The Crop Behind New Barn’s Buckwheat Milk
How farms, mills, and buyers keep a useful crop in production
By Chad Walker, Sustainability Coordinator, New Barn Organics
New Barn’s Buckwheat Milk launched at Whole Foods Market on September 28. Its main ingredient has a long history in American agriculture, where growers have used it for food, summer cover, pollinator forage, and short openings between other crops.
Buckwheat once covered much more American farmland. During the twentieth century, acreage declined as agriculture concentrated on a smaller group of commodities and the commercial support around the crop narrowed. A modest network survived, including organic grain farms in New York’s Finger Lakes and a mill in Penn Yan that has handled buckwheat for more than two centuries. New Barn’s milk brings those pieces together in an everyday product.
Why Choose Buckwheat Milk?
Despite its name, buckwheat is unrelated to wheat. New Barn’s Buckwheat Milk is organic, gluten-free, Certified Seed Oil Free, and Regenerative Organic Certified®. It offers a creamy, mild-tasting option for cereal, smoothies, coffee, or drinking by the glass.
Each type of plant milk begins with a different crop and supply chain. Choosing buckwheat brings another ingredient into a category built largely around almonds, oats, soy, and coconut. It also directs demand toward a crop that can serve several purposes on the farm and toward the specialized infrastructure needed to bring it to market.
Plant milks are not nutritionally interchangeable. Protein, calories, added sugar, calcium, and vitamin fortification vary by product, so shoppers should compare labels according to their needs. New Barn’s Buckwheat Milk stands apart through its certifications, distinctive flavor, and connection to a crop with practical value in both agriculture and food.
A Useful Crop in a Short Window
Buckwheat is a pseudocereal, the seed of a flowering plant related to rhubarb and sorrel. It reaches grain maturity in roughly two to three months. When grown for cover, an even shorter stand can protect the soil and fill a gap between spring and fall crops.
Its speed gives it several practical uses. The canopy closes quickly and competes with annual weeds, which can reduce cultivation pressure in organic fields. The flowers provide nectar and pollen for honeybees, native bees, and beneficial insects. Residue breaks down relatively quickly after termination, leaving room for the next crop in the sequence.
Buckwheat roots can also take up phosphorus from soil pools that many crops access less readily. Research is less conclusive about how much of that phosphorus becomes available to the following crop. Soil conditions, management, and the treatment of the plant material all influence the result. Its value in a rotation rests on the full combination of quick growth, ground cover, weed competition, insect forage, and nutrient cycling.
On Klaas and Mary-Howell Martens’ farm near Penn Yan, buckwheat can follow barley on the same ground. The farm can harvest another crop during a window that might otherwise produce little revenue while adding a broadleaf species with different growth and rooting habits to the rotation.
How Buckwheat Lost Its Market
Buckwheat acreage declined sharply as American agriculture became more specialized. Corn, soybeans, wheat, and oats gained extensive storage networks, transportation systems, crop programs, processing capacity, and investment in breeding. Those systems lowered costs and made the dominant crops easier to sell across large regions.
As buckwheat acreage fell, mills and handlers had less grain to move. Fewer processing options made the crop harder for farmers to sell, and declining volume weakened the local knowledge needed to grow, clean, store, and market it. Each loss made the next one more likely.
These commercial limits still shape crop diversification. Seed and agronomy are only part of the decision. A farmer also needs equipment, storage, processing, and a buyer willing to commit to the crop. Without those pieces, a useful rotation crop can remain commercially marginal.
The Finger Lakes Connection
Klaas and Mary-Howell Martens farm nearly 2,000 acres of organic grains and legumes in New York’s Finger Lakes and operate Lakeview Organic Grain in Penn Yan. Their rotation includes barley, buckwheat, corn, soybeans, edible beans, and hay. Buckwheat gives the farm another way to sequence crops, manage weeds, and use a short part of the growing season productively.
The Birkett Mills operates about fifteen minutes away. The company has milled buckwheat in Penn Yan since 1797 and maintains the specialized equipment needed to clean, sort, dehull, and mill the seed. That capacity is rare. Buckwheat cannot move through every grain mill, and the equipment represents knowledge and investment built over generations.
New Barn uses organic buckwheat sourced in the United States and Canada and processed at Birkett Mills. The mill prepares light buckwheat flour to the specifications required for the milk. This arrangement gives New Barn a traceable ingredient and provides another continuing market for the farms and mill.
From the Rotation to the Plant-Based Shelf
Many farmers grow buckwheat as a cover crop between cash crops. When grown for grain, a committed buyer turns the same short seasonal window into a source of revenue. Recurring demand helps mills schedule specialized production and gives growers a reason to include buckwheat in future rotations.
New Barn’s Buckwheat Milk carries that agricultural story onto the plant-based shelf. It gives shoppers a creamy, mild-tasting organic option while giving buckwheat a visible place in an aisle built mostly around a handful of familiar crops. Each carton connects an everyday purchase to the farms, mill, equipment, and knowledge that keep buckwheat in production.
Buckwheat’s future depends on farmers having a market and buyers continuing to make room for the crop. New Barn’s Buckwheat Milk is one way to build that demand and keep the farms, milling capacity, and knowledge behind buckwheat in use.
Sources and Further Reading
• University of Minnesota Extension, Cover Crop Selection for Vegetable Growers
• New York Soil Health, Organic Weed Control on a 2000 Acre Grain Farm in New York
