There was good news today for those who like to buy locally-made organic bread, and for the farmers who grow the wheat. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has awarded well over a million dollars in grant money to researchers at the University of Maine, as they work to enable more farmers to produce high quality organic bread wheat.

The funding is part of a nationwide USDA program. "We are awarding more than $19 million in grants to universities across the country to solve critical organic agriculture issues," said Deputy Agriculture Secretary Kathleen Merrigan, speaking from a bakery in downtown Portland.

Merrigan revealed that Maine would be one of the biggest beneficiaries of the handout. "The University of Maine will receive under this program $1.3 million for research that will expand economic opportunity for the region's farmers," she said.

"I'm not sure if everybody knows this but Maine used to have the title of 'bread basket of New England,'" says Professor Ellen Mallory from UMaine's Cooperative Extension. But Mallory says that was over 150 years ago.

Now, she says, with a growing appetite for organic home-grown food, Maine is barely able to meet in-state demand for locally grown bread, due to a shortage of wheat. "And increasingly now there's more and more millers and bakers looking for wheat they can't find, and the wheat that is available often doesn't have the quality that's needed."

"We've been baking with local grains for 10 years, this grant is going to make sure that a hundred years from now Mainers will be eating bread made with local grains," says Jim Amaral, who owns Borealis Breads in Portland, which bakes and distributes organic bread throughout the state.

Amaral employs 65 people. "I can't tell you how grateful our customers are. They come up to me and just thank me, saying, 'We are so happy that you're doing the work that you're doing. You're providing us with healthy, safe nutritious food and please keep on doing it,'" he says. "And I can't do that unless we have a very successful, healthy sustainable farm community."

In addition to helping with research at UMaine, the grant money will provide assistance to farmers who are considering going into bread wheat production, to help them figure out whether it would be profitable.

The third main initiative that the grant money will help fund is education and outreach, says Ellen Mallory from UMaine's Cooperative Extension. Maine has a lot to learn, she says, from other countries and regions, citing the example of Quebec. "They're growing over 30,000 acres of bread wheat in Quebec," Mallory says. "If they can do it, we can do it. This grant is like the break we needed to get going.

The federal grants are part of the USDA's new "Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food" initiative designed to help develop local and regional food systems and spur economic opportunity.