When Patagonia decided to go into the beer business, part of the motivation was fighting climate change: The key ingredient in its beer, a grain called Kernza, is particularly good at storing carbon as it grows. Today, Cascadian Farm announced a limited-edition cereal made with the same ingredient. Both companies are hoping to help move the food into the mainstream.

“The reality is, we are literally pioneering how you grow an ingredient,” says Maria Carolina Comings, marketing director at Cascadian Farm.

Growing in the field, Kernza–a type of wheatgrass–looks a little like ordinary wheat. But unlike wheat, it’s a perennial crop, meaning that it doesn’t need to be replanted each year. Farmers can avoid plowing the soil, a step that releases carbon; soil actually stores more carbon than the atmosphere and plants combined. As it grows, Kernza’s roots reach more than 10 feet underground, helping add more carbon to the ground by creating a home for microbes.

“Roots are the main way that soil carbon is built,” says Fred Iutzi, president of The Land Institute, a Kansas-based nonprofit that has been breeding the grain for 16 years. “You can think of Kernza and other perennial crops as really like carbon pumps that are increasing the amount of the carbon that they take out of the air that actually sticks in the soil.” The plant acts similarly to native prairie grasses that have been largely replaced by agriculture.

The grain, a variety of wheatgrass originally from Central Asia, was already used to grow feed for livestock. But The Land Institute saw the potential to breed it a version that would be productive enough to use in human food, and branded the product Kernza. Patagonia’s founder Yvon Chouinard was familiar with the work, and the environmental benefits beyond carbon sequestration; the crop also helps prevent soil erosion and its deep roots help keep water systems clean. It’s also better nutritionally, with more protein, fiber, and antioxidants than wheat.

“Yvon put a bag of Kernza on my desk and said, ‘Go talk to [The Land Institute] and see if we can do something about this,” says Birgit Cameron, director of Patagonia Provisions, the outdoor retailer’s seven-year-old food business. The company helped the ingredient get food safety approval from the FDA, and started helping set up infrastructure to commercialize it. In 2016, it released Long Root Ale, its first beer made with Kernza. Last week, working with Portland-based Hopworks Urban Brewery, it released the Belgian-style Long Root Wit.

The beer is available in relatively limited quantities and only in some states. Cascadian Farm, as the first major brand to launch a product using Kernza, wants to use the ingredient at a bigger scale. The cereal that just launched was initially set to be available nationwide in Whole Foods and other natural retailers. Instead, because inclement weather unexpectedly ruined most of the crop, Cascadian Farm was only able to launch the cereal, Honey Toasted Kernza, in a limited edition of 6,000 boxes.