alt Hacker NewsMy dad helped build North America's oat supply chain: Can it be remade?
Comments
> Demand for oats increased in the 1980s when researchers announced that beta glucan, a type of fiber in oats, can lower cholesterol.
I'm skeptical that this was a factor, because in total only 5% of oats are used for human consumption. 95% is used for animal feed: https://oklahoma.agclassroom.org/resources/agricultural-fact...
I doubt it was that much different back then. This relates to the "Oat Mafia" that the article responds to:
https://www.nature.org/en-us/what-we-do/our-priorities/provi...
While I support their efforts to shift their industry toward human-consumption-grade vs animal feed-grade oats and more sustainable agricultural practices, they will have to also learn how to shape tastes (literally). I'm not sure that Americans are willing to shift their consumption from oat-fed animals toward oat-derived products. Realistically, they should plan on a generational scale project.
As this article indicates, the oat-consumption health fad has come and gone before (in the 1980s)- but it didn't make a significant shift in Americans' meat consumption. Arguably the only thing that will is higher prices of meat - which are now here, but for different reasons (drought, war-spiked energy and fertilizer costs, and now screw-worm).
The almond/coconut cream substitutes are my favorite but most coffee shops don’t stock them. Bought my own espresso machine because I got tired of dairy after effects when indulging in cold brews from coffee shops. Straight espressos are safer in that respect.
I eat steel cut oats every day but can’t really do oat milk. Not enough texture or flavor. I’d rather use Ripple in my oats for that little bit of extra.
Straight dairy tastes too weird to me now.
> My dad realized that instead of paying the high rail rates past Thunder Bay, oats could instead be loaded into a Great Lakes freighter designed to haul iron ore pellets (like the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald). Lake freighters typically unloaded their cargo in Thunder Bay and had to sail empty to pick up more iron ore on the U.S. side of the border. If you could fill them with oats in Thunder Bay, deliver the oats to Duluth, Minnesota, and then load the oats on U.S. rail lines, you could substantially cut shipping costs.
The fun part about the “upper” Great Lakes is that some ships were built on it that can go through the Soo Locks, but not the Welland Canal. So they’re just stuck there moving ore (and I guess oats).
https://saultstemarie.com/the-ultimate-list-of-1000-foot-fre...
USDA[0] says that the US produces 1 million metric tons of oats per year, or 4% of global production. Sure, that is not the best, but clearly still in the game.
I don't drink oat milk, but man I love oats. Oatmeal is so good. Oatmeal cookies, oat crumble, goo balls, muesli, overnight oats, rolled, steel-cut, all of it. I make oatmeal sourdough bread that's like a meal in a slice, literally just put leftover oatmeal in the dough.
Just waving the flag for team-oat here. Thanks Canadian oat farmers!
This is one of those little things I’ve had trouble putting my finger on: the US eats surprisingly few oats. The U.K. eats more than three times as much on average. Which is probably one of the reasons I find US cuisine slightly uncanny valley.
Southern Europe doesn’t really consume much either, but most US food is closer to Northern European food.
As long as corn and soybeans are subsidized via crop insurance, and propped up by biofuel mandates, oats will not be a popular crop in the US.
Canada doesn't do any such subsidies so oats make a lot of sense. In fact, some years it's our most profitable crop, even outstripping canola.
In many ways, it's a story about far more than just oats.
US Ag policy is so, so screwed up. But with more entrenched interests than the US has Congressmen, and probably 10X that number of full-time lobbyists - good luck trying to fix it.
I thought this was a fantastic read! In a time when I get nauseated by all the AI posts, the section about how the author's father rejiggered the supply chain to import oats from Canada was an excellent example of hacking to get a better solution and perfect content for Hacker News IMO:
> Connecting Canada’s oat supply with U.S. mills was where my dad entered the story.
> In a business that measured volume in millions of tons, squeezing even a few cents out of the supply chain could be extremely profitable. My dad, a gifted mechanic, excelled at finding creative ways to move oats cheaper than the other guy. For example, Canadian rail lines could deliver oats cheaply to Thunder Bay, Ontario, but rail freight across the border into the U.S. was expensive. My dad realized that instead of paying the high rail rates past Thunder Bay, oats could instead be loaded into a Great Lakes freighter designed to haul iron ore pellets (like the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald). Lake freighters typically unloaded their cargo in Thunder Bay and had to sail empty to pick up more iron ore on the U.S. side of the border. If you could fill them with oats in Thunder Bay, deliver the oats to Duluth, Minnesota, and then load the oats on U.S. rail lines, you could substantially cut shipping costs.
> The problem was that Duluth’s elevators were built as a one-way spigot to ship grain out. Moving grain from a freighter into the elevator required a McGyver-esque solution. The grain company cut a hole in the side of the massive elevator bin so the lake freighters could pour oats into them, reversing the flow of grain from export to import. These kinds of fixes were how my dad made his living, and it’s how a supply chain was built.
Can we get rid of the chlormequat while we're at it?
https://www.earth.com/news/banned-chemical-chlormequat-found...
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Kicked dairy about a decade ago. I'm grateful for oat milk.
Also, one of the very, very many examples of strong, necessary, and useful collaboration between Canada and the United States.
Happy Fourth of July, neighbours down south. I'm eager to be buds again.