Can cereal save the planet? This sustainable new grain may bowl over the industry
The company that makes Cheerios, Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs is developing its most ambitious cereal to date. It may be available on grocery store shelves in 2021. Or it might not be.
Several years ago, Maria Carolina Comings, a General Mills executive who presides over the company’s organic brands (Cascadian Farm, Muir Glen and Epic) was approached by a professor with the University of Minnesota’s Department of Agronomy and Plant Genetics about a new grain it was researching and developing. It’s a grain that held great promise, he said, and could positively impact the environment.
Smaller than traditionally grown wheat, and derived from a perennial Eurasian forage crop called intermediate wheatgrass, the wheatlike grain was called Kernza.