By Barbara Oringderff
e arrived at Kansas State University (K-State) on a crisp
day last fall to learn more about the 100 year-old Department of Grain Science and Industry, which teaches grain
milling, feed manufacturing, and commercial baking, biobased products and bioenergy processing.
When the department started in 1910, it was called the Department
of Milling Industry, and only one course: “Grain Products” was offered.
W
Dr. Behnke proudly shows the author the new feed mill (still under construction) from the roof of the
Hal Ross flour mill. When completed, the feed milll, a part of the new Grain Science Complex, will be
the tallest building on the K-State campus. First proposed by Grain Science and Industry department
head Brendan Donnelley in 1996, the Grain Science Complex (nicknamed the ‘The Magical Kingdom’),
includes four buildings on a 16-acre site on the K-State campus north of Kimball Avenue. The site will
eventually include five buildings. The new feed mill is the fourth. (Photos by Sarah Schuetze)
34
T ER R ITOR I A L M AGA ZINE
F E B R U A R Y, M A R C H & A P R I L , 2 0 133
The new flour mill (the third building in the complex)
is named for Hal Ross of Wichita, an early mill owner
and major donor to the project.
Ready to tour the flour mill. The author (right to left), with
Dr. Behnke, Sarah Schuetze (her granddaughter) and
Sarah’s friend Emmett Hull. Both are K-State freshmen.
Today this department has one of the
most influential and highly regarded
programs in the world.
Looking at how grain is milled is
the principal mission of this department, and the first building we saw in
a complex of four new buildings on a
16-acre lot was the five-story, 10 million dollar, Hal Ross flour mill completed in 2006, and next to it, the bustling construction on the main tower
of the new O. H. Kruse Feed Technology Innovation Center which, when
completed, will be the tallest structure on the K-State campus. We could
hardly wait to see them close up.
Dr. Keith Behnke, professor emeritus, who joined the K-State faculty in
1977, has devoted many years to the
planning of the new feed mill and he
was to be our guide.
After a warm welcome and an
enthusiastic briefing in the stunning
new International Grains Program
Conference Center, Dr. Behnke took us
across the street to tour the Hal Ross
Flour Mill (which was not operating
that day) and then, like a proud father
THE MAGICAL KINGDOM
Instantly, I was treated to a breathtaking view of the campus. I was
actually looking down on the spectacular Bill Snyder Family Stadium,
and onto the top of the feed mill tower, which was not yet as high as the
flour mill building. There also will be
a small bio-security level (BSL) 2 contained feed processing research center and laboratory as part of the new
feedmill. This addition to the new
Grain Science Complex will mean
that the complex will live up to its
nickname: ‘The Magical Kingdom’.
“Our old feed mill was built in 1952,
DOWNRIGHT HEAD CONTROL
SILENCER Hydraulic Neck Bars
Head
Control:
Left
Right &
Forward
Early ways to grind grain on display in the flour mill.
(staff photos)
getting ready to introduce us to his
first child, he lead our little group, my
daughter Carol Schuetze, her daughter Sarah and Sarah’s friend Emmett
Hull, who are both K-State freshmen,
up five flights of grated metal stairs
to the ceiling of the flour mill. In the
ceiling was a flat door, like a cellar
door, that he pushed up and then
helped everybody out onto the roof.
MOLY MFG., INC.
785-472-3388
F E B R U A R Y, M A R C H & A P R I L , 2 0 13
“
®
I love my
SILENCER
Hydraulic
Neck Bars!
“
--Dale Seibert, Seibert Feeding
molymfg.com
T ER R ITOR I A L M AGA ZINE
35
so we’re really excited about this
one,” said Keith Behnke. “It will be
a state-of-the-art teaching and research facility with all new technology. Faculty from both Animal Sciences and Grain Science departments
will use this new mill to conduct feed
processing related research. We will
produce all of the feed for our (K-State)
livestock, and do research on processing that feed. It will be named
the O. H. Kruse Feed Technology Innovation Center. The Kruse family
are feed manufacturers in California,”
he explained, “and their son, Ron, a
K-State Feed Technology graduate,
made a significant two million-plus
dollar contribution to help build this
new mill. He did it to honor his dad.
We also received $5.2 million from
the State of Kansas, and we have had
$3 million worth of machinery that’s
been donated. We’ve had to buy almost nothing! It’s amazing that these
The author and Carol Schuetze check out the interesting Wenger extruder. The shape of the product can
be changed by changing the die on the front of the
extruder.
36
T ER R ITOR I A L M AGA ZINE
industry partners have felt that this
project was important enough that
they stepped up.”
BUILDING A FEED MILL
IN VIETNAM
Keith Behnke grew up in Western
Kansas (Edwards County), on a cow/
calf operation. “As long as I can remember I was going to be a vet. I
had it all planned out to be a small
animal vet in Hawaii. At K-State I
joined an ag fraternity (AGR) and had
a room with two guys who were firstyear vet students. They’d be up at 5
a.m. to study and really were having
a hard time. One of the other kids
was in this Feed Science program
and he told me I needed to look into
this program and I did.
“I graduated with a B.S. in 1968
and started grad school at K-State at
the beginning of the Vietnam conflict.
I’m the luckiest man who ever got
sent to Vietnam! I was a 2nd lieutenant in the infantry and I got there
and went to the 29 CA DaNang (civil
F E B R U A R Y, M A R C H & A P R I L , 2 0 133
affairs) and we taught the Vietnamese how to grow rice! We ended up
introducing them to new rice varieties, and then I actually built a feed
mill in DaNang! The U.S. government
sent thousands of tons of bulgur (precooked wheat) as food aid to Vietnam
and, of course, the people wouldn’t
eat it, so we had a guy there who
would trade us bulgur for rice. We
built a feed mill to process the bulgur and rice milling by-products and
fed it to the pigs and chickens. I’m
one of the very few people who went
to Vietnam and got to do some good.
Nobody killed me and I didn’t have
to kill anybody! Actually, I carried a
Smith & Wesson but I never fired it.
“I came home,” he continued,” and
started graduate school on the GI Bill
in 1972, and I did my Master’s and
PHD (1975), all here at K-State. This is
the only university in the world that
has a four-year college degree in Feed
Technology (now called Feed Science
and Management). After I graduated I went to work for FarMarCo (a
grain marketing co-operative) in the
research department of its food division in Hutchinson, KS. Guess what,
FarMarCo started out making bulgur
that they sent to Vietnam!”
Keith Behnke’s faculty career had
already come full circle, and he was
only getting started.
KANSAS FARMERS
WANTED TO KNOW
Kansas State University is located
in the heart of hard winter wheat
country, a perfect location for the
study of grains and milling, which
began there in 1905 when J. T. Willard (then head of the Department
of Chemistry), purchased an Allis
Chalmers experimental mill to begin
evaluating the milling quality of new
strains of hard winter wheat, being
developed for Kansas and the American Great Plains.
The K-State Department of Milling Industry, which is now called the
Department of Grain Science and In-
“We have three bachelor degree programs here that don’t exist anyplace else,” explained Dr. Dirk Maier, head of
Grain Science and Industry and director of the International Grains Program at K-State.
dustry and includes processing grains
for livestock feed, was formally established in 1910 with $2,000 from
regional millers and the Kansas City
Board of Trade. Only one course,
“Grain Products”, was offered then,
but by 1912 seven courses were available as electives for agricultural students. In 1913, a large experimental
mill with a capacity of approximately 145 cwts per 24 hours (hundred
weights or 100 pounds of flour) was
installed in Agriculture Hall, later
known as East Waters Hall.
“Our program here was established
in response to farmers in Kansas,
and to the milling industry. They
wanted to know how far we’d come
in the quality of our wheat. The milling industry in Kansas at that time
consisted of several hundred flour
and grist mills. Today there are only
10 regular flour mills in the state, and
one is our mill here at K-State,” explained Dr. Dirk Maier, the 10th head
of the K-State Department of Grain
Science and Industry.
The vertical mill came into being
during the Industrial Revolution, and
the Nineteenth Century saw the complete transformation of the milling
industry from the grinding of wheat
with large stones to milling with steel
roller mills.
Improved machinery to produce
wheat, plowing, seeding, reaping and
thrashing, transporting and mill-
F E B R U A R Y, M A R C H & A P R I L , 2 0 13
ing, have reduced the cost of growing wheat and made it into a product
that can now feed the world. For instance, in 1830 it was considered that
three hours of human work would
produce a bushel of wheat, but by
1896, it was determined that it took a
farmer only 10 minutes, or one-eighteenth as much time, to produce a
bushel of wheat. (Study from the 1954
New Standard Encyclopedia.)
Today, according to the United
States Department of Agriculture
(USDA). it takes a farmer only 15 to 18
seconds to produce a bushel of wheat.
The USDA web site also includes this
data: In the 1890s it took 8 to 10 hours
on one acre to produce 20 bushels of
wheat; 1930s, 3 to 4 hours; 1970s, 1
to 2 hours to produce 30 bushels of
wheat; and in 2010, 10 to 12 minutes
of work on one acre to produce 40
bushels of wheat. (Our thanks to Ron
Straub, owner of Straub International
in Great Bend for taking the time to
search for this fascinating information for our story. The Editor.)
AN EYE ON THE FUTURE
While revering the past, Dr. Maier
has his eyes turned to the future.
“This is a great time for young people to get involved in this industry. We
can place every single student who
successfully completes our program,”
he said. “We have more demand for
T ER R ITOR I A L M AGA ZINE
37
Antique photos from the early days at Kansas State University
38
T ER R ITOR I A L M AGA ZINE
F E B R U A R Y,
Y M A R C H & A P R I L , 2 0 13
our students than we can currently
meet, and we also have one of the
largest scholarship programs. As a
department, we give out $200,000 a
year in scholarships thanks to the
generosity of out alumni, friends and
industry partners.” explained Maier.
“The uniqueness of this program
is that we have three bachelor degree programs that don’t exist anyplace else in the world. We also have
a master’s and doctorate degree in
grain science. We have about half
U.S. graduate students and half international graduate students, and that
allows many of our students to go
back to their own country and lead
the grain-based food and feed industry there,” Maier told me. “We have
25 faculty members, and 25 technical and support staff for our 200 undergraduate students (most are from
Kansas) and 55 graduate students.”
International students are of special importance to Dr. Maier, because
he was raised in Germany where his
father was the principal of a school in
Company
Sales
4414/+435220*2*450/5
".(152142
In 1957 a devastating fire destroyed the department’s pilot flour mill in east Waters Hall.
the Black Forest area, and he came
to America as an exchange student
while he was in high school.
“I lived on a dairy farm in Michigan as an exchange student, and
then earned my bachelor’s, master’s
and doctorate from Michigan State
University. I had been interested in
engineering for a long time growing
up, and at Michigan State I decided to
go into agricultural engineering,” said
Maier, who was a professor at Purdue
University before coming to K-State.
“In 2008 I had the distinct honor to
become head of the K-State Department of Grain Science and Industry,
and to assume the responsibility of
leading the department into our second century,” said Maier. “What we
do here has a national and global impact, and I believe it’s very important
that we have it here in Kansas. The
+4**4/-5.1
312"0/ 5+2--*4,
/(1341043,54 4-2*43,50/4&
"213,5.1+)213,5)103-!23
1443,5*043-.+,5!.3(0-.3,
+)0+4/5).(343,54-+#
.'520/-4/2/+4550 )541.1!2/+4555%)00/
%##544413
%'0)21-5%2*435.!2/"
5.(/-"5.25,5(0/-41,5%
$&$&$5.15&
&$$
'''#3'0)21-&32*43#+.!
F E B R U A R Y, M A R C H & A P R I L , 2 0 13
T ER R ITOR I A L M AGA ZINE
39
reason this department was established was because the
Kansas milling industry and the national industry wanted to have a place to train millers and to determine the
quality of the wheat being raised,” he continued. “And
we still do both of those things here today and more.
The department grew when, in the 1950s, the (livestock)
feed industry came to K-State and said they needed the
same training and research for their industry, so that
program was added. Then in the 1960s, the commercial
bakery industry asked K-State to establish a bakery science program. This was done in 1962.” (At that time,
there was only one university bakery engineering program, and that was being closed down at Florida State.)
“There are so many exciting careers in these global
grain-based industries for students. The demand for food
and feed industry products is growing, because the world’s
population is still increasing. Our vision is to be the global
education, research and technology and knowledge transfer leader for the grain and grain-based food, feed, fiber,
bio-fuel and bio-products supply chains. Simply put,”
Maier concluded, “that means being the best at what we
do best in the world.”
WHEAT QUALITY
Dr. Becky Miller, Wheat Quality lab director at K-State,
grew up on a farm near Cottonwood Falls, KS and re-
40
T ER R ITOR I A L M AGA ZINE
Wheat Quality lab director Dr. Becky Miller, (at right), a K-State graduate in bakery
science, always loved to bake in 4-H, and she gets to bake here – sort of. “We have
a small experimental flour mill in the lab, and we make flour from each of the wheat
samples sent to us. Then we bake the flour into small loaves of bread here in the
lab. Finally, we cut each little loaf open to determine the quality of the flour.”That’s
baking technician Rachel Benjamin in the lab coat.
ceived a degree in Bakery Science from the Grain Science
and Industry Department at K-State.
“In 4-H I always loved baking, and I always knew I
wanted to come to K-State,” Dr. Miller told me. “After I got
my degree, I decided quality control in a bakery sounded
boring so I went back to college and got more into research – and I love it! It’s my passion. I try to lead farmers to plant better varieties of wheat. I tried that on my
F E B R U A R Y, M A R C H & A P R I L , 2 0 133
dad, Tom, a few times,” she laughed, “but he always plants a certain
variety of wheat and now I leave him to his growing and he leaves
me to my baking!
“We have two K-State wheat breeders working on developing new
wheat varieties: Dr. Allan Fritz, here in Manhattan, and Dr. Guorong Zhang at our experiment station at Hays. The Hays program
is mainly hard white wheat, and Dr. Fritz works more on hard red
wheat. The Volga Germans brought kernels of the Turkey Red hard
wheat when they came here from Russia, which got wheat established in Kansas” she explained.
“In our lab here we have a small scale experimental flour
mill, and they send hundreds of samples to this department
and we look at the quality of the flour we mill from their samples,” she explained. “We then take the flour and we bake it into
bread in our baking lab. You can’t get a picture of the small
loaves of bread because they are actually baking now. Later we will cut each little loaf open to determine the quality.”
DO YOU WATCH THE
FOOD NETWORK?
Dave Krishock, professor of Bakery Science and Management, actually has a B.S. in forestry from Clemson University. “I just tell people
I’m working with a different kind of fiber now!”
Dave Krishock, the Bakers’ National Education Foundation Bakery Science professor at K-State, grew up baking. “My grandma was
a baker in Wisconsin, and my six brothers and I were cheap labor! I
learned a lot from her, though, and I also learned a lot from my wife,
Wendi. She is a 1979 K-State graduate in human nutrition. My degree is in forestry!” Dave laughed. “I tell people I’m still in the fiber
136 years of understanding your business.
When it comes to ag lending, we know the lay of the land. That’s why, for 136 years, we’ve
been in the business of helping producers just like you keep their operations running
smoothly and profitably. Because we’re not just experts in your field – we’re INTRUST Bank.
intrustbank.com
Member FDIC I ©2013 INTRUST Bank
Bruce Long 316-383-1426
|
Bruce Frost 316-383-1418
F E B R U A R Y, M A R C H & A P R I L , 2 0 13
|
|
800 -732-5120
Dan Heinz 316-383-1415
T ER R ITOR I A L M AGA ZINE
41
Baking at the university in the 1950s.
business, it’s just another fiber. At home, my wife does the
cooking , but I do most of the baking.
“I’m a graduate of the American Institute of Baking. They
have an 18 week resident course here at AIB in Manhattan
for industry professionals. For a time I worked in Ann Arbor, MI, for the Zingerman’s Delicatessen and Bake House.
They baked everything from scratch. I was their production manager and supervised 85 people. Also, my wife
and I owned a bakery in North Carolina called the ‘Sunny
Day Bakery.’ It was fun,” he recalled, “and we’re probably crazy enough to go back into that business someday!”
An Eagle scout, Dave grew up in Boy Scouts and had an
opportunity to teach other kids. “I liked teaching a whole
lot, and I still do,” he said. “The first question I ask my
students today is if they watch the Food Network? Then
I tell them that’s not what we do! Here we teach the science and technology of baking. Eighty percent of my time
is devoted to teaching, and the other 20 percent to community service. We produce products here for projects
like the Breadbasket, which provides food for the needy.
“The heart and soul of our program is young people.
This is the only school in the world where you can get
a degree in Bakery Science, Milling Science or Feed Science, and we have 100 percent placement of our students.”
The Bakery Science program has a weekly bake sale
for the public, and we were there on the right day to smell
the bread and cookies baking and to buy some to sample.
Yummy!
“IT’S GOOD FOR FARMERS”
Sarah (at right) was there for the weekly bake sale.
Always alert to the needs of an agricultural industry,
the K-State Department of Grain Science and Industry is
preparing to start a new program for the pet food industry.
There is no degree program in the U.S. for this industry.
Last summer (2012) the university hired Dr. Greg Aldrich,
who with his wife Susan, who also has a PhD in Animal
Physiology, own a pet food nutrition consulting firm in Topeka, KS, called Pet Food & Ingredient Technology, Inc.
Dr. Aldrich told me over the phone there are less than 10
42
T ER R ITOR I A L M AGA ZINE
such consulting firms in the world. He indicates that “Pet
food is a 19 billion dollar industry in the U.S., and, globally, a 5.3 billion dollar industry. As a result I work with
pet food companies all over the world,” he explained. “Pet
food in the U.S. and Western Europe dominate the world
scene, with Brazil and Eastern European countries growing at a rapid pace to catch up. In the U.S. each year the
pet food industry consumes about 9.5 million metric tons
of raw agricultural commodities such as beef, chicken,
corn, wheat, etc., all produced in and around Kansas.
“The new K-State program will provide value added
opportunities for commodities produced in the region. It’s
good for farmers!” exclaimed Aldrich, a fourth generation
Kansan who grew up in Western Kansas around the wheat
and cattle farms of Pawnee County. Aldrich received his
B.S. from K-State, master’s from the University of Missouri,
and his PhD in Animal Nutrition from the University of Illinois. This is a totally new area: “There was no university
pet food program in the U.S., so I pretty much had to learn
in the field,” he explained. “Here at K-State I have the good
fortune to work with some of the brightest minds in the
world to correct that deficiency. The Pet Food program is
now under construction with the creation of classes and
degree programs in pet food production. Specifically, beginning the fall semester of 2013 we will begin to offer
an option within the Feed Science and Management program. Also students in other degree programs could work
toward a minor in pet food science.” Besides helping to
champion the program, Dr. Aldrich indicated he will do
some teaching and focus his research on the effects of
processing for food safety on the nutrient composition and
F E B R U A R Y, M A R C H & A P R I L , 2 0 133