Impact

impact projects allow us to truly change the world And participate in GREAT financial possibilities while we do so.

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The Grain Story

Blue Room Impact has invested in the work of visionary food activist Kelly Whitaker to create a robust regenerative agriculture movement.

By transforming the way we grow, produce, and sell grain, Whitaker is creating better food while revolutionizing farming practices. Regenerative agriculture helps conserve water, amend the soil, create food with better flavor and nutrition, and build an agricultural system that more fairly rewards farmers for their labor. We become healthier, farming becomes more sustainable, and our local agricultural businesses thrive, at the same time.

Kelly Whitaker was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and grew up spending summers on his grandfather’s farm, where he learned to value the labor that goes into locally-grown food. Later he studied hospitality in a more formal fashion at Colorado State University and at the Hotel Institute Montreaux in Switzerland. He fell in love with baking bread and making pasta while working on the island of Procida, off the coast of Naples, a place famous for wood-fired cooking. While working as a chef in the kitchens of big name Los Angeles restaurants including Hatfield’s and Providence, Whitaker also came to appreciate the dependence of restaurants on local farmers’ markets and other sources of fresh produce.  

He started his own restaurant called Basta using wood-fired cooking and locally sourced food in Boulder, Colorado. After Basta achieved renown, he was named “Best Chef” by 5280 magazine, and won a James Beard nomination for best chef in the Rocky Mountain region. He opened several additional restaurants as well. Along the way, Whitaker also became known as a food activist who spoke out regularly about the need to pay restaurant employees a livable wage and to provide better compensation to farmers.

As a baker, Whitaker felt frustrated by the limited types of grain that he could acquire locally. In dialogue with farmers based in his home state, Whitaker realized that because local mills had ceased to function, virtually all of the grain grown in the state of Colorado was being sent to Kansas, where it was mixed with other sources of grain. There was little incentive for farmers to grow different varieties or farm organically, as they had no way to market those products. Whitaker partnered with the Nature Conservancy to revive dryland farming in the San Luis Valley, and worked with experts at the University of Colorado to identify varietals that grow well in that location. Heirloom strains of wheat such as Turkey Red, Rouge de Bourdeaux, Sonoran, and Yecora Rojo proved to thrive in the local climate. Thanks to Whitaker’s activism, farmers in the San Luis Valley have devoted 150 acres to these heirloom varietals, and produced 70,000 pounds of locally grown organic grain while using less water and improving the soil.

Due to the dearth of local mills, however, there was a bottleneck in the distribution process. Whitaker succeeded in persuading farmers to grow heritage grains, and created a significant procurement market for their products, but there were no small mills in Colorado that could keep the heritage grains separate and mill locally-produced flour. To solve this dilemma, Whitaker created a for-profit partnership to start a local stone mill in his hometown of Boulder, Colorado. He obtained a forty inch mill stone and started grinding flour in a way that leaves the grain’s protein and fiber intact, making it a healthier product. So far, 40,000 pounds of grain has been delivered in old-fashioned tote bags from the San Luis Valley to the mill in Boulder and turned into locally-produced organic flour with far better flavor and nutritional value. By supporting this work, we help save heritage grains, make locally grown food more widely available, support sustainable agricultural practices, and restore dignity to farming. And as Whitaker’s mill business grows, so do our shared revenues. In this way we seek to change the world and participate in significant financial possibilities while doing so.

THERE IS NO VALUE MORE IMPORTANT THAN HUMAN VALUE.