Inside a barn in southwest Missouri, Macauley Kincaid operates a massive contraption of wood and metal affixed with pipes, pulleys and wheels.

“This was like state of the art for its time. I mean, this was the bee's knees back in the ‘80s,” he said.

With the help of gravity, recently harvested barley seeds sift through four levels of screens in the mill. Kindcaid is the second generation in his family to cultivate crops for seed production, and he’s still using the technology his uncle invested in 40 years ago.

“For every crop we clean, they have different recommended screen sizes and different air pressure that you run on each seed … you get larger seeds very clean and little to no weed seeds,” he said. “That's where you want to be.”

Kincaid conducts the laborious seed testing and cle

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