ReferenceA map, a dataset, or a directory. It makes no recommendation.
Growers
Most gluten-free brewing grain is grown for food, feed or forage, and reaches brewing as a commodity with its history stripped off. The growers who matter to this site are the ones farming with identity intact (contract networks, cooperatives, farmer-direct sellers), because lot identity is the thing this site's standards work depends on, and it starts in a field.
Page established 2026-08-25 · seeded from existing site entries; filled 2026-08-27 from the grain research directories.
How to read it — entry rules, and what a listing means
One owner, but the reader never has to leave. The full description of a person or organization lives in exactly one place: the role page owns the person, the subject page owns the work. But a short identity travels with the name wherever it appears: who they are, where they work, and why they are named here, in a sentence or two. You should never have to click somewhere else to find out who someone is.
Organizations sit inside the role they perform. A farm, a cooperative and a grower network all belong here.
Described, never endorsed. A listing is a map reference, not a recommendation, and implies no relationship with this site.
What qualifies. A public-facing farm, cooperative, or commercial offering. Private individuals are not listed without consent.
Corrections and removals: contact us.
The roster — who grows it
The growers this site can name are those whose grain reached documented commercial use. The farmer-direct sourcing route, and what to ask before buying, is on Sourcing sorghum farmer-direct.
— Farms and grower-owned companies —
The Teff Company (Maskal Teff) — Idaho. Teff grower, miller and marketer founded by Wayne Carlson, contracting a grower network for the crop per its own site. · teff · The grower network · Verified 2026-08-25
Tenera Grains (Teffola) — Addison, Michigan. A seventh-generation crop farm that diversified into teff in 2015 at 33 acres, milling and marketing its own teff products. · teff · First-year account · Verified 2026-08-25
Riceland Foods — Stuttgart, Arkansas. A farmer-owned cooperative of 5,500 rice-growing members, described by the company as the world's largest rice miller and marketer. · rice · Riceland · Verified 2026-08-24
NorQuin — Saskatchewan, Canada. Quinoa producer that dates its story to 1992 and describes itself as the largest vertically integrated quinoa supplier in North America; acquired by Above Food in 2022. · quinoa & amaranth · The company · Verified 2026-08-25
Buckwheat Growers Association of Minnesota — Wadena, Minnesota. A farmer-owned cooperative founded in 1997, growing, processing and marketing buckwheat seed and feed; the one US buckwheat grower cooperative we have found. · buckwheat · The cooperative, as reported · Verified 2026-08-24
— Cooperatives and producer networks —
Groupement des Producteurs de Fonio au Foutah — Foutah, Guinea. A fonio producers' group of 85 members, per the reporting; one of the mostly women-led cooperatives the crop is organized through. · fonio · The cooperatives, reported · Verified 2026-08-25
Yakaar Niani Wulli — Senegal. A fonio producer cooperative in the same reported West African grower layer. · fonio · The cooperatives, reported · Verified 2026-08-25
Koba Club de Kédougou — Kédougou, Senegal. A women producers' group that, per the reporting, rebuilt its operation around fonio processing. · fonio · The cooperatives, reported · Verified 2026-08-25
The Yolélé grower network — West Africa. The farmers supplying the US fonio company, put at roughly a thousand by the trade press. · fonio · The cooperatives, reported · Verified 2026-08-25
Ethiopia's teff cooperative layer — Ethiopia. The crop's homeland organizes through cooperatives rather than a crop association: government-supported seed producer cooperatives distributing improved teff seed, and the multipurpose farmer cooperatives that anchor the supply chain. · teff · Seed cooperatives and teff productivity · Verified 2026-08-25
Peru's producer-association layer — Puno and Ayacucho, Peru. The world's largest quinoa producer organizes locally: cooperatives and producer associations that collect, process and sell into the export chain. · quinoa & amaranth · The association study, open access · Verified 2026-08-25
ANAPQUI — Bolivia's National Association of Quinoa Producers — Intersalar region, southern Bolivian highlands. Founded in December 1983 and representing more than 25,000 farming families, per its own account, with processing of its own. · quinoa & amaranth · The association · Verified 2026-08-25
The Tulyehualco amaranth community — Santiago Tulyehualco, Xochimilco, Mexico City. A town where roughly half the community lives from amaranth production and sales, turning the grain into more than a hundred products. · quinoa & amaranth · The community's producers · Verified 2026-08-25
Nigeria's contract sorghum growers — Nigeria. The smallholder farmers supplying the country's sorghum brewing industry through contract-grower schemes, including Nigerian Breweries' stated ₦78-billion, five-year smallholder program for its local raw materials. · sorghum · Nigerian Breweries' program · Verified 2026-08-24
— Growing regions, where no farm is named —
The High Plains proso millet growers — Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota. The largest proso millet producing states per the AgMRC profile, and the grain layer under the one gluten-free malt chain that runs end to end today. · millet · Ag Marketing Resource Center profile · Verified 2026-08-24
The US buckwheat crop — North Dakota, Washington, Minnesota, New York. Per AgMRC the majority of the US crop grows in those four states, and about 40% of it is exported to Japan, largely for soba. · buckwheat · AgMRC buckwheat profile · Verified 2026-08-25
The San Luis Valley — Colorado. Where US quinoa began in the early 1980s, and the domestic base the US breeding programs build on; we have found no published figure for current US quinoa acreage. · quinoa & amaranth · The crop profile (AgMRC) · Verified 2026-08-25
Private landowners are not listed. Every entry above is a farm, cooperative, grower network or documented producing region. The roster grows only through public-facing operations.
Bodies & gatherings — the associations, checkoffs and field days this role runs through
Shorter than the other role pages by design: past six or eight entries this list would carry bodies a grower never actually deals with.
United Sorghum Checkoff Program. The US producer board for sorghum, funded by a levy on the growers themselves; its research RFP is paused for 2026 pending evaluation, per its own research page. · sorghum · Research page · Verified 2026-08-26
National Sorghum Producers. The US grower advocacy organization: policy, promotion, and the political voice of the crop. · sorghum · NSP · Verified 2026-08-24
High Plains Millet Association. The grower organization for US proso millet, the closest thing millet has to a producer voice, in the absence of a checkoff. · millet · HPMA · Verified 2026-08-24
USA Rice Federation. The national rice industry organization and its research-and-promotion apparatus, funded through the state checkoffs a rice grower pays into. · rice · USA Rice · Verified 2026-08-24
California Rice Experiment Station — Biggs, California. The grower-owned breeding institution, established 1912, whose varieties are owned by California's rice growers, a body a grower belongs to rather than buys from. · rice · The station's story · Verified 2026-08-24
Arkansas Rice Field Day. The annual grower-and-research gathering at the Stuttgart Rice Research and Extension Center, where the state's new varieties are shown to the industry each August. · rice · The 2026 field day · Verified 2026-08-24
NW Buckwheat Festival. The annual August gathering of farmers, chefs, researchers and food champions in the Pacific Northwest, co-hosted by Washington State University and the Organic Seed Alliance since 2023. · buckwheat · Building buckwheat community · Verified 2026-08-24
The land-grant extension services. Where agronomy for these crops reaches a farm: NDSU's soil-fertility guidance for buckwheat in North Dakota and Cornell's Northeast variety guide are the published examples this site cites. · buckwheat · NDSU buckwheat guidance · the Cornell variety guide (archived) · Verified 2026-08-24
Working with them — how a brewer or maltster buys from a farm
If you want to buy farmer-direct, start with Sourcing sorghum farmer-direct: how the route works, and what to ask a farm before you commit to a crop year.
If you are qualifying the farm as a supplier, the criteria and the paperwork are on grain source and acceptance and supplier qualification.
If the lot has arrived, sample it properly before you accept it. The FGIS four-way split exists for exactly this.
If you want the numbers to travel with the grain, the reporting format is the lot reporting standard: the one thing a grower can do that makes a lot usable to a maltster who has never met them.
If you need grain, post what you are looking for on Source grain.
If you grow it, List your grain is where a farm makes itself findable to this side of the market.
How this role connects — documented links to other roles and subjects
- This is the role where lot identity is created or lost. Everything the lot reporting standard asks a seller to report (cultivar, harvest year, storage, handling) is knowledge that exists on the farm and nowhere else once the grain is commingled.
- The buyer's acceptance criteria are the grower's real specification. Test weight, moisture, germination and mycotoxin limits reach the field as contract terms rather than as agronomy: grain source and acceptance.
- There is no malting-sorghum specification to grow to. This site can say what makes good malting sorghum and still not hand a grower a number to hit. The gap between the two is the most consequential thing missing between this role and maltsters.
- Cultivar screenings are the closest thing to a variety recommendation this field has: the 2002–2004 sorghum screenings are what a grower would have to read to choose a malting variety, and they were not written for growers.
- Breeders release, growers adopt — and nothing in between is aimed at brewing. The varieties reaching farms come out of food, feed, forage and yield programs, which is why cultivars for malting reads as an open question rather than a list.
- Maltsters are the first buyer who cares whether the seed is alive. Germination survives or dies in drying and storage decisions made on the farm, months before a maltster sees the lot.
- Brewers inherit the field's decisions. Rotation, neighboring crops and shared equipment set the contamination risk a brewery later has to test its way out of: agricultural cross-contamination.
- Identity preservation is a farming practice before it is paperwork. Keeping a lot separate starts at planting and ends at the bin: identity preservation.
- Suppliers sit between this role and every buyer. Handlers, millers and processors are where most of these grains change hands, and where a named lot most often becomes an anonymous one.
- Researchers meet this role at field days and through extension rather than in journals: the gatherings above are the interface between published agronomy and a planted acre.
- The world grows these grains for something else. Most US teff acreage is hay, most US buckwheat is exported for soba, and most sorghum is feed. The grain directories document each crop's real end market, and brewing is not it.
- Homebrewers and home maltsters are the smallest buyers this role has, and often the only ones asking a farm for a named single-origin lot, at a volume a farm can decline.
- What this role could answer, nobody has asked it. The research asks are written for kettles; the equivalent list for a field (which cultivars, grown where, malted how) does not exist yet.
Who's missing — where this page's coverage runs out
- No grower is publicly identified as growing for gluten-free brewing specifically. The farmer-direct route exists and is documented, but the growers on the other end of it are not public. That is a documented zero, not an oversight. If you grow for this market and are willing to be named, tell us.
- No named US sorghum farm. Sorghum is this site's central grain, and the roster above reaches it only through Nigerian contract schemes and US producer bodies.
- No named US millet or rice farm either. Millet is the one gluten-free grain whose malt chain runs end to end today, and we can name the malthouse and the breweries but not a farm; rice appears here only as a cooperative of 5,500 unnamed members.
- Private landowners are excluded by rule, and that removes most of the field. Nobody is listed for growing alone, so the map skews to cooperatives, companies and regions. That is the rule working rather than the field's shape.
- Acreage is largely unpublished. We have found no figure for current US quinoa acreage, and none at all for grain grown to any brewing specification. Where a source gives no number, this page gives none.
Grow gluten-free brewing grain, or buy from someone who does? Tell us.