Canby, Ore., USA
April 7, 2022
Hannah Kammeyer, Limagrain Cereal Seeds Pacific Northwest regional commercial manager
Hannah Kammeyer’s agricultural education started early.
“My siblings and I were recruited as free labor, like a lot of farm kids are,” laughs Kammeyer. “But that wasn’t a bad thing. We enjoyed the work, and it gave us a love for working hard and being outdoors that I carry with me to this day.”
In addition to field labor, Kammeyer spent hundreds of hours working at the family feed store. She learned how to achieve individually and as part of a team, to interact with people and provide high quality service. In the small community store setting, building relationships with customers was everything — a skill that would serve her well.
Kammeyer’s passion for agriculture took her to Oregon State University (OSU), where she earned a bachelor’s degree in agriculture business management and landed a position in the wheat breeding program as its first-ever sales and marketing manager.
“The university hadn’t marketed varieties before, but they saw the market was changing as more private breeding programs came online,” says Kammeyer, who relished the opportunity to break new ground and make the position her own. She dug in, collaborating with OSU researchers and local farmers, organizing field days and creating outreach materials — and cultivating partnerships, which is what led her to Limagrain Cereal Seeds (LCS).
She first worked with LCS on releasing and marketing two OSU-LCS collaborative varieties, Norwest Duet and Norwest Tandem. The experience was eye-opening, she says: “I got to work closely with the LCS team and had a front row seat to their marketing strategy and inner workings.” She liked what she saw. So when LCS asked her to join the team, Kammeyer was ready.
Making the cut
What surprised Kammeyer most when she started working with wheat breeding programs was the sheer volume of wheat crosses created and tested in order to bring a high-performance variety to market.
“When I bring people out to the plots and they see how many rows are planted, all of which will get culled down to a variety or two every year — it’s impressive,” says Kammeyer. “It’s one thing to get the number of crosses and plots presented to you in a PowerPoint or press release, but being out in the field and seeing the genetic variability in person is a different experience.”
The story doesn’t end when a wheat line goes to market, as any farmer will tell you. Once a variety is planted on thousands of commercial acres, there is a great deal more performance data to analyze. “There’s a transition of knowledge depending on where you are in the variety pipeline,” explains Kammeyer. “When we’re releasing a variety, it’s my job to share all our breeding, agronomic and trial data with seed dealers. But once the variety has been established on acres, I’m the one learning from them and the information they collect from their growers on all those different growing conditions. That feedback helps guide our breeding program in creating future crosses.”
The process comes full-circle and then starts all over again, leading to advanced genetics informed by real-world performance. “That’s why relationships are so important,” says Kammeyer. “A big part of why LCS varieties do so well in the Pacific Northwest is because of how closely we work with our seed dealer network.”
There’s a lot to be excited about in PNW wheat genetics. In addition to the diverse portfolio of LCS and Varsity Idaho varieties Kammeyer has already helped bring to market, VI Presto CL+ and VI Voodoo CL+ are new and represent the next wave of two-gene Clearfield Plus soft white winter wheats. New conventional lines VI Shock and LCS Jefe offer agronomics never before available in the PNW. And with the launch of the first CoAXium soft white winter wheat varieties, Kammeyer has been able to fulfill a lot of PNW grower wishes for controlling grassy weeds with LCS Dagger AX, LCS Hydra AX, LCS Kraken AX, LCS Mani AX and LCS Sol.
The trick, says Kammeyer, is matching up the right varieties with the right acres.
A diverse region
The Pacific Northwest is vast and has vastly diverse wheat growing conditions. Every region requires unique plant characteristics, agronomics and disease tolerances. Eastern Oregon wheat growers typically benefit from earlier maturing varieties, for example. Whereas in higher rainfall areas such as the Palouse, farmers can realize strong yield benefits from medium-maturity varieties that offer more winter-hardiness and allow them to take advantage of the complete growing season.
And those are just the broad strokes, says Kammeyer. Localized conditions and farmer-specific growing practices and variety preferences also come into play: deep seeding, dusting in, no till practices, using CoAXium® or Clearfield® technology to manage weeds, timing wheat with other crops, disease pressure — there are endless variables. Kammeyer takes all the nuances into account and helps growers make the best decisions for their wheat acres.
“That’s the fun and the challenging part. It definitely keeps me on my toes,” she says with a smile. “I'm always learning. I think you could be in this job your whole life and still learn something every day.”
And the best part of Kammeyer’s job? That’s easy: “The people. Whether it’s meeting a grower for the first time, reconnecting yearly with folks at field days or calling on a seed dealer who’s become a friend over time. I love working with farmers, hearing their stories and listening to feedback on varieties — whether it’s good or bad, it’s always really valuable to me.”
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