The last bite: First it was cereal bacon, now it’s bacon cereal

Welcome to “the last bite,” an end-of-week food and ag roundup from the Minnesota Star Tribune. Reach out to business reporter Brooks Johnson at brooks.johnson@startribune.com to share your news and the next big bacon collab.

General Mills and Hormel teamed up to release Cinnamon Toast Crunch-flavored bacon last fall, a sweet-and-savory first for the Minnesota companies.

Now the brand-boosting fun has mutated into another bacon-y creation. The newest mashup between the food giants flips the formula, imbuing smoky bacon flavors into bags of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

“This collaboration is rewriting the rules of breakfast,” Brandon Tyrrell, senior marketing manager at General Mills, said in a rather bold statement.

The limited-time offering — that’s an LTO in industry lingo — is only on Walmart.com for $5.84 while supplies last. (A Target team-up would have made Minnesota explode, probably.)

If anything, this should answer one important question the food industry needs to know: ls this the peak of bacon-on-everything?

Following last week’s graphic-heavy story explaining what we grow in Minnesota and why, it’s worth catching up with some crop progress data to see if, indeed, corn was knee-high by the Fourth of July.

It was indeed, and this year’s corn was ahead of last year’s rain-drenched crop thanks to the right mix of moisture and sun early in the season, said University of Minnesota Extension educator Brad Carlson.

Our more recent string of storms has the state’s top commodities on a more average course. U.S. Department of Agriculture statistics put nearly all Minnesota soy and corn in fair or better condition. Corn is even silking (entering the reproductive phase) in about 6% of the crop compared to 4% last year at this time. Soy pods are also starting to set at an average rate.

A Cargill plant just across the Minnesota border near Wahpeton, N.D. spilled 2,000 gallons of hydrochloric acid earlier this week.

There were no reported injuries following a brief shelter-in-place order and evacuation of nearby farm sites, according to local station KFGO. Exposure to hydrochloric acid can cause serious burns on skin or when inhaled.

So why is there a massive tank of the stuff at a Cargill corn processing facility? Cargill likely uses hydrochloric acid to catalyze production of high-fructose corn syrup, the sweetener found in most sugary sodas. Seed oil haters, take note.

T-Rex Cookie Co., the 10-year-old Eagan bakery that makes enormous cookies (like, seriously huge, half-pound beauties) recently announced its first round of investors.

Founder Tina Rexing ― notice the happy coincidence with the name ― shared on social media the capital campaign runs through the end of August, though no details yet on how much capital the company raised or sought.

“This investment isn’t just about money,” Rexing wrote, “it’s about growing our mission, expanding our reach and proving that giant cookies really do have a place in the world.”

First came the spinoff as Kellogg broke into two companies. Then Mars agreed to pay $36 billion for snack-focused Pop-Tarts and Eggo maker Kellanova. Now, Italian candy company Ferrero is spending $3.1 billion on W.K. Kellogg, the second-largest cereal company in the country.

This is big news for the nation’s other top-three cereal-makers, who both happen to reside in Minnesota: Golden Valley’s General Mills and Lakeville’s Post Consumer Brands.

Ferrero makes Nutella, Kinder chocolates and Tic Tac mints/candies, and it could supercharge Kellogg into reclaiming the No. 1 spot from Mills. That was supposed to be the outcome of the W.K. Kellogg spinoff in the first place, but the cereal category overall is on the decline, save for better-for-you alternatives.