This weekend’s SkyFire Film Festival features a documentary with a provocative title: “Beer Saves the World.”
Kelly Sallaway directed the film, and she says it may not be that bold a claim.
Her movie follows a group of microbrewers — including Arizona Wilderness — and their attempt to brew beer using a grain called Kernza. The grain is a project of a Kansas-based nonprofit called the Land Institute, and they think it has the potential to revolutionize industrial farming.
Sallaway spoke with The Show about the film.
Full conversation
KELLY SALLAWAY: Kernza is a perennial grain. And so it’s really a grain that could replace wheat. But unlike wheat, it is not an annual. It’s not something that is tilled up every year.
It’s something that’s a perennial. And as a perennial grain, it develops this long, long root system that goes way deep in the ground, 10-15 feet. And it’s really a remarkable thing.
SAM DINGMAN: Right. So let’s talk about some of the potential ecological benefits that like the widespread adoption of Kernza could potentially have. Because on the website of the Land Institute, which is the place that is developing Kernza, they list things like carbon capture.
SALLAWAY: Yeah. Because of this long root system, it actually can capture carbon underground. It’s also drought resistant. And also, you know, just in the elements. Elements go by and can flatten a field.
Well, Kernza is not grown in rows and rows of field. It’s grown in just a naturally occurring big, wide prairie grass. And so if that got flattened, all this root system would still be there.
DINGMAN: Right. And there’s the emissions factor of not having to go through and replant the entire field every season.
SALLAWAY: And you’re not tilling. It’s a no-till crop. And so when you’re tilling the field, you’re also destroying the topsoil. Some of the experts say that we’ve only got 60 years of topsoil left.
And when you plant wheat, you go through, you till that, you destroy and disturb the topsoil. And then what happens is you have to put all kinds of stuff back in.
DINGMAN: Right.
SALLAWAY: And so that’s where you come with nitrates and fertilizers and things that you don’t need when you’re growing a perennial plant.
DINGMAN: And so we say that the Land Institute is developing this grain. What does that mean?
SALLAWAY: The Land Institute is a group of scientists from all over the world. They’ve been there doing this for 40 years. They’ve been working with Kernza that long. And in that time, they’re really taking different strains of the plant, and they’re naturally hybridizing it.
So it’s not GMO. It’s like a natural system where they take the ones that are most drought resistant or wind resistant and they grow them year after year. And it takes about five years to get that cycle.
And then as we’re growing, the yield on that plant gets bigger and bigger. And that’s what they’re going for. They’re going for this big yield that can come along and that we could use this in the same way that we use wheat.
DINGMAN: Yes. OK, so if I’m hearing you right, there’s nothing synthetic in Kernza. It’s that they’re splicing the genes from a couple of other plants.
SALLAWAY: Right. They’re actual plants. Yeah, they’re just, they are. And we have these scientists at the Land Institute and at the University of Minnesota that are working a lot in Kernza, and they’re working on other perennial plants, too.
DINGMAN: So your film that’s gonna be at the Skyfire Film Festival, which is called “Beer Saves the World” —
SALLAWAY: “Beer Saves the World”!
DINGMAN: Is about these microbrewers who have either discovered — or been helped to discover maybe by the Land Institute — that Kernza tastes really good in beer.
SALLAWAY: Yeah, well, you know, it could be used for anything where you use wheat. So it could be bread or it could be pasta. But, you know, beer is a little bit more exciting.
So “Beer Saves the World” is just a short film that takes this one journey with Kernza, where the people from Patagonia Provisions — and Patagonia Provisions is part of Patagonia, like the jacket company.
DINGMAN: Like the outdoor clothing store.
SALLAWAY: Yeah. And their founder Yvon Chouinard, who got together with Wes Jackson at the Land Institute, and they’re like, “Ooh, we need to promote this. We can’t really promote the ecology and the environment if we don’t get into the food system.”
And so they thought, “Well, you know, what would be good? Beer!” And Patagonia went out and found some of these microbrewers.
DINGMAN: Including Arizona Wilderness.
SALLAWAY: Including Arizona Wilderness, which is an amazing, sustainable company here in town. They’re in the movie. And we also have the other microbrewers, about a dozen of them across the country, making this beer.
DINGMAN: So the Kernza grain is well suited to beer.
SALLAWAY: Yeah.
DINGMAN: And has flavor properties.
SALLAWAY: It’s got a nice taste. It’s a nice, nutty taste. It is an organic product, so that is important to them. And what they’re doing by brewing this beer is they’re trying to provide some surety for these farmers. “Hey, if you grow this grain and you provide it, we will buy it.”
DINGMAN: And did you have the opportunity to taste any of the Kernza beer in the course of making the film?
SALLAWAY: Yes, I did.
DINGMAN: So what did it taste like to you?
SALLAWAY: It does have a little bit of a more nutty flavor. It is a light beer. It’s lagered, and that’s Just one of the processes of making sort of a lighter beer. And it’s not just a summer beer, but I’d say so a little, you know.
DINGMAN: Yeah. I think there’s one guy in the film who says, “I’m normally an IPA drinker, but I really like this.”
SALLAWAY: I like it. Yeah, it’s not one of those type of crazy thick beers.
DINGMAN: So one of the assertions that is made in the film that I think is very interesting is this idea that beer drinkers culturally tend to be the kind of people who are open to trying things. Especially craft beer drinkers are like, “I’m interested in thinking about where the stuff I put in my body comes from” and thinking about that in a responsible way.
And you in the film actually go out to Arizona Wilderness and some other breweries and talk to beer drinkers.
SALLAWAY: Yeah, we talked to some beer drinkers, and we just had people saying, “Hey, if I knew this was organic, if I knew this is a regenerative product, if I knew that going in, I would definitely make it my choice.” They like to be a little different. They like to know what’s going on, and they’re on that cutting edge.
And craft breweries across the country have been trying it. We had an all-Kernza beer tasting at a screening in Kansas, where some guys went out and gave different brewers a big sack of Kernza. And it’s something that they combine with other grains. And so it doesn’t all taste the same. It is just one of the grains that they combine with hops and other things to make beer.
DINGMAN: Right. OK. So one of my favorite moments in the film is one of these sequences where you’re talking to some folks who are tasting the beer. I’m not sure which brewery it’s at. And someone asks one of the people tasting it, “So would you be open to this being used on a much wider basis?”
And she goes, “Yeah, it has to taste good.”
SALLAWAY: Yeah, that is the message. And the head of Patagonia Provisions is in the film saying, yeah, it could do all these things. It could help with emissions and help with sequestering carbon. But their customers are just not gonna care unless it tastes good.
DINGMAN: Right. Well, but this gets into — if I may, Kelly — the thing that is sort of provocative about the movie, which, it has a kind of a cheeky title: “Beer Saves the World.”
But we’re in an era just in terms of the way we talk about politics in our culture, where there is this question of how do you build movements? How do you get people on board with things?
And this is sort of an interesting idea. If you give people something you know they want that is even better than the version of it they already have, they’re just going to want it organically. And it doesn’t even necessarily have to be about lecturing people about values.
SALLAWAY: Right. People don’t like to be lectured. You know, you have to make people listen. And so, yes, we could have done a movie that says, “Oh, Kernza, the perennial grain.” That’s not quite the same as “Beer Saves the World.”
And “Beer Saves the World” does start a conversation. Can it save the world? Not on its own.
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