Beloved WSU bread-baking lab in Burlington threatened by Trump cuts

Food research at Washington State University is being hit by federal funding cuts. That includes the WSU Breadlab in Burlington, which studies, grows, and bakes new kinds of whole grains.

Last week the lab announced money that pays for research and staff on the federally funded Soil to Society grant had been suspended by the USDA.

That grant paid part of the salary of Janine Sanguine, who runs outreach and engagement at the Breadlab.

"Even though we knew this reality, the gravity of it catches you off guard,” Sanguine said.

The Soil to Society project is three years into the five-year, $10 million grant from the USDA.

The decision to freeze the money came without warning, said Ali Schultheis, project manager for the Soil to Society grant.

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Schultheis said she had heard rumors from other grant managers doing similar work that had their funding suspended.

“We thought maybe we got lucky and that we snuck past,” Schultheis said.

But then Project Director Kevin Murphy received a notice from WSU that the program’s previous month's expenses were not reimbursed through the USDA.

The pause on the Soil to Society grant amounts to a $2.5 million loss in funding across all grant stakeholders, the Breadlab says.

The lab, planted deep in the Skagit Valley surrounded by farms, is home to “breeders who bake,” Sanguine said. Researchers are farmers, bakers, and students all in one. They study new varieties of wheat, barley, rye, buckwheat, spelt, and quinoa.

“[The grant] brings together Washington State University, Johns Hopkins University, and Viva farms, which is an incubator farm in the Skagit Valley,” Schultheis said.

The Breadlab is co-housed with one of only two King Arthur Baking Schools in the country and regularly opens its doors for pop-up bake sales and classes.

“Many wheat-breeding programs don't actually taste what they're creating,” Sanguine said. “At WSU Breadlab, we develop novel grain varieties, and then we plant them out. If they do well agronomically, we take them to the bakery that's in house and we bake with them.”

Currently, much of their work with the Soil to Society Project has no funding. Salaries and operational costs for the Breadlab have been affected, and research funds for nine graduate students across the grant’s programs have been frozen.

"There goes a huge portion of our workforce, of the studies that they're doing," Sanguine said. "None of that will go forward until the funds are released or we find new funding sources. Students are the backbone of programs like this."

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The site is beloved by amateur and professional bakers alike who line up for classes and fresh baked goods. Bill Gates lauded it as the bread lab in his backyard in 2017.

The Lab’s instagram post announcing the funding freeze is filled with comments of love and support from some of the biggest names in baking.

“It is pretty discouraging to see an organization like the Breadlab, that is doing good and important work, face funding cuts," said Kit Schumann, co-owner Sea Wolf Bakers in Fremont. Schumann said he’s hopeful the community can come together to support the lab.

He said he’s been in contact with other bakers in Seattle to possibly host workshops either at the Breadlab or bakeries in town. It’s important, he said, to keep educating people about grain and bread making.

“I don’t know if enough people recognize what a resource this is,” Shumann said. “It makes it really exciting to bake in the Pacific Northwest.”

WSU said at least 14 other grants from the USDA have been affected by stop-work orders and terminations, among others at the university.

Since January, the federal government has made large cuts to many agencies and research institutions. Trump and his supporters say this is to reduce taxes and create more efficiency at a national level.

But Schultheis said cutting funding off in the middle of a grant only creates more waste.

“Now our research invested in this [grant] for the last four years is going to produce less impactful results than what it would have had we had access to our full funding,” she said.

It’s unclear if the USDA’s funding decision is permanent. Project personnel and WSU are having difficulty finding out more information from the federal government about the future of the grant. That uncertainty makes it difficult for Schultheis and other researchers to plan for their futures.

A spokesperson for the USDA wrote in an email to KUOW that, “this award currently is under review to ensure compliance with executive orders and the funding is paused while we await further guidance. NIFA [National Institute of Food and Agriculture] will share more information when it becomes available.”

Sanguine said this does not mean the end of the Breadlab.

They will continue to partner with bakeries, mills, farms and schools to keep educating people about healthy whole grains, she said.

"We're not going to stop what we're doing,” Sanguine said. "We're actually going to try to ramp it up in some ways, and let the community get more involved.”