need young, highly educated staff to manage technology and operations,” Crost said. “They aggressively recruit from other industries and actively seek engineering graduates from major universities.”


The magazine pushes hard to reach these new demographics. “That’s why our digital products are so important to M+P,” Crews said. “That’s why we strive to offer original content through our digital media, not limiting it to the magazine’s contents only.”

Out of the West

Launched in January 1955 by Oman Publishing, based in the San Francisco Bay area, and originally titled Western Meat Industry, the magazine was specifically written for meat handlers and processors in the far Western states. It was sent to approximately 10,000 recipients. It had two full-time writer/editors covering the northern California area and tapped experienced business news reporters throughout in the 11-state region. Its lead-off issue carried 48 folio pages, printed primarily in black and white, with red as a spot color on the cover and several ads.


In the first issue, founder Donald Oman wrote to his new readers: “There is little doubt in the minds of men who know this western industry best that the West needs and deserves its own magazine.”


This was an auspicious time. In 1960, Oman reported to readers, “During this past five years, western population has increased by 3 or 4 million. Meat production and consumption have increased. The industry has seen many changes and improvements. Two more western states – Alaska and Hawaii – have been admitted to the US, making the western empire bigger and more closely knit than ever before.”


Typical of magazines of this era, Western Meat Industry reported extensively on industry association meetings and conventions. “At that time, the editors and publishers were very tight with the West Coast meat associations,” Crews said. And like all good reporters, they used these relationships to gain story leads and insights.


For its first 20 years, Western Meat Industry served beef, pork and lamb processors and purveyors in the now-14 western states exclusively. Availability of frozen distribution and advances in packaging technology were prompting those readers to venture over the Rocky Mountains and into national distribution. The magazine attracted the attention of a larger audience.


“We have been urged in recent years to give our annual special June ‘Frankfurter & Sausage Issue’ wider distribution,” Oman wrote in 1970. Recognizing the opportunities to gain audience and advertising revenue, the magazine officially changed its name to Meat Industry and raised qualified circulation to 16,000 recipients at more than 11,000 federal and state-inspected meat plants throughout the United States.


Steve Bjerklie, former editor of M+P (1980-96), summed up the move: “In short, the regional industries were shrinking by the mid-1970s, and the big companies were all going national. Advertisers followed, so it only made sense for Western Meat Industry to become Meat Industry in 1975.”
Writing to the Meat Industry audience in January 1970, Oman and Michael Alaimo, associate publisher, explained their reasoning.


“Most of the editorial contents of our monthly issues are unavailable from any other convenient source, so we will not be duplicating editorial service already available elsewhere,” they wrote. “Western packers and processors have had easy access to this kind of information in our magazine for years, and we like to think it is one of the reasons why there are so many progressive, well-informed packers in the West.”


Editorial and publishing offices remained in the San Francisco area.

Editorial driven

From the start, the editorial content of MEAT+POULTRY has centered primarily on production and packaging technology, industry news and business strategy. The first issue carried articles about a new supermarket meat center, two new meat plants and the addition of a new meat packaging department along with news of company, personnel and association activities plus new products from suppliers.


This blend of news, operations, technology and association matters set the early pattern for the magazine. As the years progressed, the magazine added technology reports written to help readers understand highly complex topics. It developed a schedule of special issues devoted to the industry’s products, such as portion-control meats, burgers, hot dogs and sausage, deli meats and, most recently, barbecue along with an annual Buyer’s Guide and pre- and post-convention issues.


From its launch to today, the magazine benefited from a devoted editorial staff and a stellar assortment of contributing writers.


In the January 1960 edition, Oman announced the promotion of Alaimo to editor from associate editor. By 1977, Alaimo also carried the title of associate publisher, and he would devote his career to the magazine, rising to owner and publisher during the 1980s.


Another individual long associated with M+P, Bjerklie joined Oman Publishing in 1980 as an assistant editor, progressing to associate editor, with a brief stint as assistant to the publisher. Alaimo continued to act as editor until 1989 when Bjerklie was named managing editor and shortly thereafter became editor.


“When I came aboard in 1980, Katie Supinski was managing editor, Janet Basu was associate editor, and Judy Bischoff was assistant editor,” Bjerklie recalled. Basu moved into freelancing a short while later. In the mid-1990s, he brought in Keith Nunes, as managing editor and Zack Stentz as assistant editor.


“We published some of what I consider the best trade journalism anywhere and certainly the best the meat industry had ever seen,” Bjerklie said.


Bjerklie continued as editor until 1996, when Sosland Publishing purchased M+P, and he then became a contributing editor.


One of the most remarkable aspects of M+P is its outstanding roster of contributing editors. Many of the meat industry’s thought leaders are on that list, and their articles have bolstered the magazine’s content and burnished its reputation.


In the 1970s, the magazine offered “Doc Williams’ Forecast”, a monthly column by Willard F. Williams, a leading market analyst who specialized in livestock forecasts and futures trading. “The Knocking Pen” offered folksy observations made by an anonymous writer, who asked to be identified only as “a West Coast packer.”


In 1987, M+P listed among its contributing editors three university professors, two lawyers, a retired meat packer, a director of R&D and a livestock handling specialist.


“Our contributors have made a real difference in the credibility of the magazine,” Crews said. “Temple Grandin is America’s foremost expert in animal welfare, and her ‘From the Corral’ column has been exclusively with M+P for about 40 years.”


As M+P readers know, Grandin possesses an expertise in animal handling with a unique perspective. At the time Bjerklie first interviewed her on this subject, she was already consulting with major beef and pork packers. Her theory that mishandled and mistreated animals meant poorer quality meat has changed animal management practices substantially. Being autistic, her gift of visual thinking allows her to provide unique animal handling solutions and livestock handling design consulting with a unique approach.


Columnist Steve Kay, publisher of Cattle Buyers Weekly, is an icon in the red meat industry and has contributed his editorial expertise to M+P for more than three decades. Contributor Steve Krut, another living legend in the industry, writes “Small Business Matters” to spotlight this innovative segment and inform readers about their larger business concerns. Richard Alaniz, the magazine’s labor correspondent of more than 20 years, taps his considerable legal experience to write about what owners and executives have to think about as an employer. Donna Berry and Bernard Shire complete today’s roster of M+P contributing editors with their expertise in ingredients development, packaging and Washington, DC, developments, respectively.


“The contributors bring a tremendous amount of industry knowledge,” Crews said.


About the time the magazine expanded to national distribution, it introduced its annual Red Book. This special issue, now published in May, assembles a comprehensive guide to suppliers of equipment, products and services along with a roster of industry associations.


The magazine’s Salary Survey, initiated in the 1990s, is unique among the trade magazines serving the meat and poultry industry.


“No one has ever done this in our field, yet it’s been offered for more than 30 years now,” Crews said. “Like all research-based special reports, they take considerable time and resources, but they are well read.”


Today, the survey is conducted by Kansas City, Mo.-based Cypress Research.

You might also enjoy:

The bake story

The bake story

This innovative publishing platform now observantly reports about the changing face of retail baking.

Content and Integrity: the Milling & Baking News story

Content and Integrity: the Milling & Baking News story

The 100-year-old magazine helps managers keep supply and demand in balance by assisting the industry in keeping its eye on the ball.

A trusted voice

A trusted voice

Sosland Publishing’s protein platform builds its success on a solid foundation of industry knowledge and connections.

Acquisition mode

In 1996, Sosland Publishing acquired MEAT+POULTRY from Oman Publishing. Charles Sosland praised the magazine for its reputation and history, describing it as the leading publication in its field.


“Acquisition of M+P extends Sosland’s reach farther into food processing and complements as well as reinforces our commitment to serving grain-based foods.” Sosland wrote to the magazine’s readers at the time.


“We already knew Mike Alaimo,” Sosland said. “We saw this as a way to expand into additional food categories. And through feed, the meat and poultry industry has a grain connection.”


The change of ownership opened new vistas for the magazine.


“Sosland [Publishing] gave us the opportunity to scale up our efforts,” Nunes said. “I wanted to push the magazine forward, beyond what we could have accomplished at Oman.”


One dream was to develop a robust website.


“We had a template,” Nunes continued. “We could not have done it without Sosland.”


Another goal was publishing up-to-the minute reporting on food safety. About the time M+P joined Sosland, the tragic E. coli O157:H7 outbreak happened. Concerns about bovine somatotropin (BST), an artificial growth hormone, and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, a.k.a. “mad cow disease”) added urgency to this subject. Also, USDA was about to mandate use of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) programs to improve food safety.


Digital media capabilities at the new parent company enabled M+P to later roll out Sosland’s Food Safety Monitor e-newsletter as a joint project with sister publication Food Business News.


The new owner moved the magazine’s editorial and advertising offices to Kansas City, Mo. The purchase and move placed the publication in the traditional and geographical heart of the industry.


Charles Sosland was the magazine’s first publisher at its new home. In 1998, Chuck Jolley, a marketing communications executive from a major packaging supplier to the meat industry, was named publisher. When he left in 2004, another Sosland executive stepped in as interim publisher until Crost was named to that role for M+P in 2005.


In 2005, Sosland launched Food Business News and tapped Nunes to be its first editor. M+P then appointed Crews as its editor. He joined the publication in 2000 as managing editor.


“For a few months, my job was roughly 50:50 M+P and FBN,” Nunes said, “but that arrangement rapidly tapered into more of a consulting role as Joel and Dave picked up the ball and ran with it.”


Today, the M+P editorial staff consists of five full-time editors. Executive Editor Kimberlie Clyma arrived at Sosland Publishing in 2006 as associate editor of Baking & Snack magazine. With previous experience in the meat industry, she became the managing editor of M+P in 2010 and was promoted to her current position in 2019. Bob Sims, named M+P features editor in 2016, started at the company as a staff writer for Bake magazine. Erica Shaffer is the magazine’s digital media senior editor, having served in similar roles with Sosland since 2009, and works with Ryan McCarthy, digital media editor, who joined the company in 2016.


Sosland acquired Meat Processing, a competing magazine, from Watt Publishing (now Watt Global Media) in 2006.


“The intention was to fold Meat Processing into M+P,” Sosland said. “The circulation, which included some international recipients, was the biggest part of the acquisition.”


M+P celebrated its 60th year of publication in 2015 with a series of articles that traced the industry decade by decade. These reports included summaries by Maureen Ogle, a historian and author of “In Meat We Trust”; Steve Kay; and Steve Bjerklie, leading off with his extensive interview of Rosemary Mucklow, emeritus executive director of the North American Meat Institute, about the industry as it was in the late 1950s through the 1960s.


M+P is no longer solely a print publication, it now publishes a variety of digital products.


“Digital is a necessity for content delivery today,” Crost said. “You have to communicate with readers in the manner they choose.”


He explained that the M+P audience tends to prefer print, but because reader demographics continue to skew younger, digital gets increasing attention. The electronic side supports numerous channels and a dynamic website, meatpoultry.com. The newest is Bacon Business News, the first and only monthly e-newsletter dedicated to all things bacon. A weekly podcast was also launched in 2018.


“The delivery platform has changed,” Crost said. “No matter where you are or what time it is, you can access our content around the world. You can display information in a readable fashion through a channel you prefer.”

A changing industry

In the 1950s, as the American economy shifted out of World War II necessities, a new model for cattle feeding emerged, cutting out seasonality concerns. Stockyards were eliminated in favor of finishing closer to slaughter. Trucking shouldered out railroad transportation, and unlike rail, trucking was unregulated.


“At the time Western Meat Industry was founded, the meat industry in the US was still largely regional, with just a few national companies,” Bjerklie said. “The industry in the West was particularly robust, and in fact, there were two San Francisco-based trade associations representing western meat companies, the Western States Meat Association and the Pacific Coast Meat Association. They eventually merged in the 1980s.”


By the 1960s, industry norms were being broken left and right. The top-heavy corporate structures of the old guard, the so-called Top Five, were crumbling. New plants now side-stepped old-fashioned multi-story structures for more efficient single-story layouts; moreover, the industry’s most advanced facilities opted for rural settings and eliminated unions altogether.


Customers were changing, too, with supply chain relationships favoring grocery store chains over middlemen merchants. Meat began to sell as a value-added item and ingredient for other food products.


Poultry feeders brought down the consumer price of chicken and became a serious competitor for the protein portion of the plate. They did it by integrating operations from hatcheries and feed mills through processing.
“Our magazine renamed itself Meat Industry to be able to bring in coverage of poultry,” Nunes said. “And of course, the big poultry show posed many advertising opportunities.”


All these subjects found their way into the pages of the magazine.
“Refrigeration and freezing technology – that changed everything and created a national/global industry,” Crews said. “Vacuum packaging technology extended the shelf life of products and facilitated increased distribution across the country.”


By the 1970s, automation had started to play a much larger role in the meat industry.


“It’s been mostly used at the end of processing lines (packaging and logistics), but there is a strong push for it upstream because labor shortages in plants have been a huge problem that is only getting worse,” Crews said.

Consumerism, regulation

As the 1960s flowed into the 1970s, meat and poultry purveyors encountered even more tectonic change. “Boxed beef became the norm for many processing companies versus receiving shipments of primals and subprimals,” Crews noted.


Industry consolidation and vertical integration on the slaughter side created economies of scale and reduced the price of meat to the point everyone could afford it. Within a decade, poultry emerged as the nation’s most popular animal protein.


Contract poultry production became a primary market. Niche markets began to rise, and foodservice flexed its supply chain muscles, creating franchise-based businesses that could provide a chain operator’s every need from hamburger patties to buns, ketchup packets and cleaning chemicals, all distributed from one location, i.e. the “single source” vendor.


Biotechnology in the form of protein somatotropin (pST) entered herd management practices.


Although powerful labor unions had journeyed well into their long twilight decline, they still put up a furious fight as the industry reshaped itself around newly dominant companies.


“In the meantime, consumerism took the wheel to steer the food industry in new directions,” Crews said. The result of 50 years of federal legislation and policy affirmed consumers’ rights and nurtured and encouraged consumer consciousness.


USDA inspection ramped up.


Advancing technology continued to occupy the pages of the magazine. For example, the February 1975 issue carried a special three-part report on mechanically deboned meat for making sausages and other meat products intended for human consumption.


In 1980, the Food and Drug Administration issued its first Dietary Guidelines for Americans, which suggested consumption of “alternate proteins” for a part of an individual’s daily intake of food.


“Features about regulatory issues, from labeling to beef grading, from environmental rules to access to export markets as well as dealing with unions became staple material,” Bjerklie said. “From 1980 on, I don’t think we published an issue that didn’t have at least one story about regulatory matters, and usually the focus was on Washington, DC, rather than state capitals.”


The magazine swiftly reported the impact of the 1993 E. coli O157:H7 episode that occurred on the West Coast. That tragedy upended processing systems and inspection protocols. It was reported in the February 1993 issue, and later the same year, new regulatory powers over pathogens were granted to USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).


By 1995, the HACCP protocol – little known before 1990 – became the foundation of federal meat inspection.


When introducing Sosland Publishing as M+P’s new owner in the October 1996 issue, Sosland commented on the importance of food safety initiatives to the industry and the magazine. “The Pathogen Reduction/Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point final rule is going to change this industry,” he said, noting that sanitary operating procedures, such as HACCP plan development, implementation of pathogen intervention technologies, plant floor design and layout, as well as equipment maintenance, would be regular topics for the magazine’s in-plant operations features.


Consumerism turned to the animal welfare practices of meat processors. M+P covered the 2008 voluntary recall by a California meat packer of 143 million lbs of frozen beef products – the biggest recall to date – following an investigation into animal cruelty.


Technology isn’t immune to regulatory attention either. “A few landmark recalls resulted in equipment companies producing machines that feature sanitary design and easy-to-clean configuration,” Crews said.

Going global, managing local

By the end of the 1990s, US meat exports climbed to 8.1% of meat and poultry sales. Coverage of this increasingly important activity was added under Sosland.


The other side of the “going global” coin – animal diseases – has been a longtime thorn in the industry’s side, according to Crews. This problem has global consequences, and the magazine covers it on an ongoing basis. A 2003 case of BSE in the United States, for example, cost the American meat industry $16 billion, mostly in lost exports. Japan, a key market, did not reopen to US beef until 2013. Other coverage by M+P documented how porcine epidemic diarrhea virus (PEDv) devastated pork production around the world and how African swine fever and avian influenza have wreaked havoc in China and Europe in the late 2010s.


“The impact on US processors of such matters, and their coverage in M+P, are largely a product of the growing international nature of the meat and poultry industries,” Crews said. Many of the industry’s largest companies are not only active in the United States, they are global.


Public and media scrutiny of the industry continues unabated. In 2002, it focused on Lean Finely Textured Beef (LFTB), what the critics villainized as “pink slime.”


Crews observed, “That was a recent example of what can happen when media misinformation fuels misunderstanding among consumers.”


He also noted the recent controversies over country-of-origin labeling (COOL) and the legal challenge to the beef checkoff program. Both continue to receive M+P editorial coverage.


Another issue local to the United States that was examined in depth by the magazine and its digital offerings was the diversion of corn from animal feed channels, especially poultry, to ethanol production. Federal support of ethanol worsened the tight supply situation. With the bloom fading from the ethanol rose, this concern has subsided.


As M+P’s reader audience entered the 2020s, magazine editors planned to give more attention to increasing productivity and efficiency by covering the way processors link multiple operations, even multiple locations and plants, via secure cloud-based systems to monitor production and streamline processing.


“In recent years, we have taken our coverage further upstream to include animal production and downstream through packaging, distribution and into retail channels,” Crews said. “We still have more of a micro focus on the processing side of the business.”


The emphasis on operations is deliberate. “What you see in the plant is changing the business and the magazine. What’s coming off the packaging lines is altering the marketplace. And MEAT+POULTRY is ready to report this to our readers, in print and digital formats alike,” Crost said.

Editorial excellence accolades

Over the years, several MEAT+POULTRY articles received awards for editorial excellence.


During the late 1980s, a three-part series about labor and another series about contract farming in the poultry industry won top awards, according to Steve Bjerklie, former editor of M+P. Keith Nunes, former editor, also assisted a Wall Street Journal reporter with a story about the poultry industry that won a Pulitzer Prize. The magazine also garnered a Jessie H. Neal Award in 1998 for editorial commentary. This was given by the American Business Media (now known as SIIA).


“More recently, we won Tabbie Gold Awards in 2019, and a Bronze Award in 2021,” said Editor Joel Crews. One went to M+P’s Annual Sausage Report, while another was for an editorial commentary. “We were also named one of the Top 25 features for a story on inclusion and diversification,” he added. The 2021 award recognized M+P’s Family Business Focus special report. The Tabbies are given by the Trade Association of Business Publications International.


“We have also had numerous regional awards from the American Society of Business Publication Editors,” Nunes said.