Barley straw doesn’t particularly want to become paper.

Its stalk is thick, rigid and resistant to breaking down. But after six months of boiling, pulping, pressing and tinkering, a project in southeastern Turkey has turned roughly 300 kilograms of the agricultural by-product into sheets that can be stitched, folded, printed, woven and worn.

The results will arrive in New York on Thursday with “Soil to Surface,” an exhibition at the Fashion Institute of Technology that pairs work developed by women in Turkey’s earthquake-struck Adıyaman province with experiments by Turkish designers and members of the FIT community.

The exhibition is the international component of Second Harvest, an initiative from the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Turkey and brewer Anadolu Efes in collaboration with MILKist Social Design Center. It explores whether straw left after the barley harvest can support a new design-material supply chain—and new sources of income for women-led cooperatives.

The material begins with straw collected from growers in Anadolu Efes’ agricultural supply network. Workers cut it into smaller pieces, then boil it in water with washing soda to soften and separate the plant fibers. After rinsing and further breaking it down, the resulting pulp is suspended in water and formed by hand on screens and molds.

The sheets are pressed to remove water and allowed to dry naturally. Variations in thickness, color and visible fibers remain part of the finished surface.

MILKist led the initial research and technical formulation, striving to make a sufficiently strong sheet from 100 percent barley straw without adding other fibers or binders. Washing soda functions as a processing aid and is rinsed out before the straw becomes pulp, the organization said.

Plant-based dyes can be added either during fiber preparation or applied to finished sheets. MILKist has experimented in particular with poppies, which grow in the Adıyaman region and have been part of the center’s natural-color work for nearly a decade.

“There is an interesting possibility of bringing two materials from the same landscape together: the residue of one crop becoming the surface, and a locally occurring plant becoming its color,” said Birnur Temel Birtane, MILKist’s founding director and a co-curator of the exhibition.

Barley straw is not waste in the strict sense. It already has agricultural uses, Anadolu Efes said, so the project aims to open an additional pathway for part of the material rather than divert something otherwise destined for disposal.

The company selected barley because it’s the brewer’s main agricultural input and chose Adıyaman because the province is part of its supply network. The region was also among those most severely affected by the February 2023 earthquakes that devastated southern Turkey and northern Syria.

Sixteen women from the Eliyaman and Fortuna women’s cooperatives are participating in the pilot. MILKist introduced the original recipe, but the women helped test thicknesses, drying methods, natural-color applications and other changes based on how each sheet would be used.

A lighting component, for instance, requires different properties than a bag, piece of jewelry or sculptural object. The cooperative members’ experience with sewing, handcrafts and production helped designers adjust both the material and the finished products, according to the project partners.

Second Harvest is intended to create several potential sources of income for the cooperatives, including supplying sheets, taking on commissioned production and producing finished goods. UNDP said it eventually wants to establish permanent production spaces and a sustainable workshop model in Adıyaman.

The material itself also remains at an early stage. No formal performance or environmental testing has been completed, including standardized assessments of its strength, durability or environmental footprint. Current findings are based on hands-on prototyping, designer feedback and use in objects including bags, lighting, jewelry, home décor, installations and retail-window displays.

The team describes the project as a small-scale production model moving toward commercialization rather than mass production. Improving consistency and measuring demand are among the remaining steps.

For the New York exhibition, FIT students, faculty and alumni were invited to work with the sheets without a prescribed outcome. Some cut the material into strips and wove it using traditional techniques. Others screen-printed both sides or shredded the barley straw and needle-felted it with wool onto woven satin.

The latter experiment moved the material away from its original sheet form and into a layered textile structure.

“The participants did not necessarily treat the barley material as a finished sheet of paper,” Birtane said. “They began to deconstruct it, combine it with other fibers and surfaces, and bring it into textile and fine-art techniques that we had not originally developed it for.”

The work suggests applications somewhere between paper, fiber and textile, though the absence of formal testing limits what can yet be claimed about its performance or environmental benefits.

Anadolu Efes provides access to its agricultural network and coordinates the partnership with UNDP, MILKist, the cooperatives and participating designers. The company and UNDP have collaborated since 2007.

“Second Harvest” also forms part of UNDP’s economic-recovery work in Adıyaman, where rebuilding livelihoods has accompanied reconstruction following the earthquakes. The organization said the cooperative setting offers participants production experience, social connection and a route back into paid work.

“Soil to Surface” opens Sept. 24 at FIT’s Art and Design Gallery and remains on view through Nov. 1. The works on display span the project’s current range: hand-formed barley sheets, finished objects and FIT experiments that pull the material apart and assemble it in new forms.