Alaska Flour Company Builds Healthy Soils & Food Security
Father-son duo Bryce and Milo Wrigley produce sustainable barley foods using soil-friendly farming practices like no-till and cover crops.
Alaskan farmer Bryce Wrigley is not just a barley farmer; he’s a zookeeper. His zoo consists of billions of living things that are invisible to the naked eye. He feeds them, nurtures them, and ensures they are healthy and productive.
Can you guess what they are? Soil microorganisms!
In just one teaspoon of healthy soil, there are more than six billion living things such as bacteria, fungi, protozoa, nematodes, earthworms and arthropods. These tiny critters make up the soil food web, and their transactional relationships with one another directly affect the health and productivity one of humankind’s most precious resources: soil.
The Soil Food Web. Illustration by Catherine Bailey, NRCS.
The Wrigley's use regenerative agriculture practices that promote healthy soil biology. Their farm is 100 percent no-till!
With conservation assistance and financial incentives from the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Wrigley Farms apply the principles of soil health to their operation:
NRCS Soil Health Principles
- Minimize Disturbance
- Keep it Covered
- Maximize Diversity Above for Diversity Below
- Keep a Living Root in the soil as long as possible
Why is No Till Important?
No-till is an important conservation practice because it minimizes soil disturbance. Every time the soil is plowed, churned, and turned with equipment; it destroys soil aggregates, which provide habitat for soil microorganisms. Tillage can reduce organic matter in the soil; reduce water infiltration; create compaction and poor soil structure; trigger soil erosion and encourage weeds and pests. No-till essentially does the opposite! It fosters more organic matter, increases water infiltration, builds healthier soil structure, reduces erosion and it can even reduce weed and pest pressure.
Building Food Security
Providing locally grown foods that can be packaged, shipped and stored effectively is critical in Alaska. Only 5 percent of the food purchased in Alaska is produced in-state, making the food system insecure.
When Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005, Bryce was watching the news coverage and reflected on the food security issues that impacted the people displaced by the storm. It got him thinking more and more about food security in Alaska, which prompted a family vacation to Utah and Idaho to visit flour mills.
“I wanted to find a way to make food here on the farm using the product we grow, to help our own food security in Alaska,” he said.
They built the mill in 2011. It started as a 600-square-foot room that included all the essential equipment they needed to mill barley flour. Over the years they expanded the mill to its current capacity to process up to 6.5 million pounds of barley a year!
Published December 2021 by NRCS Alaska.
View more conservation success stories on the NRCS Alaska Success Stories webpage .
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